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.
I didn’t know David Corn did satire!
YES! Democrat Presidents are much smarter than republican Presidents! So smart they slide into the arrogant, ignorant bastion of foolishness.
Did he even watch that disaster? He was the dullest knife in the drawer.
Pray for America
Wise men speak when they have something to say. Fools speak when they have to say something. Plato
Post title needs a (barf alert)
Awfully nauseating for early Monday morning.
Clearly a Democrat hallmark. Sitting around talking about something for a year and a half and getting nothing done. Yep, that is way smart.
I hate to make fun of a person’s name—but David Corn seems to have an IQ of an ear of Corn, so he’s aptly named.
No matter how hard the libs try to spin it, it is abundantly clear to the American people that Democrats are NOT smarter than Republicans.
This is as far as I could get. Uh....no, it is impossible to imagine Jimmy Carter hosting a successful weenie roast. Until Obama, Carter was the hands down winner of worst president in US history.
>>ght:: 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.<<
The author confuses “arrogant chiding” with “mastering specifics.”
This TOTUS-reader doesn’t even know that the Executive Branch is EQUAL TO the Legislative Branch, not ABOVE it.
Worst. presidency. Ever.
Heck yeah, life's easy when you just make up sh!t as you go along...
I saw Obama taking an aswhooping. I dont know what Corn saw.
I thnk the author “David Corn” is the barf alert.
I had this conversation with a liberal a few days ago when a Lib declared that Obama was the smartest man to ever be President.
So I asked “How do you know that?”
All his school records are sealed? So how do you know?
I did not know that was the only response I could get. I say that the man-child is just another affirmtive action idiot.
Democrats are definitely really, really, smart, all-knowing, filled with wisdom, intellectual, quick-thinking,
superior to the rest of humanity and so much finer than those bible-thumping dolts in flyover country.
Their mommies told them so.
/s/
IMHO
Read the by line, dispose of safely
By asking the question... the author koran... I mean corn, a lipless poofter-boy for satan, proves the point that dims are just not that smart.
LLS
I would not confuse Obama’s performance with mastering anything. He did not even know that the individual premiums would increase according to the CBO data.
"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves; but they measuring themseleves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise."
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