O, Mr. President

The other day, as part of my one-new-thing-a-day campaign, I spoke for the first time to a 28 year old American guy working in our office. We kind of hit it off and our talk wandered into Blu ray DVD. He said this new DVD battle shows that Japan is better than US because hardware development still has its momentum in Japan while US is merely wondering which machine is better. In US, science is getting less and less popular these days. Half jokingly he added "after all it is a country whose president thinks that Mars goes around the Sun in the same orbit as the earth."
As this remark haunted me for a week, yesterday I at last investigated it on the Internet. I found he was not joking if not exactly correct! Here is what George Bush Jr said.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Of course his ignorance is intriguingly amazing (even cute) already, but what surprises me more is Americans who elected this man as their president. In Japan it would be impossible. The Japanese would think that if the man doesn't know this basic, how he knows other important things? However, Americans might have thought that knowledge about Mars had nothing to do with politics. I am not saying Japan is better and US is worse in this regard. Just different. This difference may partly stem from education, I think.
What do you think?
To be continued.
The picture is from "The International Astronomical Union / Martin Kornmesser"