Posted on 05/16/2008 10:26:42 AM PDT by imd102
In an earlier column, I raised the matter of whether, and how, Senator Barack Obama's conspicuous intelligence may act as a barrier to his being elected president. [SNIP]
In recent years, Democrats have nominated presidential candidates who are far more intelligent that their Republican counterparts. Common sense might suggest that high intelligence is necessary to be president, and conclude that we should applaud such nominations. Election politics, unfortunately, usually punishes the more intelligent nominee.
Start with Nixon. Hubert Humphrey had a remarkable mind and while Nixon was no slouch, Humphrey always struck those who knew both men well as way ahead of Nixon in intellect....In 1976, Jimmy Carter (a nuclear physicist by training) made Gerald Ford seem something of a dunce (indeed, Lyndon Johnson had once said that Ford was incapable of chewing gum and thinking at the same time). Carter's Southern drawl, however, made his intelligence less than conspicuous, enabling him to win at least one term. But Ronald Reagan, whom no one will ever accuse of being an intellectual (his favored briefing material as president was Reader's Digest) trounced the elitist Carter in 1980, and then the far more mentally agile Walter Mondale in 1984.
Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all were far brighter than their GOP opponents (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and George W. Bush), but only Clinton made it to the White House. Clinton played down his intelligence and education (Georgetown, Oxford and Yale Law), and played up his bubba image....
Maybe Americans are ready to reconsidering wanting to elect the less intelligent candidate. And maybe Democrats can effectively deal with this bogus charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at writ.lp.findlaw.com ...
Anyone that thinks a man with an undergraduate degree from Yale and a post graduate degree from Harvard is dumb... quite frankly is showing their own ignorance. I graduated magna cum laude from a large state university and was promptly humbled by colleagues with the same degrees from these very same Ivy league schools.
“...conspicuous intelligence...”
sorry, laughing too hard, couldn’t get past that early sentence.
The leftists that I've confronted with this maintain that both colleges were willing to risk their status and their "brand" by giving GW Bush easier grades and passing him when he didn't deserve it.
Such knots you have to twist yourself into to justify a leftist position.
His answers to the financial/economic questions show his
conspicuousness as a glittering jewel of ignorance.
I believe Dean, ever since his recoverey from concer, is a registered Democratchik and stumps for the party.
But then again, I though he had died about 4 years ago...
This line, right here, indicates the problem. By what measure is he making this assessment? Has he given each of those men an IQ test or studied their academic achievements? Or is he simply considering the superficial appearance of being educated? The problem ultimately isn't one of intelligence but of contempt of the sort seen in this article. You can be smarter than someone else but that doesn't make you morally superior to them or even a better leader.
Sorry, we disagree. To meet with state sponsors of terror without condition, is in itself appeasing them.
Wrong question.
The correct question is “Is the American electorate so stupid they will put this guy in office?”
Sadly, in America these days, ANTYHING is possible.
Inasmuch as the whole Watergate thing was to protect Maureen Dean (Mrs John Dean), he could be said to be one of the biggest ingrates ever imaginable. That being a trait of liberals, I believe that the charcterization of Dean as a liberal hits the ten ring...
the infowarrior
Frankly I’m not at all impressed with Obama’s so-called intellect.
Without a teleprompter he’s a stumbling, bumbling buffoon as far as I’m concerned.
Dean is partially correct. Reagan did kick both Carter and Mondale's butts in historic fashion, but he wasn't part of the liberal intelligentsia. That doesn't mean Reagan wasn't intelligent. Quite the opposite is true. Reagan had natural instinct and ability, a man of true character and integrity. He was a great leader and understood that by promoting conservatism and getting government out of the way all Americans would prosper. Reagan also thought highly of Reader's Digest, but he thought more highly of the US Constitution.
ROFL!
In the interest of fairness, anyone who bills him/her self as a Rhodes scholar has just irredeemably demonstrated to *me* that they have no business being elected dogcatcher of Flyspeck, Mississippi. Billybubba took racist money, for a racist education, for racist purposes, end of story (read up on Cecil Rhodes, and what the Rhodes scholarship fund was actually set up for, *journalists*!!!
the infowarrior
John Dean has been a whore for the Demagogues for so long that he is incapable of intelligent thought. This column is replete with howlers. Dean mis-states so many elementary facts about Republican candidates and the vaunted intellects of Democrats that it is unintentionally hilarious.
btw, this all goes back a lot further — the insufferable prig Adlai Stevenson was regarded as some great intellectual by Democrats desperate to defeat Eisenhower, etc. Stevenson was once told at a campaign event that “all intelligent Americans are voting for you” and he supposedly replied “yes, but I need a majority!” Chuckle, chuckle, stuffy liberal prigs DO think they are the annointed elite destined to rule over all the little folk, if only they can trick enough of the little folk to vote for them.
Liberal imagine themselves to be blessed with intellect simply because they spend so much time in their own echo chamber of leftist platitudes.
The idea that Jon Carry or Albore are so much more intelligent than GWB is just another of the many inanities that help snivelling leftists to sleep at night.
Reagan never had a chance to meet with a Soviet leader until he met with Gorbachev in 1985. Reagan never met with Breshnev, Chernenko or Andropov. One reason was, they all died before he had a chance to hold any meetings with them. And he only met Gorbachev after he rebuilt the US military and announced his intention to advance his proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka."Star Wars".
Reagan didn't appease the Soviet's. Obama wants to capitulate to the Islamofascists. Obama is a dangerous individual to the future of America. Obama is a real liberal-socialist, a Leninist-Marxist to his core political beliefs.
This post (<-click), while addressing taxes, helps to explain why government "leaders" like Obama are actually in contempt of the Constitution that they have sworn to defend, foolishly following in the footsteps of FDR's dirty federal spending politics. In fact, the article referenced below shows that Obama is the #1 federal spending proposer in the Senate for '08; Clinton is #2.
Obama, a big-shot federal spenderThe people need to reconnect with the Founder's division of federal and state government powers. The people then need to wise up to the major problem that the federal government is not operating within the restraints of the federal Constitution, particularly where constitutionally unauthorized federal spending is concerned.
The bottom line is that the people need to send big-shot, Constitution-ignoring federal spenders like Obama home as opposed to trying to send people like him to the Oval Office. The people need to get in the faces of the feds, demanding a stop to constitutionally unauthorized federal spending while appropriately lowering federal taxes - or get out of DC.
I certainly agree with you that Reagan did not appease the Soviets. I don’t know that Obama’s being a liberal-socialist would mean that he wants to capitulate to the Islamofascists. The Russian communists fought the Islamofascists for years.
Well I'll be darned ... so's mine.
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