I do not have time today for a long post, so I thought I would ask a question that has been troubling me for some time. The Conventional Wisdom is that Barack Obama is a very intelligent person. The evidence for this is that he attended Harvard law school and was the editor of the law review. Once the CW settles on a narrative, there is little effort made to challenge the CW. Furthermore, once the CW has been established, all "news" is filtered through a lens that discounts evidence that refutes the CW and emphasizes "news" that supports the CW. As an example, Jerry Ford, one of the most talented athletes to occupy the White House, was determined by the CW to be physically clumsy. The MSM paid acute attention to any and all pratfalls that President Ford took and ignored all evidence of his athletic ability. While this was only peripherally related to his candidacy for re-election (though the idea that his physical clumsiness reflected a less than supple mind was certainly part of the reason the MSM so eagerly latched onto the meme) the idea stuck and Gerald Ford foreverafter was remembered as a clumsy man. Joe Biden offfers another example. The CW has it that Joe Biden is the foreign policy solon of the Democratic party (and Biden himself has missed few opportunities to tout the size of his IQ.) Despite his ability to seemingly commit a gaffe a minute, there is little evidence that the CW on Joe Biden has been affected by his gaffes.
And that brings me back to Barack Obama, who is quite obviously an extremely talented politician who has a special gift in his ability to give a speech. One should never discount the importance of communication skills in a President (just contrast the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to the current President with his unfortunate communication deficit.) However, ideally a President should also have analytical skills and a facile, acute intelligence. My naive question is, therefor, where is the evidence that Barack Obama is uniquely gifted intellectually? Where is the evidence that he has the kind of penetrating intellect that we would prefer in a President? A corollary is, where is the evidence that he has the superior judgment that we would desire in our President?
Since Barack Obama may well be our next President, I would be much more comfortable with the idea if I knew he had either the intelligence or the judgement (preferably both) for the job.
[To anticipate the comment that Sarah Palin has similar lacunae in her record, I would respond that we will have plenty of time to see if she avails herself of the on-the-job training as Vice-President; in four to eight years we will have seen enough of Sarah Palin to determine whether or not she has the requisite intelligence and judgment to lead the country. On the other hand, learning about Barack Obama's judgment and intellect while he is engaged in his on-the-job training as President is a much more troubling thought.]
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