Is Obama Smart? A case study in stupid is as stupid does.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Mercor, Aug 9, 2011.

  1. Mercor

    Mercor

    I've heard that Jesus was a mumbler.
     
    #11     Aug 9, 2011
  2. If Obama was smart he would quit the White House and go back to Africa with his mate and those he has bred with his mate.

    But he is not smart, and wants to stay and be impeached then imprisoned.
     
    #12     Aug 9, 2011
  3. bone

    bone

    Human Events

    Obama’s Not as Smart as the Media Portrays

    by Christian Toto
    Posted 08/19/2010 ET
    Updated 08/20/2010 ET


    One by one, the media memes concocted on President Barack Obama’s behalf have fallen away.
    Post partisan? Simply tally up the times he blames his predecessor for his current woes—caution: you might need an abacas.

    Post-racial? Well, if the so-called Beer Summit didn’t smash that image, then the President’s inability to restrain members of his own party from calling critics “racist” sure did.

    The great communicator redux? Chris Matthews’ leg hasn’t tingled in ages, and Obama often looks bored discussing job creation, empowering small businesses or the virtues of his country.
    That leaves only one media meme, the granddaddy of them all. Obama is simply the smartest man we could select as our commander in chief.

    It was the biggest talking point the left and its media enablers had in the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections, and it‘s one that won‘t go away without a fight.

    Numerous outlets even compared Obama to Mr. Spock, the uber-brainy Vulcan from “Star Trek.” The description helped distract voters from his negligible track record in office. It also contrasted him with the deeply unpopular President George W. Bush, a man whose oft-mangled speeches left him susceptible to intellectual taunts.

    Yet a quick glance at Obama decisions—and statements—over the first 19-plus months of his presidency makes it hard for anyone but a Kool-Aid stained DNC drone to describe him in such lofty terms.

    On the campaign trail Obama proved just as vulnerable to gaffes as his predecessors, if one recalls his “57 states” line or declaring “Austrian” is a language.

    It’s not fair to pick on him for such slips given the rigors of the campaign. They simply hinted at the fact that Obama’s intellect might not be as super-charged as advertised. But the smart meme endured all the same.

    The President’s recent blunders have hit us at breakneck speed. He waded into the New York City mosque debate with his standard combination of arrogance, misinformation and straw men.

    When his comments blew up in his—and his party’s—face he backtracked one day later. Did someone directly ask for Obama’s opinion on the controversy? Or did the sharpest knife in the drawer think it wise to stick his chin out?

    Earlier this month, First Lady Michelle Obama drew withering fire from the pundit class for stepping out to Spain at a significant cost to taxpayers. Now, Michelle Obama deserves the blame here, but there’s no way the First Couple didn’t discuss the trip before the particulars were nailed down.

    Call it arrogance, call it short sighted—just don’t call it bright on any level.

    The President’s handling of the Gulf oil spill couldn’t have been much worse. He looked aloof when he should have seemed caring, chased away help from other nations when he could have welcomed their aid in line with his international bent.

    And would a wise man respond to a catastrophe by saying he was looking for an ass to kick? That’s what a third grader says after getting verbally teased, not something the smartest man in any room declares.

    Even Obama’s speeches have taken on the simple-minded clichés that Presidents often need years to develop. Obama’s insistence on stale phrases like “let me be clear” and “make no mistake” hardly speak to a communicator for the ages. And what follows the former catch phrase is often as clear as mud.

    Obama’s foreign policy positions hardly seem the work of an intellectually serious man. Was he shocked, shocked when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swatted away his calls for rancor-free dialogue and simply went ahead with his country’s nuclear program?

    Mainstream press outlets still won’t let the smart meme go no matter how much evidence buildsup to the contrary.

    Politico’s Roger Simon filed a scathing column this week with the headline, “Obama, the one-term President.” Yet even Simon, before listing the President’s gaffe-a-thon term in office, uncorked this stunner:

    “I am not saying Obama is not smart; he is as smart as a whip,” Simon wrote. “I am just saying he does not understand what savvy first-term Presidents understand.”

    Does that mean a lowly columnist understands what it takes to be President more than the Brain in Chief?

