Those aren't mommies...
Posted on 03/01/2010 4:09:45 AM PST by Zakeet
Watching President Barack Obama at the White House health care summit last week, it was hard not to have an obvious thought:: Could George W. Bush have done this? It is tough to imagine Bush leading a seven-hour gabfest on a complex policy matter, being able to master the specifics and nuances, and field questions about in-the-weeds details as Obama did. Which brings me to another idea: Are Democratic presidents smarter than Republican presidents?
Before proceeding, let me stipulate that there are different sorts of intelligence, and conventional (or book) smarts does not guarantee a president a good ride. (W., some folks claim, has oodles of social intelligence.) Yet it is all too easy to envision either Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter hosting an event like the health care summit and doing a fine job. Weeks before he moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Clinton, well known for his lust for policy wonkery, demonstrated his talents. In December 1992, as president-elect, he skillfully played host a two-day economic summit in Little Rock, Ark., with 300 business and labor leaders.
Jimmy Carter, who graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy and who subsequently studied nuclear engineering, was also a smarty-pants. In a 1979 Atlantic Monthly article criticizing Carter's "passionless presidency," James Fallows, who had been a speechwriter in the first half of Carter's only term, observed:
With his moral virtues and his intellectual skills, he is perhaps as admirable a human being as has ever held the job. He is probably smarter, in the College Board sense, than any other President in this century. He grasps issues quickly. He made me feel confident that, except in economics, he would resolve technical questions lucidly, without distortions imposed by cant or imperfect comprehension.
Carter would labor over thick briefing books, pore over budget tables, and check the math. (But, Fallows lamented, he also could get bogged down in bureaucratic minutiae, such as when he personally reviewed requests from staffers to use the White House tennis courts.) Carter would have relished a policy showdown like the health care summit.
Now think of George W. Bush, his father or Ronald Reagan at the helm of such an event.
The problem here is that many fools judge intelligence by one's means to break down right and wrong into multiple shades of gray. While it may be impressive to view multiple perspectives of a given concern, in the case of most democrats, it completely impares their ability to make a decision and finally lead based on a coherent point. You can't say "We're going to defeat the Taliban even though our troops are committing atrocities against innocent civilians and the entire premise for our presence on foreign soil is false". It doesn't work. Perhaps the rats know this and just enjoy watching our nation fail. They do it so often, it's hard to believe it's done by mistake.
If Obama is so smart, I have a question. Why is it that with an overwhelming majority in the house and a fillibuster proof Senate for a year, he still has no health care bill?
He said: “ it was hard not to have an obvious thought:: Could George W. Bush have done this?”
Really? I didn’t have this thought. But then maybe I am not obsessed with George W. Bush like the left is. They just can’t let go. Sad.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Seriously. All he did was dismiss virtually every one of the republicans' suggestions as a "talking point". Anyone can do that, and that's not my idea of a real debate.
Obama probably woulda been a good political scientist. However, he can’t manage worth a damn.
The insanity of the sycophants continue.
Fixed it.
Reading your post, I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with your dog. My condolences...
Oh yeah...
MacGruber Smart.
[Insert Will Forte Image here :)]
Why are you insulting corn? Corn is far more useful to the world than that guy. I mean, look at all the things that can be made from corn. The only thing this guy is good for is as an emetic.
Those aren't mommies...
Assuming we survive Broke Obama, history will not be kind to him. Nor will history ever shine on Mr. Stagflation Jimmy Carter whose response was the “Malaise speech”. I think history will be much kinder to Bill Clinton though as his best trait was being a pragmatist.
I’m sorry, David. Are you under the impression that the president did a fine job, and if so, why?
And if it ever was true that Democrat presidents were smarter than Republicans, it’s getting harder to see how it’s the case now. It’s like a parody of the March of Evolution, with Thomas Jefferson striding tall and proud at the rear, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama capering about at the front.
I checked with the authoritative source:
Schoolhouse Rock: How a Bill Becomes a Law
Noting in there about 7-Hour Presidential Summits...
My IQ is well within the genius range. I am a professional writer. I've written two books, and public figures around the world regularly pay me to use things that I write as if they were their own thoughts. I have even ghostwritten lines that were widely quoted in presidential debates and worked on speeches read in prime time at national political conventions.
All that said, what is the evidence of Obama's intelligence? He's never released his college transcripts. He was editor of the Yale Law Review, yet never wrote a single article. His books are obviously ghostwritten. He won't appear at an elementary school without two TelePrompters. He sat in a church for 20 years listening to Jeremiah Wright and apparently never comprehended a word he said. He believes in political systems and solutions to problems that have been tried repeatedly for over 100 years and failed miserably in every instance. And his wildly overpraised speeches are nothing but giant, empty facades built of equal parts hypnotic, repetitious cliches and mental cotton candy. A challenge: can you quote even one line ever spoken by Obama that wasn't memorable solely for its vapid asininity? ("We are the people we have been waiting for," etc.)
As for last week's meeting, what I mostly saw on display from him were arrogance, egomania, hubris and a scary lack of knowledge, curiosity or respect for opposing viewpoints, or for the basic facts underlying both the medical and insurance industries and the contents and consequences of his own bill.
From what I've seen thus far, he has been the greatest beneficiary of low expectations, misplaced praise and greased skids since Chauncey Gardener.
democrats WANT REALLY SMART ppl than themselves to RUN THEIR LIVES FOR THEM
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