Obama, whatever else he is, is not an intellectual *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Mar 16 2010 at 10:43 am | Filed under: Barack Obama
Some things are timeless, and I think Sir Francis Bacon, writing almost 500 years ago, pretty much nailed what constitutes an intellectual and a wit: “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
In modern English, an intellectual can be described as someone who is extremely well read. He or she has a fully furnished mind and, at the drop of a hat, can delve into that internal room of books, and resurrect quotations, ideas, and information.
Being an intellectual is not necessarily virtuous. People can have stuffed their brains without achieving wisdom, morality, decency or even common sense. Intellectuals are often boring, and pompous, with a simple conversation converted into a pedantic lecture. That’s not always the case, of course. Combine an intellectual with a wit and you suddenly have someone whose every word is a delight, as that person draws on a vast fund of knowledge to support amusing conversation.
And then there’s Barack Obama. Eleanor Clift, yet another worried liberal who is trying to buck up her idol and make him functional again, offers him five bullet-points of advice in her Newsweak column (h/t The New Editor). As part of the justification for giving this advice, she concedes that the Great Orator isn’t really so great after all. In other words, she says, he’s no Reagan — but he is an Adlai Stevenson:
If Michael Deaver, Reagan’s image maestro, were still alive, and working for Obama, he would convert these glimmers of hope into “Morning in America.” Reagan had a natural ability to touch the emotions, a trait that Obama doesn’t have. He’s not going to get a personality transplant; he’s an intellectual’s intellectual, more Adlai Stevenson than Ronald Reagan. (Emphasis mine.)
I gaspled (a cross between a giggle and a gasp) when I read that highlighted language. Obama could not be more unlike Adlai Stevenson. If you’re going for ridiculous comparisons, you may as well compare Obama to Marilyn Monroe. It would make about as much sense.
I wasn’t around when Stevenson ran for office, but my Dad loved the guy. It wasn’t just his Democratic politics (which, incidentally, were also staunchly anti-Communist), it was his incredible wit. He had a supple, creative, pointed but seldom cruel, humor that revealed a breadth of intellect one seldom sees today. Although a sometimes indifferent student, Stevenson had a well furnished mind that, coupled with a powerful sense of humor, left him scattering bon mots left and right.
Iknow also this because my Dad cherished a book called “The Wit and Wisdom of Adlai Stevenson.” I no longer have that book but, thanks to the miracles of the internet, I can share some of his humor with you. None of these quotations reveal his immense breadth of knowledge, although the elegance of his phrasing implies it, and they certainly do reveal a flexible, creative mind, and one with some old-fashioned morals to back it up:
A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.
Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.
An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity – in short, of tyranny – and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
Flattery is all right so long as you don’t inhale. [A certain prescience about Bill Clinton there....]
I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign… and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.
In America any boy may become President and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes.
It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look his neighbor in the face and see a man — not a color. [A notion that is anathema to today's Democrats.]
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for. [Subtle, and one that modern Democrats would do well to understand.]
I have a question for you: Has Barack Obama ever said anything witty? Sure, he can speak in orotund cadences when the speech is spelled out, but have you ever heard the man make a reference to anything that shows knowledge beyond the Marxist canon? Has he ever made a joke other than one that would be most at home in a Middle School cut session (i.e., an insult competition amongst barely pubescent boys)?
Barack Obama has nothing of the intellectual about him. He’s a documented ignoramus when it comes to history, something worrisome, because he often tries to get history to back up his policies. He’s an almost laughably stereotypical “Ugly American” when it comes to his knowledge of the world around him. He’s embarrassingly slow on learning the nuances of the military culture he leads. (You can amuse yourselves in the comments by providing more examples of Obama’s horrific errors, linquistically, historically, culturally, etc.) And if you’ve cudgeled your brains after reading the paragraph immediately preceding this one, you’ll definitely have come to the conclusion that, not only is he uninformed, he’s no wit.
As I already warned at the beginning of this post, the fact that Obama is neither a wit nor an intellectual doesn’t automatically mean he’s dumb or immoral or lacks common sense. We can discern those qualities from his conduct, if we’re so inclined. Thus, we could say that his rigid insistence on following a failed path indicates that he’s not too bright, that his allegiance to a Leftist world view means his beliefs are antithetical to traditional morality, or that his failure ever to work in the private sector deprives him of ordinary common sense. But those are thoughts for another post.
Suffice it to say for this post that he’s no Adlai Stevenson.