    The whole “smarts” question could be partially answered had Obama let us see his academic records in toto. But since he still finds the need to hide them, we have to look at his days in the Oval Office for evidence of a superior intellect.

    So far, the evidence points to a C student with a sonorous voice his peers probably confused for wisdom.

    American voters know the feeling.
     
    #13     Sep 14, 2011
  4. bone

    bone

    American Thinker

    August 18, 2010

    Just How Smart Is Obama?

    By Victor Volsky

    The meteoric rise to the presidency of Barack Obama was fueled in no small part by the widely accepted contention that he was one of the smartest men ever to seek the Oval Office. He is not the first leader to be oversold.

    "As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he's a great military man -- I want you to know that."

    It is an article of faith among the mainstream media, even on the squishy right (Bill O'Reilly comes to mind), to start any discussion of the 44th President with a ritual expression of utter amazement at his enormous brain power.

    This immortal witticism of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf , after a lightning 1991 campaign that cut to pieces the Iraqi dictator's vaunted army, resonates with me each time I read or hear any discussion of President Obama.

    Does Obama deserve his reputation? Not really -- unless of course, a "perfectly creased pant" is a true metric of rapier wit and towering intellect, as David Brooks seems to think. One can certainly take such things on faith merely on the basis of credentials: the right university, the right profession, the right crowd. Columbia and Harvard Law alum -- what other proof is needed that the accomplisher of such lofty achievements must be right up there with the Einsteins of the world? Assumptions of this sort could cause one acute embarrassment, such as the one experienced by the historian Michael Beschloss at the hands of Don Imus. Beschloss was extolling Obama's "sky-high IQ," but just as he was hitting his stride, the host interrupted his guest's rapture: "So what's his IQ?" The historian had to sheepishly admit that he didn't know.

    But mindless sycophancy of Obama groupies aside, what gives his admirers the reason to believe in the incomparable intellectual faculties of their idol? An ability to more or less fluently read a prepared text? But each time he drops the life buoy of the teleprompter and ventures to go unscripted, Obama stumbles and mumbles in search of words, launching an avalanche of "uhs" and more likely than not putting his foot into his mouth. Watching him on such excursions into the terrifying world of improvisation, anyone can see that Obama would be wise to take a few speech lessons from purported lowbrow Sarah Palin. Are his glaringly poor off-the-cuff skills evidence of great intelligence?

    How about his endless gaffes? Like

    "I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go."
    - Obama 2008 campaign event, Beaverton, OR (Perhaps it was a Freudian slip, considering that there is indeed an entity consisting of 57 states -- it's called the Organization of the Islamic Conference.)

    Or the "Austrian" language which Obama believes is spoken in Austria? Or

    "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed."
    - 2007 campaign speech on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people

    Or as he said in this year's Ramadan greeting, "Islam has always been part of America and ... American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country." What country was he talking about? Or this pearl: "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong." An occasional slip of the tongue is an accident. A habit of dumb misstatements is evidence of laziness and lack of mental discipline, of the tongue just wagging uncontrollably. Is it evidence of Obama's intellectual superiority?

    What about his propensity to jump feet-first before thinking and let the devil take the hindmost? Like accusing the Cambridge, MA police of stupidity in the Skip Gates incident, while freely admitting that he actually didn't know the circumstances of the case? Or getting into the Manhattan mosque controversy -- how's that for political acumen? Does it take a genius to figure out that coming down on the unpopular side of the issue, contrary to the will of nearly 70 percent of the American people, would be a major political blunder, particularly with the midterm elections just around the corner? Liberal pundits heaped praise on the president for his courage and steadfast adherence to principle. Why, then, did he hastily backtrack the very next day? Hardly a profile in courage is it. So what was it? Apparently an infantile, ideologically driven whim: I want it! I need it! And a hasty retreat as soon as the utterly predictable explosion ensued. A political genius?

    How hard was it to predict that endless golf-cum-basketball outings, musical soirées at the White House, and vacation upon vacation in posh spots, culminating in Michelle's Spanish junket and a forthcoming stay in the elitist retreat of Martha's Vineyard, would be a major irritant to the people hard-hit by the recession or an undermining influence on the president's popularity? A callous disregard for the proles? Obviously. But how astute is it? Not very, for in-your-face arrogance has never been a mark of intelligence.

