Is George Bush smarter than the Washington elites?

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine is pointing out George Bush essentially decided to do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton recommended in the Iraq Study Group report. Bush employed Petraeus' surge strategy which has routed Al Qaeda over the past months. From PowerLine:

The ensuing troop surge has helped deal a devastating blow to al Qaeda and has significantly enhanced security in Iraq. One strongly suspects that Churchill would applaud Bush for blowing off the defeatist recommendations of Baker and Hamilton and employing a strategy that offers the possibility of some form of victory.

I'd add: Bush also ignored the advice of the leaders of the Democratic party. Here's Harry Reid, from April: "This war is lost." He also ignored media elites like McClatchy reporter Tom Lasseter, who found some dispirited troops in February, and wrote an article titled, "Soldiers in Iraq view troop surge as lost cause."