UPDATE: Just the most recent example of Obama’s lack of intelligence, neatly coupled with a complete lack of honesty.
Related posts:
- Obama’s pastor matters *UPDATED*
- The Year Zero on the Obama calendar
- “Eff you!” — How Jon Stewart interpreted Obama’s SOTU address *UPDATED*
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21 Responses to “Obama, whatever else he is, is not an intellectual *UPDATED*”
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He is not an intellectual, but rather an actor playing an intellectual.
Many American academic intellectuals are so hungry for approval and status that they will fervently support any politician who makes the slightest effort to look/sound like one of them.
In fairness, it’s not only academics who can be fooled by a good actor. I read about an experiment in which actors were taught a little bit of electrical engineering jargon and sent out to interview for EE jobs. They got more employer interest than did real, actual electrical engineers!
But I suspect the phenomenon is stronger among academics/intellectuals because of the extreme and unsatisfied status hunger that seems to dominate so many of their lives.
The eminent David Foster speaks the truth: Obama does not do President very well. What he does is cheap street theater reruns with no new material in the offing.
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Stop being so mean to our President! Obama was referring to the 3000% savings that is possible in our 51st and 52nd states! He campaigned there, you know, so he understands them.
Money grows on trees in those two states. (Obama knows, it’s because they grow so incredibly high. Said the plastecine porters with looking glass ties.)
In those two states, nine women can have that baby in one month.
And a stitch in time saves 9,999.
—–
“3000 Per Cent!” exclaimed Alice. ”That’s such a nice round number!”
“Indeed!” agreed Humpty. ”And nice round numbers are much safer, too, than those nasty jagged ones. You’ll never cut yourself on the round numbers.”
Oops – should have said, my comment refers to Book’s “Update” link on Obama’s most recent stupidiferous moment. It is quite a stunner.
“(Obama knows, it’s because they grow so incredibly high. Said the plastecine porters with looking glass ties.)”
Curiouser and curiouser!
You’ll never cut yourself on the round numbers
Love it.. 99.9% of the time ; )
I pasted the AT quote and comment and sent it along to friends and family, knowing that they would not see or hear it through the MSM.
Not surprisingly I received a reply from the husband of a niece. He is a high school English dept head and really a flaming liberal. Naturally, he accused me of quoting out of context; claiming (and I take him at his word) that in the preceding sentence he alleged a 14% savings. So he presumably meant to equate that to $3,000; and mistakenly said 3,000%.
I do give the man credit for understanding that you cannot reduce something by 3,000% (do I accord him too much?). But, I can only respond by asking how many egregious errors he is allowed before a pattern is detected? When he plays fast and loose with the truth is it incumbent upon the listener to differentiate honest mistakes from willful falsehoods?
I send these things to this young fellow to goad him, knowing full well that he will not change. In my response I nearly went nuclear and told him how much I detest the people who elected this Charlatan and continue to support him. But, restraint within family is sometimes called for.
NObama also talked about the “profit earnings ratio,” instead of the price/earnings ratio, a term I learned in an 11th grade economics course. It is thus no surprise to hear about %3000 percent. BTW, journalistic miscues on percentages are recently an issue in Venezuela- at least among those who are aware of them.
Some of the better Stevenson sayings are ones he may not , like Yogi Berra, actually said.
“That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!” In response to a woman who said during the 1956 campaign: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!”
“Saskatchewan is much like Texas — except it’s more friendly to the United States. ”
My response is that Adlai was witty enough to have said them.
Examples of messed up percentages in Venezuelan journalism:
http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/03/02/a-simple-explanation-for-venezuelas-electric-crisis/
http://www.caracaschronicles.com/node/2365
“According to El Nacional, over the last 11 years, prices have gone up 733%, while remunerations have risen just 571%. Ergo, since 733-571 is 162.purchasing power has fallen 162% since Chavez came to power.”
Oldflyer says in #8,
> Naturally, he accused me of quoting out of context; claiming (and I take him at his word) that in the preceding sentence he alleged a 14% savings.
Well, OK, verbal gaffes like “3000 per cent” instead of “3000 dollars” are quite understandable, and it was a long speech. (But wasn’t there a teleprompter?) I’d like to be fair. But 14%, the number your relative is tying into this, is about 1/7, so the $3000, which Obama apparently meant to say, is 1/7 of $21,000. I scanned the whole article and I couldn’t find it, or how this ties together. There are numbers floating around all over in the speech, but rest assured, the CBO is guaranteeing HUGE savings from this plan.