    Add to this Obama's obvious economic ignorance, his glaring naiveté in international affairs, his boundless faith in the power of his oratory, his intellectual laziness, his intrinsic indecisiveness smacking of childish belief in the power of wish (close your eyes and the bad stuff will just go away), his political tin-ear -- are these the attributes of a genius? Sorry, Obama fans, what it all adds up to is an immature narcissist, an utterly inexperienced tyro, devoid of administrative ability, lacking political skills...a radical ideologue, who apparently believes that the job of president boils down to an incessant gabfest.

    So with compliments to General Schwarzkopf: As far as Barack Obama being smart as a whip goes, he has no clue in economics, nor has he any understanding of foreign policy; he is supremely arrogant and doesn't care if it rubs people the wrong way; he has few political skills and no administrative ability, nor does he have any desire to engage in the day-to-day drudgery of ruling, preferring to reign instead; and he revels in the luxury of presidential perks and delights in flaunting his excess. Other than that, he is a true genius.
     
    #14     Sep 14, 2011
  5. bone

    bone

    American Thinker

    June 1, 2011

    Stop It Already -- He's Not So Smart

    By Dov Fischer

    As part of the mainstream media's ongoing effort to sway and distort American thinking, liberal "analysts" for decades continually have conveyed the impression that ideological liberals are just-plain-smarter than mortal humans while conservatives -- even the good ones like the RINOs -- just are not all that smart, and in fact are stupid. Thus, Ronald Reagan was a moron, an actor who shared a bed with a monkey in "Bedtime for Bonzo." George H.W. Bush, despite having achieved extraordinary results during Operation Desert Storm, was no intellectual match for the Clintonites who derisively mocked: "It's the economy, stupid."

    You could not call Richard Nixon "stupid," so he instead was "tricky." (By contrast, the mainstream media did not label Bill Clinton as "tricky" even when he tried evading questions based on "what is, is.") The media depicted President Gerald Ford, a graduate of the University of Michigan and a star athlete, as a bumbling oaf. George W. Bush was another dope -- he could not even pronounce "nuclear" the way they do on the East Coast.

    By contrast, John F. Kennedy was a Harvard scholar, surrounded by the "best and the brightest." Jimmy Carter was the hardest working of Presidents, whose brilliance enabled him to grasp every detail of governance. Bill Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate, also had been a Rhodes Scholar, again one of our most brilliant Presidents, albeit disbarred ultimately from practicing law before the Supreme Court. And Barack Obama -- well, a graduate of Columbia University's undergraduate school, of Harvard Law School, editor-in-chief ("president") of the Harvard Law Review, a professor of constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School. A genius, with brains to spare.

    Even the losers get treated according to the media script. Barry Goldwater was a crazy man, set on launching a nuclear holocaust. Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, on the other hand, were brilliant and brillianter. Al Gore was brilliantest. Meanwhile, Bob Dole tripped off a stage, evoking the Gerald Ford myth. And John McCain? Poor guy can't count the number of houses he owns, while his pig-with-lipstick running mate cannot name a newspaper or a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade. As if, for example, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, governed the state with nothing to do but watch the Real Housewives of MSNBC, never reading a newspaper, never hearing of a Supreme Court case.

    So it is time to say it: Stop it already. We know that Barack Obama has unique gifts that elude many of us. For example, he manifestly avoids holding banister rails when he descends steps at airports because, unlike Republicans Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, he never slips. We are very impressed, those of us who keep our hands near the banister just in case. We know that he is professorial, says "uh" when thinking, drinks beer with professors. We are very impressed.

    We would be more impressed if our transparent President would allow us to see his transcript from Columbia University and share with us how he managed to finance his education there. Or if he would allow us to read his senior thesis. Or allow us to see his transcript from Harvard Law School. Yes, we know he rose to be the president of Law Review, but there is a question that nags on that one, too:

    I was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and later had the honor of clerking for the Hon. Danny Julian Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, one of the nation's most brilliant jurists, who later rose to become Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit. To be selected as Chief Articles Editor, I had to research and write the Law Review Comment of a lifetime. In time, it was published and deemed good enough that I was named law review chief articles editor. In the years that followed, that Law Review Comment has been cited by federal courts in at least seven published judicial opinions, and in several other unpublished opinions. It has been cited and quoted often in other people's legal scholarship.

