Attempting to explain the Ground Zero mosque blunder, Margaret Carlson argues that Obama is too smart for us: “He is so supremely confident in his intellect that he forgets, on his way to the correct decision, to slow down and pick up not-so-gifted stragglers.” Well, supremely confident but not so smart. Does he truly not get the distinction between constitutional rights and moral persuasion? Does he not understand that an imam who can’t denounce Hamas, insists America is complicit in 9/11, and won’t disclose whether state sponsors of terror are funding his project isn’t seeking reconciliation?"As well read as George W. Bush" is hysterically funny on its own.
To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman? Let’s get some perspective here.
But look: now we've gone from "Obama is too smart to connect to the American public" to "Obama's not smart enough to do anything right" almost overnight. Obama's gone from Spock to Stupid...not even the intellectual equal of Dubya. After all, the argument goes, if Obama doesn't get the "common sense" wisdom that America hates Muslims, he can't be all that bright, can he? That's why he's letting Timmy and Ben and Nancy and Harry run things. Hey, he's even taking advice from his VP.
Hey, if Obama was actually smart, he would have fixed the economy, prevented the oil spill, ended racism, fixed Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan for that matter, solved Middle East peace, dropped the unemployment rate...you know he would have fixed all the problems that Bush left him. I mean come on, he had 19 months after all. Clearly because liberals questioned Bush's intelligence when he got us into this mess, if Obama hasn't fixed it yet he's not as smart as Bush, right?
Libertarian self-proclaimed Uber-nerd Vox Day goes one step further.
I figured out during the campaign that while Soebarkah is more intelligent than the average, he is far less intelligent than his academic background would normally lead one to believe. He's simply not as smart as his underlings or most of his peers in the political elite and he knows it, which is why he accepts the de facto leadership of Reid and Pelosi. This doesn't make him uniquely cretinous among the Washington set; John Kerry has a similar IQ in the 115 to 120 range. But because people expect more from a president, I have little doubt that by the time Soebarkah's political career is done, most likely after his first term, the national consensus will be that he was one of the dumbest presidents with whom the electorate has ever inflicted itself.The Affirmative Action President, he calls him. "one of the dumbest presidents with whom the electorate has ever inflicted itself." This from a guy who insists the President's last name isn't Obama.
If the President was smart, he'd be a conservative Republican, after all...right?
Hence the title of the post, here. Barack Obama is the Other, and the Other is not like us. He continues to be dehumanized by some of his critics. The unspoken here is of course that the nation's first minority President can't actually be that bright -- look at all the trouble we're in now -- but what do you expect from one of them? It all comes back to the oldest racial stereotypes: "they're just not as smart as we are" so it's perfectly logical to dehumanize and disenfranchise them.
Ahh, the soft bigotry of low expectations has now become the open bigotry of Obama Derangement Syndrome.
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The link in that Vox Day post is priceless (or it would be if I didn't think CNN will eventually have Vox Day on to have a serious, chin-scratching discussion about Obama's brainpower): Day doesn't know Obama's IQ, so he liks a guy who also doesn't know Obama's IQ and thus decides to base his analysis on Obama's LSAT score -- which he also doesn't know, so he looks at the average LSAT score for Harvard ... and then deducts points for presumed "affirmative action," then concludes, based on this oh-so-scientific process, that Obama's IQ is precisely 116. QE freakin' D!
The scientific method just rolled over in its grave.
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