I think the author is playing the role of Captain Obvious just to tee up the national clown for another deserved beat-down.
Which works for me. IMHO,
1) Obama is fairly intelligent with an IQ of around 120. He does best in abstract, “poetic” areas with no real answers, just subjective observation, and floating above it all. This is the perfect sea for an empty vessel to catch the tailwinds of racially subjective evaluation.
2) He can’t cope with mathematics, science, or engineering, stochastics, accurate spelling and usage, or any “hard-edged” subject; these require disciplined work and a verifiable work-product. (His transcripts probably show decent grades; either he is ashamed of the lack of hard courses, he didn’t really finish at Columbia, or he has to hide everything to keep his foreign student gambit under wraps.)
3) Obama appears to be an idiot because he lacks both natural and learned executive abilities, and was raised outside of American culture in an ambiguous world on the periphery of Indonesian royalty as an outsider, in Hawaii as an outsider, etc. His identity confusion creates insecurity, which makes him indecisive. Ungrounded in practical values as a child, and self-admittedly lazy, Obama found Marxist ideology very compelling; it says it is scientific and explains it all.
4) 1960’s era Leftist cant about capitalism and imperialism informs Obama’s worldview. After that, he basically stopped learning. His facility with this impressed Leftist profs and Chicago communists. Once he achieved entry to Columbia and Harvard through extensive political lobbying, he was guaranteed “academic” success. He has never engaged with real-world business and economics, so he falls back on the dogma that served him so well in his youth, even if he had to hide it to get elected.
5) Because many voters found him handsome, cool, hip, young, or whatever, he sailed into office on an updated “Warren Harding effect”, and selling empty promises to empty heads. He is the perfect puppet.
Bottom line ... has genetics for intelligence but now is functionally stupid and definitely in the wrong job.
I love number 5. Very perceptive.