Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
Big trouble ahead for the Democrats. Blaming Bush for everything is now unpopular. Even with part of the Democratic base. From the Washington Times:
The summer of the discontented voter steams onward and, unfortunately for President Obama, polls show voters are no longer blaming the bad times on the George W. Bush administration.
Add Hispanics to the growing list of Obama supporters disgruntled by aspects of the presidents performance, in what has become for theWhite House and Democrats a seemingly daily beat of gloomy polls.
Mr. Obama gets only lukewarm ratings on issues important to Hispanics in a Univision/AP poll released Tuesday, and, according to a separate Reuters-Ipsos survey, Americans overwhelmingly believe the president has failed to focus enough on job creation.
"A lot of these folks wouldn't like him no matter what, but I think the country has pretty much the same problems it did before Obama took office — at least that's how voters feel — and more and more that's becoming Obama's fault rather than Bush's fault," said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling.
It's way, way, way too early to be pinning medals on each other. It's August 1st, and November is a political lifetime away. But it's amazing to see just how quickly a president can squander a 53% victory, universal press approval, and a huge amount of good will. Remind me again why he's supposed to be so smart?
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May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
because the left/media needed someone smart to complete the contrast versus the supposedly moronic Bush. Reality had & has little relevance to the narrative. The choice was 4 -8 more years of the Clintons or a fresh new face with no history, allowing a compelling story to form. Intelligence was just part of the puzzle fabricated to support the dream candidate and subsequent leader. While many are waking up to reality, don't look for the same to happen with those who invested so much to create the perfect leader - out of fiction.
Amazing how people can lie to themselves and convince others of the lie as well.
Jul '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
He's smart because he is the very epitome of the academic/cultural elite. When one belongs to that club it is not necessary to actually do anything to be declared smart. That actually kind of gets in the way. People might think you are a grubby working type.
No, one just needs to exhibit the proper attitudes and postures, and to mouth empty sonoroties with eloquent abandon. As far as I can tell, President Obama is as good at this today as he ever was.
Jun '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
I guess it all depends on whether you take the long view or the short view. Yes, the Democrats will likely get creamed in November. But in the last two years they've made considerable progress in laying the foundations of a socialist state. Worst of all, they've created dozens of new federal agencies to carry on their work for years to come. Will Republicans reverse this if they gain power? The record is not encouraging.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
He is smart because he holds a similar ideology to people who consider themselves the smartest in the country and who create most of the content for broadcast and print media, giving them control of the narrative.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
For crying out loud, Long. We're talking about a Nobel Prize winner here.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
Nobel Prize Winner and Double Downer President Obama.
Jun '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
He won the Nobel Prize for not being George W. Bush. Hey, I could do that.
Jul '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
The man won the Presidency in a campaign where he threw his own grandmother under the bus to score political points with the usual race mongers (who were going to vote for him based on his complexion anyway). His ridiculous resume made him the least qualified candidate available, yet, with the lefty press tossing rose petals in his path, he was able to scrape out a victory. Qualified? No. Brilliant? Only at getting elected.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
Rob, I think you have it backwards.... My impression is that the President is very intelligent, but he isn't very smart. We seem to get a lot of that from those that escape the Ivory Tower (Is that a racist term?).
As Prof. Glenn Reynolds has taken to saying..."Didn’t the 'best and brightest' used to be, you know, better and brighter?"
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
I agree, and I have even said those exact words before. You don't have to look very hard to find lots of examples of things he just doesn't know, but that a normal smart person would have to pick up just by living life.
For example, he preposterously thought 10,000 people had died in a tornado in Kansas. That would be the largest natural disaster of any kind in United States history, outdoing hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, heatwaves, and massive urban fires. It seems that he lacks a normal person's sense of scale.
He thought the device children with asthma use is called an "inhalator".
He didn't know how to pronounce the word "corpsman". A normal person would have run across the words "corps" before, and certainly the President would as Commander-in-Chief of the Marine Corps and the Army Corps of Engineers. Of course he just hasn't been exposed to that unsavory aspect of American life, the military.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
I may be late to the show here, but did anyone else notice that Hispanics are becoming disenchanted with Obama? Granted, I haven't checked the link to see exactly why they are disgruntled with him or judge whether that's a sound conclusion. Still, if it's true, the fact that he is losing Hispanic support after trying to wave Arizona's SB 1070 as a bloody shirt to rally Hispanics to his side - I just can't see any way that could portend anything but disaster for him.
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
Smart people are susceptible to governing philosophies that tell them they're The Answer. It's true that too much of our academy and our intelligentsia are bewitched by that approach to government. But it's salutary to be reminded that even really actually very smart people can and do have simply bad ideas. Sometimes idiotically bad ideas, sometimes brilliantly bad ideas...and that's to leave aside the whole question of translating ideas into practice. Obama's translated a few fairly well -- consider his education and even a fair bit of his foreign policy. But on the whole, it's been too much and too little at the same time. It's hard to simply smart your way out of that.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
We've gone from verbing nouns to verbing adjectives! That weirds me out.
Jul '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
I've met plenty of people from Harvard who couldn't find their ass with both hands. Obama seems to fall in that category.
I don't find him particularly smart, neither from his prepared or extemporaneous speeches nor his approach to government. His 'success' in promoting the leftist/socialist agenda has been spectacular, but at the expense of future political victories. It's an approach that any senior class president could run. At the same time, he's salted the earth; he knows that any rollback is not just improbable, but impossible. But again, what's the genius in that?
Aug '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
For me, at least, I recall that O'bama's attraction being that he was "different" not that he was intelligent. It is his difference which permitted his proponents to themselves feel "intelligent" for sponsoring him which led to this meme. It's nothing more than projection.
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
Right. It's weird, don't you think? Losing your base this close to an election, with no evident tactic to get them back? And factor in that presidential power is really about capturing the middle, which he's also lost? It's as if his only strategy is to lose the House and/or the Senate, and then cross his fingers and hope that the Republicans go nuts and start being weird and off-putting.
Wait a minute. So he does have a plan! And a pretty good one, at that.
May '10
Re: Remind Me Again Why He's Supposed to be So Smart?
The President doesn't strike me as at all intellectually curious. I can't recall the last book he read, or even if he reads books regularly at all. He doesn't ever seem to question anything with an intellectual argument. His weapons are progressive cant repeated ad nauseum and the cutting insult. He's surrounded himself with people just like that as well.
IN fact, that was my biggest problem with Elena Kagan. For someone who is supposed to have a great legal mind, she didn't express much interest in expanding her knowledge.