The difference between Bush and Kerry (or Gore or Clinton) has been attributed to the fact that Bush had a managerial education and the education of the others was professional (i.e. legal, journalistic, or ministerial). So Bush is confronted with practical problems and seeks practical solutions for them, while the others are looking to craft an intellectual interpretation or understanding of them, based on abstract ideas.
Bush's approach doesn't always work better (Robert McNamara's managerial approach made quite a mess of Vietnam), but does seem to be more appropriate to the "real" practical world most of the time. Academic life involves creating all manner of complicated papers that as often as not avoid coming to a realistic and practical solution of problems. And professional education -- and politics -- have been influenced by such a theoretical and interpretive way of looking at the world, that can be very distant from practical concerns.
The irony, though, is that ideas have come to be very important to the "practical" Bush -- sometimes even outweighing immediate practical concerns -- while the "nuances" of the "intellectual" Kerry look to be more and more without real content, just a way of saying "I'd do things differently" without any clear idea of what should be done. The practical mind eventually does seize on ideas (for good or ill), while the theoretical mind finds it increasingly hard to take firm hold of anything.
Thanks. I enjoyed your insightful post.