Posted on 03/14/2010 8:21:04 AM PDT by opentalk
As a student of charismatic leadership, my antenna lit up when I saw all the chatter during the 2008 Presidential campaign regarding Barack Obama’s brilliance and genius. Since I’ve gotten to know some real geniuses, I think I’m in a good position to access his intellectual capacity. Based on my experience, I can report that Barack Obama is a non-genius.
How do I know? Well, for one reason, one of my brothers is a genius. He’s tested out in elementary school with an IQ over 140. In high school, my brother figured out how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. (This was back in the days before there were on-line cheat sheets and YouTube videos explaining how to do it.) See, http://www.videojug.com/interview/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube-in-under-a-minute#first-layer
I have also taught at the nation’s number one liberal arts college, Williams in MA. In that job, I had the opportunity to teach some of our nation’s most talented between 1986 and 1989. I also served, briefly, as an admissions counselor at Cornell in the early 1980s where I got to interview applicants and compare what I saw face-to-face with their SAT test scores. In other words, I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting “true men of genius.”
Based on reasonable standards, I can safely assert President Obama’s mental capacity is not in that category.
Nevertheless, it is tempting for those seeking to promote his charismatic image to interpret his current behavior as if he were, in fact, a genius. From this biased perspective, Obama has a secret, long-term plan that is going to work out for him and all of us at the same time. His challenges today are due to the extremely poor mistakes made by others in the past and the sheer impossibility of doing anything productive under the constraints established by the U.S. Constitution. If you choose to believe that Obama is a genius, then his failures must be due to exogenous factors.
If you see Obama as a non-genius, however, you become more sensitive to a different storyline, a storyline that makes more sense given President Obama’s actual history. To be a little blunt, assuming that Obama is not so bright helps explain a lot of mysterious stuff that makes no sense if he were truly a genius including:
Obama’s over dependence on his teleprompter. Obama’s boring performances in his now discontinued press conferences. Obama’s factual errors during his confrontation with Republicans at their retreat. Obama’s indecisiveness and general slowness in figuring out how to respond to his commanders’ requests for additional troops in Afghanistan.
Obama’s try and fail approach to winning the Olympic Games for Chicago, his useless trip to China, and his fruitless visit to Copenhagen on behalf of the cause of anthropomorphic global warming.
Obama’s unwillingness to contribute an article to the Harvard Law Review while he served as its first African-American president.
Obama’s reluctance to compete for a tenure track job at the University of Chicago Law School and the fact that he never submitted articles to peer-reviewed law journals.
In addition, the theme that Obama is no genius also makes it much easier to absorb new information regarding Obama’s past achievements and associations, including the possibility that Obama’s first book Dreams of My Father reflects the ideas and writing style of his Hyde Park neighbor, Bill Ayers. See, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_book_blows_ayers_cove.html
It also raises the frightening possibility that Obama truly believed the silly liberation theology taught by Rev. Wright. Obama’s non-genius status would certainly help explain why he got married in Rev. Wright’s church and why Obama thought so little about raising his children in that bizarre, hateful environment.
As a non-genius, I think it is safe to say Obama faces the same challenges as most of us. He does not process information quickly…it is not so easy for him to retain information once he learns it…and it is difficult for him to focus – in a long and sustained fashion – on complex issues. All of this suggests that Obama is likely to spend a lot of his time as President with his family enjoying expensive, but pointless vacations. It suggests, he is unlikely to respond to the demands of political reality by becoming a Clinton style centrist. It also calls attention to the startling possibility that the mainstream media is covering up for President Obama’s intellectual weaknesses the same way they covered up for FDR’s physical disability and marital affairs.
Most worrisome, I think Obama compensates for his limited intellectual abilities with a strong reliance on ideology, with emotional appeals to fairness, and with a dogged determination to stick to the simple, leftwing perspective he learned from his mother, Stanley.
As a glorious leader, President Obama will always fall short of our normal expectations. Those who voted for him believing he was a talented intellectual, a genius of epic standards, are right to feel betrayed. Those of us seeking to protect our country from the temporary power of Obama’s charisma are wise to see him as he is…and not as his supporters pretend him to be.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Actually, highly intelligent people make poor politicians and leaders. There is a happy median where someone is smart enough to lead, but not so smart he loses everyone.
Obama = An Official Affirmative Action Genius
&
Obama = One Big Arse Mistake, America!
Bookmark.
--- President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a "lawyer" . He surrendered his license back in 2008--
-- Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago
--.The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "served as a professor" in the law school-but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.
-- "He did not hold the title of professor of law," said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.
--The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the US Constitution during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence . not the Constitution.
---This is the former editor of the Harvard Law Review who doesn't seem to give a hoot about his law license.
(from More to the Mystery of obama) link
Great post!
Thank you.
Obviously one of the reasons his college records have all been sealed...along with whatever he put down as his religion or place of birth.
I need new glasses! I read the title as saying “Glorious Leader Giap.”
There must be an EO somewhere that stipulates penalties for criticizing Dear Jughead.
I think he’s a perfectly ordinary Harvard Law grad.
Law school takes only three years, has no dissertation, no mathematics, and no competition from students from overseas who have elite subsidized educations.
No, Obama wouldn’t last a day in a Ph.D. program in computer science.
Anyone interested in the nature of charismatic leadership & how dangerous that can be ought to read Obamanutz: A Cult Leader Takes the White House.
There is a lot of info not only on the current userper but historically how this has happened.
Btw, BO is not a great thinker-he parrots the same old Marxist crap without a single original thought.
For an example of someone who did not go to Harvard but who has an excellent mind & genuine intelligence with the capacity for originality, just look to Rush.
Calling Captain Obvious...
Obama was an affirmative action applicant, an affirmative action student, and an affirmative action graduate. I constantly challenge his apologists, who brazenly declare him a scholar, to produce one iota of his so-called scholarship. I am still waiting.
Since he is so concerned about his legacy perhaps we should start writing it for him. Many different words come to mind,
but something fitting for our new post 2012 history books needs to be submitted fairly soon for the presses. What should it be?
I think I’m in a good position to access assess his intellectual capacity.
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My new tag line:
A politician is an elected official whose primary goal is to enrich him/herself while appearing to represent his constituents; maintaining a degree of plausible deniability regardless of the results of his efforts.
The question should be whether he is evil or just the dummmy that others are manipulating?
I suggest that his one term as President is only a step to the UN Secretary.
The Peter Principle and Affirmative Action at work.
Can he wreck the American Constitution and freedoms with his cohorts in the Democrat Party?
I am afraid of what his election says about the American voters and those that enabled him to become the leader of our country.
Obama’s reluctance to compete for a tenure track job at the University of Chicago Law School and the fact that he never submitted articles to peer-reviewed law journals.
...'but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.' - Dan Rather
So John, what you and Dan are saying is; not only is he lazy and stupid, but he can't even sell watermelons.
Hmmmmm...
It's not that highly intelligent people make poor politicians. It's that people who are regarded as "highly intelligent" are often just people who are hyper-focused in one small area of life (being an "intellectual") and have neglected other areas that are needed to be a well-balanced leader.
Developing social skills to a high degree of competence involves a large investment of time and thought. It's just not something that academia awards PhDs in
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