I haven’t seen a CBO estimate yet that indicates huge savings, unless you factor in some ridiculous economic assumptions and you perform the “double-dipping” that Ryan discussed in “the summit meeting”.
So I’m thinking I’ll try to be fair to our president this time… then I read these nice little blurbs, close to the “3000%” remark in his speech:
> Now, the opponents of reform, they’ve tried to make a lot of different arguments to stop these changes.
> … And anybody who says otherwise is either misinformed — or they’re trying to misinform you. Don’t let them hoodwink you. They’re trying to hoodwink you. (Laughter.)
And I am reminded yet again of his divisiveness, how with such certainty he casts me as an ultimate villian in his little morality plays. And my complete, 100% opposition to him is renewed, as he attacks again unrelentlingly. I am “an opponent of reform”. I am hoodwinking people. I have nothing but nefarious motives at heart, guaranteed.
So, screw kindness to Obama and his ilk. It’s war. These people are so quick to claim an overwhelming mandate when they win the election 53%-47% – by SIX percentage points – but now that they’re behind by TWENTY percentage points on healthcare, 55% – 35% with 10% undecided, that quaint little concept of a mandate goes out the window. Because now it’s an inconvenient concept. They play fast and loose with the numbers, and distort the very reality around us with various deceits. No fairness, and nothing but lies.
Actors tend to have more social skills than engineers. Not to say that engineers have none, but actors have a noticeable advantage. Of course, if they ever actually took an engineering test after the interview validation, they would get weeded out.
Out of an average of prospects with engineering credentials, the more charismatic tend to stand out given the average charisma of engineers.
Ymar…I’m really curious about whether the interviews were with HR people or actually with the managers for whom the candidates would be working…who would themselves have almost certainly been EEs. (IIRC, the article didn’t say) If it’s that latter, then interviewing skills in corporate America are even worse than I already think they are.
“But I suspect the phenomenon is stronger among academics/intellectuals because of the extreme and unsatisfied status hunger that seems to dominate so many of their lives.”
There is also the major element of word=reality adopted as their metaphysical and epistemological bread and butter.
If something is said, then it is real. Thus if they are called smart and exalted, then by logical conclusion they are smart and exalted. The more people they can bring into the consensus on this issue, the more reinforced their preferred reality becomes and the less dangerous external threats become in their mind.
Actors and con men operate on a fundamental principle: the mark must wish to be fooled. Whether the actor is providing an entertaining illusion, a sexual fantasy with a high mark woman, or the fantasy escape of a different world (Pandora), the audience must always wish for it to be true. The marks of con men always wish for a get rich scheme and the con men provides. Obama provides whatever the people wish for.
If people wanted something real, they would have worked for it with sweat and toil. But fantasies are easily manufactured on demand.
The drug addict knows very well this reality grave. Euphoria can be bought for far less than the work required to make real euphoria, but it lasts fleetingly. Sublime beauty can be achieved through drug altered consciousness, but at the price of ugly self-destruction.
The Left does not care if society is destroyed by their fantasies any more than the drug addict cares about the deterioration of their mind or body or family. So long as their children, their clan, their friends, their caste are taken care of, screw anybody else.
Of course, that kind of behavioral inevitably produces the logical and inevitable end result. Sacrificing society’s interests in favor of your own never works in the long term. Eventually society will be destroyed and then when the human social compact breaks down, there is nothing to prevent anarchy from reigning supreme. Except perhaps for the latest thug on the corner.
Here’s something to clarify matters on my part. Whatever Obama is, however terrible his graying visage or bullying stance becomes, the American system chose him as leader.
This nation is dead so long as the system is broken. Without a way of choosing virtuous leaders and maintaining them in virtue, it does not matter a damn what you call your nation or your style of government. The only direction that country will go is down. And while final death may not happen for a decade, a century, or a millennium, some prolonged time after Final Death has occurred to America, historians will be debating what caused our fall just as we today do the same with the Roman Empire.
Won’t do us or anybody that will be born here a damn bit of good, however. Obama is the symptom, not the disease.
Ymar said in #15:
> Won’t do us or anybody that will be born here a damn bit of good, however. Obama is the symptom, not the disease.
I hadn’t looked at it that way, but I think you’re exactly right. The key question is why in the world did America elect Obama? His approval/non-approval ratings are 46%-47%. Why does he still have a 46% approval rating? It’s safe to assume that his supporters are being honest and would list a number of reasons here in the comments (comments that would probably have most of us just shaking our heads…)
For all the unpopularity and disgust toward the health care bill, Obama’s personal approval rating remains much higher.
