Who's Worse, Bush in 2000 or Palin in 2008?

So I was sort of wondering if Bush came off better in interviews in 2000 than Palin does in 2008.

This comparison I thought might be instructive. Each was/is the governor of a red state with a pronounced frontier fetish, each had/has a reputation as a hardass politician as opposed to a policy wonk, & each was/is the darling of the religious right.

And each was/is tagged with the criticism of being way out of their depth. Now, we know Bush actually was out of his depth, as he would have been had he got tossed into a wading pool, even though in fact he got tossed into the ocean. To be fair, as of now we only suspect this of Palin, though if I were her I wouldn't go wading in birdbaths anytime soon. (Katie Couric made you look dumb? Jeepers.)

Anyhow, let's look at the tape. Here is Bush with Jim Lehrer in February of 2000. Does he seem smart?  I chose this more at less at random, though I was intrigued by his answers about Northern Ireland particularly: