Jennifer Rubin has a very good post today about the reasons that the “smart” Obama may be struggling so mightily to be a good president.  She offers three basic reasons that may explain Obama’s ineptitude, whether it touches economics, diplomacy, or national security:

First, the punditocracy confused credentials with knowledge or smarts.

[snip]

Second, even intelligent and well-schooled people can be poor managers, bad decision makers, and indecisive leaders.

[snip]

And finally, as Ronald Reagan said, “The trouble with our liberal friends isn’t that they are ignorant; it is that they know so much that isn’t so.”

I agree with everything Rubin says about the gross inefficiencies and thinking errors even smart people can display, except for one thing:  I disagree with her fundamental premise.  I don’t think Obama is smart at all.  I think his reputation for smarts is one of the great cons foisted on the American people, greater even than the con that Gore and Kerry, both of whom were undistinguished college students, as their transcripts show, were smarter than Bush, whose transcripts reveal him to  be a slightly better student than those two “men of genius.”

We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Obama is smart.  To begin with, we have no evidence at all of his academic abilities.  (And I will concede that, while academic smarts don’t demonstrate functional intelligence, they are still a good yardstick of a brain that operates at a fairly high level.)  We do not know how he did in Indonesia, his high school years are a blur, we do not know what happened during his stint at Occidental, we know nothing about his Columbia years, and the only thing we know about his Harvard years is that he made Law Review.

Liberals like to point to the Columbia and Harvard attendance (let alone the Law Review) as evidence in and of itself that the guy is smart.  After all, only smart people go to those schools.  Au contraire, my friends.  Thanks to the poisonous influence of affirmative action, an influence alive and well during Obama’s entire academic career, only smart whites and Asians go to those schools.  If you’re black and ambitious, you can into and stay in those schools despite less than stellar academic showings.  Columbia and Harvard need black admissions, and neither can afford for those blacks, once they’re in the school, to appear to be failing.

Let me insert here that I very strongly believe that that blacks can qualify for Columbia and Harvard on their own terms.  I am not publishing here a racist disquisition about black intelligence.  Anyone who reads that into what I’m writing here is reading me wrong.

What I am saying, is that if you set the standards lower for one racial group than for others, three things will happen:  First, the race that has the lower hurdles will stop trying as hard.  After all, humans are rational creatures, and people working towards a goal are wise to work only as hard as they need, and no harder.  Why expend energy unnecessarily?

Second, those members of the race who are fully capable of competing without a handicap will also behave rationally and conserve their energy, because it’s the smart thing to do.  This means that the lower hurdles will deprive them of the psychology opportunity stretch and prove themselves.

Third, a lot of people who would not normally have been in the race at all will bob up to the top, thanks to that handicap.  Worse, if there is a critical mass of mediocrity floating along on this tide of affirmative action, those mediocre people will inevitably, through sheer numbers, become representative of the racial group.  In other words, if you give enough mediocre people in a specific racial group a head start so that they win, it looks as if all the winners from that particular racial group are mediocre.

The above realities mean that you end up with two dire situations for the racial group that affirmative action infantilizing:  First, an enormous number of useless people become very poor representatives of their race.  And second, people who are genuinely good and deserving of recognition end up being thrown in the hopper of useless beneficiaries who achieved high status without ability or effort.

My argument is that Barack Obama is one of the number of useless, mediocre people who, thanks to affirmative action, have been elevated to a position far above their natural abilities.  The absence of grades is not the only indication of Obama’s intellectual weakness.  (And believe me, if his grades were good, they’d be published in every paper in America, including the want ads.)

Everything Obama’s turned his hand to — except for using people to advance his career — has failed.  The Annenberg Challenge was a $100 million disaster.  His legal career was, to say that least, undistinguished.  (I should add here that junior associates always have undistinguished careers.  There’s just not that much scope there.)  His tenure as an Illinois State Senator was marked by dithering indecision, coupled with the intelligent strategy, for a stupid person, of simply vanishing when the votes came around.  The same holds true for his career in the United States Senator.  If you examine those two tenures in political office without the gloss of the media love affair, all you’ve got is plenty of nothing.

Obama’s professorship at the U. of Chicago law school was equally undistinguished.  He published nothing.  His disquisitions on the Constitution show he knows nothing.  That is, he doesn’t even have the true intellectual’s excuse of fully understanding, but nevertheless arguing against, the language of the Constitution itself or the standard interpretations of that language.   I pity the students who had his class.

All that the liberals can hang their hat on is that one book:  Dreams.  And even that is proving to be a remarkably weak reed.  Jack Cashill has argued compellingly that Bill Ayers was the book’s principle author.  Cashill has a two pronged attack for this.  He demonstrates first, that Obama’s known prose stylings at the time (wooden, obfuscatory, cant-like), are completely unlike the fluid, artistic prose that gets people so excited about Dreams.  I personally find that argument compelling, because I’ve always been struck by Obama’s ugly language when he’s off a teleprompter.  This is not a man with any love for English.

The stylistic argument is also an easy argument to bat down.  It’s always possible to point to a moment of incredible inspiration, when everything in the brain clicks and things just roll out like magic.  That’s why I have a tab at my blog with an old poem of mine.  I like to have it there because it’s a reminder that when we are inspired, when someone makes incredible demands upon us, we’re all capable of great things.

Cashill, though, is too smart to stop with the “it doesn’t really seem like his writing” argument.  In article after article, he’s demonstrated that, stylistically, the writing is just like Ayers’ writing; that in terms of world view, the writing is just like Ayers’ writing (including all the nautical references that sit so well with Ayers, the former merchant marine); that anecdotally, the narratives precisely track events in Ayers’ life, right down to the description of the lavish mansion in which Ayers’ one-time girlfriend lived.  I won’t summarize everything Cashill writes, but I do urge you to read his whole series of articles on the subject, which you can find here.

Conspiracy theories, of course, are easy.  More than thirty percent of the American public believes that the Bush government brought down the Twin Towers so that Cheney would have an excuse to get government contracts for Halliburton in Iraq.   Never mind the death of 3,000 innocents, never mind the impossibility of keeping such a vast conspiracy absolutely secret, nevermind the fact that Cheney didn’t work for Halliburton, and nevermind that those government contracts were anathema to Halliburton, because it had contracted for them a decade before, in a different economy — to the conspiracy theorists, all of the dots always connect.

For conspiracy theorists, life is always like that scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind, in which the genius gazes at thousands of random newspaper clippings taped to his wall and, in an instant of inspired schizophrenia, sees them all connect in a vast network of relationships.  Except . . . except that Cashill has one weapon in his arsenal that no conspiracy theorist would ever have:  completely independent corroboration of the fact that a panicked Obama, sitting on a $150,000 advance and utterly incapable of writing, high tailed it over to Bill Ayers house, and got all the help he needed.

All of which gets me back to Obama.  None of the apparent indices of brains pan out:  no grades, no job record, no book.  Nothing at all.   His sole talent, and I have to say that it’s a spectacular one, is to be a con man.  He has a deep voice, good looks, and a network of behind the scenes operators who have been deeply invested in his advancement.  The only problem with running a con, as Harold Hill discovered when he had to produce that “boys band,” is that, if you stick around after you’ve run the con, people expect you to perform.  And Obama, who has none of the advertised talents, is utterly trapped.

The great pity for the American people is that, unlike the clever con man in a Broadway show/Hollywood musical, there is no miracle at the end when faith and love suddenly operate to produce the strained tones of the Minuet in G.  All we’re hearing now is silence, a few cricket chirps, and the scary drone of muezzins and nuclear bombers in the background.

UPDATE:  Right on schedule, a link about the genius that is Al Gore.  This is not the only example, of course; just the latest.

Although the dinosaur media has assiduously ignored the story about Ayer’s authorship of Dreams of my Father, people are beginning to recognize the impact from the combination of Jack Cashill’s articles about the stylistic similarities between Dreams of my Father and Bill Ayer’s writing (similarities too great to be mere coincidence), and a new book’s report that neighbors knew Ayers was doing the writing.  Aside from the obvious impact on conservatives, who have never been able to reconcile Obama’s leaden unprompted speech or pre-Dreams writing with the elegant prose in Dreams, the story may be having an impact on Bill Ayers.  Now that the cat is out of the bag (or, at least, is in the process of being dragged out by its whiskers), Ayers may be disgruntled about the fact that Obama has leap-frogged to the highest position in the land without even a nod to Ayers.

If Ayers isn’t feeling the weight of the truth, how else does one explain the fact that Ayers reportedly told Anne Leary, a conservative blogger he met at the airport, that it was he who wrote Dreams?  Please note that I said wrote, not edited.

My first thought when I heard this story was that it was a hoax.  But if you read Leary’s post, which includes a picture of a scruffy Ayers in an airport, it doesn’t read like a hoax at all.  It reads like a narcissist (and everyone in Obama’s circle seems to suffer from that personality disorder) who’s hacked off that he paved the way but didn’t get the glory.  As James Simpson says (at American Thinker):

My understanding of communists is that most would know better and keep their mouths shut. But Ayers is a bit different. He is, as he says, a ”small ‘c’ communist,” but he is also, in a certain, slimy way, an entrepreneur, as we explained in Monday’s post. (Apologies in advance to entrepreneurs everywhere.) He grew up a very rich kid, used to getting everything he wanted. Even as an adult his career has relied on a hand up from his wealthy father. His past statements and radical activities also mark him as a megalomaniac. In youth he drew attention to himself by blowing things up. As an adult “educator” he merely attempts to subvert children. But that doesn’t seem to be going so well.

He is under a lot of pressure, too. Ayers and his horrid wife Bernardine Dohrn are believed to have planned and executed the San Francisco Park Police Station bombing in 1970 that killed police sergeant Brian V. McDonnell and wounded several others. Efforts to bring them to justice have been underway for some time, as brought to light this past March in a National Press Club conference put on by Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival.

This is no small matter.  Obama leapt to fame, not because of his life story itself, but because the liberal establishment decide that his poetic, luminous prose was proof positive that Obama was a genius.  It was his writing style, not his story, that won him the accolades and respect that catapulted him to political prominence.  This is distinct from a situation in which a person has a compelling life story, but needs help writing.  In the latter situation, even if it’s a little bit humiliating when the truth comes out, the focus remains on the person’s accomplishments, not their need for a ghost.  (Witness John F. Kennedy’s autobiography ghostwritten book.)

But what if the life story is just your usual Oprah-rific narrative of a pathetic loner who has accomplished nothing but whining, smoking and visiting with relatives?  And what if the only distinctive aspect of the story is the intellectualism behind the writing itself?  And what if that writing was done by a radical communist who attempted murder and is married to a woman who almost certainly succeeded in committing murder?  What happens to the whole narrative then?  Not the narrative in the book, of course, but the narrative that sees a vapid, self-centered being elevated to the pinnacle of world success based on nothing more than his prose.

UPDATE:  Hoax.

Today, Gerry Charlotte Phelps is celebrating the anniversary of her imprisonment (she was a 1960s college radical).  While in prison, she found God and turned her life around.  Thinking about her, it struck me that one huge difference between liberals and conservatives is their attitude towards sinners.

On the one hand, liberals embrace the unrepentant sinner (e.g., Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu Jamal, and Stanley “Tookie” Williams, all of whom are liberal causes célèbres).  On the other hand, conservatives embrace the repentant sinner (e.g., Chuck Colson, Gerry Charlotte Phelps, and Oliver North, all of whom served their time and made the best of their new lives.)  That speaks volumes about liberal and conservative attitudes towards personal responsiblity, societal obligations, justice, and law and order, doesn’t it?

I grew up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s.  I have vivid memories of the brief, highly middle class era right before the hippies came (when houses and people looked liked sets and actors from the Dick Van Dyke Show); of the be-ins in Golden Gate Park; of the incredible human degradation that quickly characterized the Haight Ashbury; of the fear that stalked the City during the height of the Zodiac Killer’s reign of terror; of the release of the homeless onto the City streets, turning parts of the City into the urban equivalent of psych wards; and of the societal narcissism that was the self-actualization movement of the 1970s.  What I have no memory of at all, even thought it happened within miles of my home, is the February 16, 1970 bombing at the Park police station, which wounded 9 and killed one.

Ironically, though, that bombing may prove to be one of the pivotally important events that occurred within my childhood frame of reference.  People who care are beginning to agitate to have the Justice Department and the FBI open their files on the matter, and about the Weather Underground, since there is reason to believe that Bill Ayers (that Bill Ayers) and Bernadine Dohrn may have been directly complicit — and there is no statute of limitations for murder.  Sadly, we can expect Eric Holder to push back.  Read more, lots more, about it here.

As we were driving back to the ‘burbs from an outing in San Francisco today, we saw a rare sight:  an older lady nattily attired in furs.  Standing near her was a young woman, screaming into the lady’s face.  The children were mesmerized.  First, they’d never seen furs and, second, the spectacle of a public screaming intrigued them.  As we drove past, they asked why the women were fighting.  Mr. Bookworm said that they could just be two women who knew each other, but he and I also posited that the young woman might be a stranger who launched a verbal assault against the fur-clad woman simply because the latter was wearing furs.

The kids were perplexed.  Mr. Bookworm and I explained that in the old days (a la I Love Lucy), lots of women desired and wore furs.  We also explained that, while some furs (such as mink) were harvested pretty much like chicken, other furs were the product of very inhumane trapping (foxes) or clubbing (baby seals).  We also explained that the anti-fur people had gotten more and more aggressive, to the point of throwing paint all over women’s fur coats, regardless of whether they were farmed fur or fur obtained through more brutal approaches.

What fascinated me at that point was my daughter’s comment about the paint throwing:  “That’s a really good idea.”  And in a way she’s right.  I think it was the risk of paint more than anything else that stopped a generation of women from wearing furs.  It just wasn’t economically viable to wear a $20,000 fox coat and take the risk that it would be destroyed in an instant by someone wielding a pot of paint and then vanishing into the crowd.

On the other hand, if my daughter accepts that the paint strategy was a good one, she’s also accepting that it’s perfectly okay to destroy other people’s property to achieve your goals — and that way lies anarchy.  My husband may be a liberal, but he owns a car and a house, and he perceived the same problem with her delighted acceptance of an “end justifies the means” philosophy.  We therefore asked her to imagine whether it was okay for someone who does’t like global warming to smash up our car — while we’re in it.  Or for someone who thinks it unfair that she has luxuriant hair, while sick kids go bald, to cut off her hair on the street.  Those examples, which hit close to home, brought her to an awareness of the fact that we like to think that our property is (and should be) inviolable.  Our next step with her is to brainstorm ways to change policies with which we disagree without personal attacks or destruction of property.

All in all, though, the whole conversation was interesting because it showed me how easy it is to convince children that violent attacks and property destruction, because they are effective, must be good — assuming that you agree with the end goal.  It’s a reminder that, because there’s little reason to believe that Ayers has changed his ideology, and he’s been very vocal in his belief that his violent tactics “didn’t do enough,” we really do need to be vigilant against seeping Ayer-ism in an Obama administration.

I have to admit to screaming with laughter when I finally got around to Bill Ayers’ short-form autobiography for the New York Times, one that sees him classifying himself as just a joyous idealist, frolicking through the 1960s and 1970s — a Dennis the Menace for his times, all good intentions and humorously bad outcomes.  The best take-down of this inane little op-ed piece is, of course, Patterico’s satirical discovery of a similar piece from Charles Manson.  I opted here for a fisking, one that shows, I hope, that the New York Times has sunk so low that even Polly no longer wants it to line her bird cage:

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role [Perhaps he was cast in that role because he himself wrote the line.  Let me remind you of Ayers own boastful words in 2001:  ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.''  To most sentient beings, setting bombs to kill fellow citizens + no regrets = "unrepentant terrorist"]; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing. [Poor baby.  Tough enough to build the bombs to kill the people, but just can't take the criticism that comes with it.]

[snip]

I never killed or injured anyone. [If we're talking about personally pulling the trigger, neither did Hitler, dude.  Both in law and popular culture, though, we tend to hold the instigator responsible for the direction in which he led his troops.  Indeed, I'm willing to bet the a very little bit of digging will find Ayers calling for Nixon or Bush or Cheney to be convicted for war crimes, notwithstanding that none of them ever put a finger on the trigger.] I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. [Well, I'm sure it's true that he was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations.  What Ayers forgets to tell credulous readers is that he was also an active participant in some of the most violent anti-War protests the 1960s had to offer:

Ayers was an active participant in Weatherman's 1969 "Days of Rage" riots in Chicago, where nearly 300 members of the organization employed guerrilla-style tactics to viciously attack police officers and civilians alike, and to destroy massive amounts of property via vandalism and arson; their objective was to further spread their anti-war, anti-American message. Reminiscing on those riots, Ayers says pridefully: "We'd ... proven that it was possible -- we didn't all die, we were still there."]

I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. [I love how he glosses over this "accidental explosion" (there's that Dennis the Menace innocence again) as if it was just a gas main that blew, as tragically happened in my community the other day.  This particular explosion happened because Ayers and his buddies were building bombs that they intended to use to kill hundreds of people.  Here's a bit more info:

In 1970, Ayers' then-girlfriend Diana Oughton, along with Weatherman members Terry Robbins and Ted Gold, were killed when a bomb they were constructing exploded unexpectedly. That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."

In other words, when Ayers, in the very next sentence, speaks about the WU placing "small bombs in empty" offices, that's simply because these WU clowns were, thank God, too inept to carry out their intended level of murderous mayhem.]

The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.  ["Extreme vandalism": More than thirty actual, not merely attempted bombings, aimed at the federal infrastructure, not to mention the intent to kill hundreds of military men and civilians.  I think even Bill Clinton would be impressed by this misuse of language.  As for the "attacks on property, never on people, [that] were meant to respect human life,” we know this for the outright lie it is.]

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.  [Let me repeat:

In 1970, Ayers' then-girlfriend Diana Oughton, along with Weatherman members Terry Robbins and Ted Gold, were killed when a bomb they were constructing exploded unexpectedly. That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."]

I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. [Another lie. Again, let me repeat:  ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' ]

[snip]

The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. [And the man lies again.  For those who would like to take the time to research it, there's ample evidence that these two were not just nodding acquaintances at coffee parties, but had a tightly interwoven friendship that spanned many, many years.  And yes, on that record, I will assume that Obama was comfortable with Ayers' attitudes towards America and revolution, given Ayers' self-professed role as a "teacher," that Ayers did what he could to indoctrinate Obama.] There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.  [Always the McCarthy trope.  It's truly become the last refuge of a Communist.]

You’ll notice that I repeatedly used the word “lie” or some variation thereof in the above fisking.  That is actually a loaded word to use when discussing verbal emanations from a true narcissist, whether he’s comes that way by process of upbringing or political ideological, never lies in his own mind.

To the Leftist ideologue, there is no such thing as absolute truth.  Instead, there are only ideologically pure results, and the truth is whatever is necessary to achieve those results.  That’s why Leftists are such cool liars.

Contrast Nixon’s sweaty-faced lies with Obama’s cool-as-a-cucumber refutation of statements made practically minutes before.  Nixon, an old-fashioned Quaker, knew he was lying and, despite the compulsion to do so, suffered for it.  Obama and Ayers, and their buddies, never suffer pangs of conscience because truth is infinitely malleable, and “factual” statements exist only to further their goals.

In this regard, it’s worthwhile remember that sociopaths almost always pass lie detector tests.  They are functioning in their own immediate reality, and are very comfortable with the rightness of any statement that passes their lips.

I’m on the run this morning, bouncing from one thing to another, but strongly suggest that you read Bob Owens’ interview with informant Larry Grathwohl, who reflects on the Weathermen, their leaders then and now, and what he thinks about the relationship between Bill Ayers and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

We all recognize that, as to the average American, Obama’s friendship with Bill Ayers is a big yawn.  Who cares that, as Obama said, Ayers bombed when Obama was 8?  Who cares, as Obama refuses to admit, that Ayers has never repented and, indeed, wishes he’d done more?  Who cares that Obama’s friend Ayers has replaced the vulgar bomb with more sophisticated intellectual infiltration in our school system, aimed at passing on the same radical agenda he once tried to move forward with bombs?  Well, as to that last one, people should start caring.  You see, the radical agenda Ayers envisions (and has always envisioned) is also one that readily contemplates the death of up to 25 million Americans in “reeducation” camps.  And those aren’t my words.  Those are his (and his friends).

So do Obama’s friends matter?  Yes, not because of their pasts, but because of their “presents”, and the plans they have for your future.

Kathy Shaidle summarizes neatly why Ayers wasn’t then and isn’t now a nice person, and why that latter fact matters vis a vis Obama:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I had a lovely time last night at a reception on the Bonhomme Richard, and plan on writing about it later today.  However, other work calls, so I thought I’d fill this space with recommendations for interesting stuff you may want to read.  In no particular order:

William Katz, a witty, erudite man who has absorbed much from traveling through the past few decades, deconstructs the way the Left is using the concept of “guilt by association” to insulate Obama from much-deserved criticism.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Mr. Katz, spend some time with Jesse Jackson.  We’ve always known he’s an antisemite, but with the prospect of a similar thinking White House administration, he’s oozing out of the closet. As you read the article, keep in mind that Jackson is promising that an Obama administration will turn its back on the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and will ally itself with some of the worst theocratic totalitarian dictatorships, not just in the region, not just in the world, but in the history of the world.

Jonah Goldberg points out the obvious (but does it does charmingly):  Republicans are so frightened by Obama’s skin-color, and the risk of appearing non-PC, that they are allowing him to get away with political murder.  We all know that, when it comes to Obama, there’s only one color that matters, and that is Red.

Thomas Sowell nails the liberal horror of the long-standing American tradition of “going negative” in political elections: “Why then is ‘negative advertising’ such a big deal these days? The dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many voters have had it with liberals.”

Michael Reagan provides a good run-down of Ayers’ relevance to this election, and it has nothing to do with his having bombed buildings when Barack was 8.

IBD neatly summarizes why ACORN matters so much.  And if that analysis doesn’t sway you, check out the Wall Street Journal on precisely the same point.