Then again, I believe that approval rating is the lowest ever (since approval ratings have been tracked). So it’s hard to know for sure what it means.
I meant to say:
> Then again, I believe that approval rating is the lowest ever (since approval ratings have been tracked) at this point, fifteen months into a presidency.
Ymarsakar:
Out of an average of prospects with engineering credentials, the more charismatic tend to stand out given the average charisma of engineers.
Years ago I read a profile of an engineer in an engineering journal, “Who says engineers are boring?” The outstanding activity of the engineer profiled to show to us that engineers were not boring was his volunteer activity as a street-crossing guard before and after school hours. Q.E.D.
Okay, I’m late getting to this. been very busy.
I have to admit I took the “3000 percent” thing with more or less a mental sigh of resignation. The truth is that a lot of people — especially with “liberal arts” educations acquired since people forgot that three of the liberal arts are geometry, arithmetic, and logic — are not only essentially innumerate, but rather proud of being innumerate. Anne Althouse did the same thing the other day, announcing that numbers like “trillion” were ungraspable and anyone who said otherwise was basically lying. So things like saying “okay, so there are a trillion x’s in a cude 10,000 x’s on a side” or “a trillion inches is 1/6th of the way to the Sun”, which seem perfectly visualizable and clear to me, are by definition not graspable and I’m fibbing by claiming to grasp them.
Sometimes you just have to say “Yes, dear. I’m sure you’re right dear.”
Charlie (Colorado) said in #19,
> Anne Althouse did the same thing the other day, announcing that numbers like “trillion” were ungraspable and anyone who said otherwise was basically lying.
I am ashamed to admit it, but to a certain degree, I am one of those people. Or let me put it another way: I am a tactile learner. Many things I can’t learn unless I sit down and play with them. In my current profession, software, configuration is my bane. It almost never makes sense to me. I have to dive in and just play with the configuration settings, eyeing the results, until I happen to get it right, almost by accident. It just doesn’t make *sense* to me theoretically; I can’t come up with correct configurations mentally.
The same is true for managing numbers as large as we deal with nationally. They don’t hit home for me until I start to play with them. Is that true for many of us?
Our national GDP last year was, I believe $ 14.5 trillion.
Our natiional debt right now is estimated at $ 12.5 trillion.
Obama is going to add to our debt, over ten years, another $ 10.0 trillion.
The total estimate for all of our current unfunded mandates, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, among others, over the next forty years, came out to something like $ 57 trillion.
That leaves us in a worse situation than Greece has right now; which is dire indeed. Yet I am not roused to rage; I am not marching in the streets. I can define myself as a Tea Party member, but I haven’t attended even one event.
Only citizen action can solve this, if it even can be solved without a profound, wrenching national crisis. And, as a citizenry, we have absolutely no intention of solving it. It is as if we close our eyes, put fingers in our ears, and chant, “La la la la la”. Perhaps we believe some fairy godmother will swoop in on her little wings and sprinkle fairy dust all over the problem and make it go away. It won’t. Yet I, too, am doing little to solve the problem. Like the family breadwinner who sees every penny of discretionary income already gone, just to meet the credit card MINIMUM payment, I see disaster ahead but cannot rouse myself to get off the tracks before the onrushing train dooms me.
Visualization and information adaptation is a weakness of humanity. The prevalence of technology and high bandwidth data transmission simply exacerbates that trait given how glaringly obvious lack of comprehension appears when the data is ready to be digested.
However, that’s not why people are fooled by propaganda in statistics and news reports and elections. People are fooled because specific programs and attack strategies have been employed. It’s not a random variance, an accidental mistake due to inherent human fallibility, or a Murphy intervention. It was a problem created specifically by humans for humans. In so far as the attack was designed to take advantage of human weaknesses, the same is true of biological agents tailor designed to affect human biology, for positive or negative ends. They are still artificial programs: weaponized agents. If not against human life than against viruses or bacterium. Humans are adept at being able to utilize anything in our environment as a weapon. Something from our hunter-gatherer days I presume.
“Only citizen action can solve this, if it even can be solved without a profound, wrenching national crisis.”
The people on the government dole, dependent upon welfare or urban projects, aren’t citizens. They’re wards or serfs or slaves of the state. They don’t count. But their votes do.