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 ...
...only if you consider cocaine snortin’, gay terrorist appeasers ELITE..........
He’s too socialist. Too liberal.
If you want to call that “elitism,” that’s fine with me, but more specifically, he’s too liberal and too socialist.
Nixon was a brilliant man.
I've seen nothing of the sort.
No, but HE thinks he is.
Democrats will vote for anyone who lies enough so yes he can get elected.
“I’m always amazed how liberals manage to paint republicans as too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time...”
I don’t think you can call John Dean of the Nixon White House a “liberal”, despite his being a bit of a hero to them for helping to bring down Nixon.
“I’m always amazed how liberals manage to paint republicans as too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time...”
I don’t think you can call John Dean of the Nixon White House a “liberal”, despite his being a bit of a hero to them for helping to bring down Nixon.
Yeah, he’s too intellectual. Just like Gore, the cerebral giant.
Anyone remember the endless articles and journalistic references to Gore’s gargantuan intellect?
This doesn’t tell us much about Gore, though it tells us volumes about the kind of people who work for the print media.
Now it looks like we’re going to be subjected to endless references to Obama’s superior intellect. But only if we bother to read them.
Both Obama and McCain are truly too leftist for this country, and this is a serious long-term problem for the entire U.S.!
In 2007 he said that he would meet, in the first year of his presidency, with Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. Three of those are listed as state sponsors of terror. They fund and support Hezbollah, Hamas, and others, and Iran is actively helping kill our own soldiers in Iraq.
So, by his own words, to meet with the without condition, he is an appeaser. These two photographs make the statement better than any:
Here’s the tip-off. Intelligence is characterized by original thinking. All Liberals think alike.
Good point. But, if all you know of Dean is his writings on Findlaw, which is all I did until I looked into his history (sorry, the Nixon days were before my time) there is no term more fitting than "liberal". Either way, his ideas certainly are representative of those on the left, and that is more where my comment was focused.
The Presidential election is about who can best lead, it is not a test of ideas or IQ.
I'm always amazed at how many people think Halliburton is an oil company, instead of an engineering firm.
Like George W. Bush, with his Harvard MBA, is "dumber" than Al Gore, who flunked out of Vanderbilt Divinity School???
He is too much of a pansy to be president. An effeminate wimp.
Neville Hussein Obama is to elete to be elected as president in any normal election cycle. Unless events unfold that will change the political and national mood landscape, he will be carried into the White House on the waves of a perfect storm named change just for the sake of change.
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