    And that is "how it works." To be a law review editor-in-chief, a Chief Articles Editor, a Chief Comments Editor of a law review, it is a sine qua non that you publish something fabulous, a real scholarly piece of work. Many dozens of America's finest law students do exactly that every year. Those articles later become part of a vast searchable electronic library of legal scholarship.

    The thing is, I cannot find Barack Obama's great piece of work, the scholarship one would presume he researched, drafted, crafted, and honed, that earned him the presidency of the Harvard Law Review. The name "Obama" is the kind of search term that should do the job. But I cannot find any scholarship published by him that reveals the exceptional brilliance that paved the way to his achievement. So there is no published scholarship that refutes the increasing sense so many of us share that we Americans elected a President who maybe is not so smart as the media's campaign hype suggested. Perhaps even a rube. Just as we have been chastened by the Mississippi floods and the Midwestern tornadoes that challenge his power as a "god" to declare the moment when "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

    Think back to his press conference when, recklessly venturing beyond range of a teleprompter, he described his campaign efforts through the 57 states. If Dan Quayle had said that, people would have thrown potatoes at him. With Obama, though, we are told it was a slip of the tongue. When he could not properly pronounce the military term "corpsman," pronouncing it instead as one would describe a cadaver, the late-night comics did not perceive humor.

    When he recently bungled our Mideast policy in the face of the "Arab Spring," where the international Arab street has been screaming that their lives' real concern today is not Zionism but the tyranny, repression, and corruption perpetrated by their dictators, his supporters in the mainstream press praised his brilliant ideas nonetheless. And when the professor soon thereafter had to sit through the first intelligent lecture he had heard since he left school, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's thoughtful exposition on Mideast reality, Obama barely could move, planting and gluing his fist firmly in his face, practically gripping the wood off his chair like Captain Kirk during a Klingon attack.

    I have long sensed that Prof. Obama never got a fair deal from his critics, who kept asking how he could have sat silently for twenty years through the hate-filled anti-American sermons of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I always have assumed the true answer is: he did not realize because he almost-never attended church. Of course no politician can say that to American voters, so Obama was caught in a quandary, ultimately throwing the reverend under the bus, then his grandmother as a racist.

    Few of us have publicly lambasted our closest relatives, particularly those who reared us, just to win friends or to make a point. Perhaps we would do so if only we were smarter. Uh...
     
    #15     Sep 14, 2011
  6. pspr

    pspr

    Obama isn't particularly smart. Otherwise, as Lucrum says, he would release his college records.

    He doesn't have the proper experience to be our Chief Executive. In fact, he has no experience or training in that area.

    What he does have is a rather large ego. So large, that I have wondered to myself why his head hasn't exploded.
     
    #16     Sep 14, 2011
  7. Lucrum

    Lucrum


    <iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HY-03vYYAjA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
     
    #17     Sep 14, 2011
  8. bone

    bone

    His head does not explode because he keeps getting it jammed up his ass courtesy an intellectually inferior bartender from Ohio - again, and again in fact.

    I've had three years to see his game, and there is none. In fact, take away his teleprompter and he makes Sarah Palin look freakishly smart. I keep seeing him get stuffed by the nuckle-dragging idiot Republicans. Please name one accomplishment of his - The Affordable Health Care Act is his in name only. He had dick to do with that. He was put into a position with Bin Laden to choose either instant vaporization or a JSOC raid. Where is his brilliance ? The Solyndra investment ? The gulf drilling moratorium ?

    Apparently, all the Left requires is a pretty speech to deem someone an intellectual titan.
     
    #18     Sep 14, 2011
  9. pspr

    pspr

    Yeahhhh! That's what I'm talking about! :D
     
    #19     Sep 14, 2011
  10. pspr

    pspr

    Actually, Obama is pretty brave. I found this pic of him back when he was practicing law.

    <img src="http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/wp-content/gallery/obama-satire/obama-constitution.jpg">
     
    #20     Sep 14, 2011