Have you seen the poll number on DADT? A majority of Republicans support repeal, and in the general public repeal has 70-80% support. I don’t think the Dems are shaking in their boots about elections being a referendum on DADT.
Clinton’s first two years were a disaster with very few policy successes. Obama’s first two years have probably been the most successful since LBJ, at least as far as getting major legislation through Congres. Your criticism is bizarre.
I agree. Thanks again for your post.
I think you’ve come up with a pretty good set of criterion for being ‘extremely intelligent’
Attend graduate school at Harvard - along with getting an undergraduate degree from another prestigious, Ivy League school like Yale
Write well, especially when significant amounts of writing is an expectation for a position like the President of the Harvard Law Review (I’m still searching for some of Barack Obama’s output from that position and not finding any…but it must be because I’m not Googling the right way)
And get elected President
I’m also going to do some searches on who else might fit the criterion above. It will be interesting to see who else might fit.
They, according to our criterion would also be classified as “extremely intelligent”.
Fair enough. I’ll go search for some of his scholarship when he was at the University of Chicago, instead.
Might be because you can’t read.
ETA: Never mind.
this is the 2nd poll I’ve looked at that I can’t participate in. What’s up with that?
I voted for Obama and as of now I’ll vote for him again so I guess that’s favorable and favorable, although I was thinking favorable and middle. Politics across the board is far to corrupt IMO and bought and paid for. THat needs to drastically change and I’m infuriated that Obama and the Dems are not addressing that. IMO it’s nessecary step #1. Change campaign finance and lobbying laws. Otherwise how can you really expect to bring about serious lasting changes
Nothing? They passed the DISCLOSE act through the House yesterday, so I don’t think its even true that they’ve done nothing to fix it this week.
I’d also have liked something between favorable-now-favorable and favorable-now-middle (I voted favorable to offset Tom Scud).
I’d like to see more principles and less compromise.
I’m disappointed to see complaints about Obama’s stimulus and tax cuts: these should be increased not decreased. (Simple Keynesian economics should be taught in High School, with Great Depression as case study, but I guess a culture reluctant to teach evolution isn’t going to teach Keynes! :smack: )
Writing is not an expectation for the editor of the HLR (Obama critics have basically just made this up), though it does have a lot to do with the criterion for getting appointed.
Obama did write two books which demonstrate his intelligence very well.
Bush got into those schools as a legacy (i.e. Affiirmative Action for rich kids), and Harvard Business school was a much less demanding school than the Law school. Bush also wasn’t a leader of anything in college, and never demonstrated intelligence in other was like Obama did.
He did not attend the University of Chicago, he was a lecturer there. What published scholarship would you expect to find? What exactly are you trying to imply?
If you want to see his intelligence on display, read his books. They’re easy enough to find.
Incidentally, I don’t think that Bush was always stupid. I think he was probably reasonably bright at one point, but pickled his brain with booze and blow. He’s basically Ozzy with a fake Texas accent.
You’d be pleased to know that my high school history teacher did teach us about Keynes (& Adam Smith)! That was the same teacher who required us to read Eyes on the Prize and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (not for the same class, though!). Great teacher.
In his youth, Ozzy used to drag around a shoe with a long piece of string and tell everyone it was his pet shoe. So his brain isn’t pickled - it was never all there.
Oh. I thought just watching him non-stop on CNN every day would give me enough clues.
So the proof of his extreme intelligence is in the books he wrote.
Is there something I can see on TV that would corroborate that? That would be easier for me, quite frankly.
I assume then that Obama must have received excellent grades in school, and not been admitted because of affirmative action policies.
You can drop me those cites at your leisure.
Look, I don’t give a shit whether a President is extremely intelligent or not. It doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is that they stick to a few core principles in line with our Consitution and a philosophy about how jobs and living standards are improved through wealth creation, how lives are made better for our children, and how liberty and freedom are preserved for all Americans. And I want an executive leader - not a thinker or a consultant or a mediator. And certainly not a finger-wagging lecturer, which is the mode Obama is in about 80% of the time.
That what matters to me. I was having a little fun with the poster because she was refreshingly honest, and hit bang-on why most people in the middle of the political spectrum (and especially white suburban centrists) voted for Obama: he’s an attractive man who gives a well-articulated prepared speech on TV when read from a teleprompter.
And he’s black.
The poster above even had to catch herself a little when she was called on that…but it squeaked out anyway. That’s fine. She’s far from alone.
That whole package made a lot of voters feel good about themselves. It was the feel-good moment of the millienium, perhaps. A way to absolve a huge swath of middle America of all of their past sins, and the sins of their forefathers.
But Obama peaked on election day - quite literally, according to most poll numbers - because all that he was required to deliver up to that point were good speeches and wildly unrealistic expectations.
Now that the bloom is off the rose a bit, his true qualifications are becoming apparent for a lot of people…except for the 40-45% or so of the voting public for whom they were blaringly obvious before the election. He’s big-government liberal, bordering on a socialist, in hock to the unions and a rough-and-tumble politician. He’s never even come close to understanding how private enterprise works, how jobs are created, and how living standards are improved. And he’s turned a cold shoulder to some of our most trusted allies.
But yet, we get all sorts of contortionate logic about how ‘brilliant’ he is, as if that can somehow justify something when it comes to electing a President.
If you want to allege he got in through AA, you need to provide that cite.
In point of fact, he left the race question blank on his application to Harvard. He did not get in through Affirmative Action.
And, yes, pretty much any speech or press conference you wtach will confirm his intelligence, especially the off-the-cuff stuff (like when he pwned a roomful of Republican lawmakers on HCR), as well as his performance in office. He has made nothing but intelligent choices.
If you’d like to dispute his intellectual abilities, you are welcome to cite specific examples. Simply parakeeting Fox News demagogery is not very convincing.
he completely lose all crebility when you use terminology like “socialist” and “big government liberal.” That just shows a lack of education and comprehension on your own part.
All other things being equal, I’d like an exceptionally intelligent President, but I’m not sure how important it is. A paper which estimates Presidential intelligence may be interesting. Among Presidents between 1901 and 2008, Wilson, two Roosevelts, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton are shown with “I-U” > 125 and Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Johnson, Ford, and G.W. Bush are shown with I-U < 115.
What impresses me about Obama even more than his intelligence is his patience: the man is a Saint!
Let’s eavesdrop on another Doper:
(TV? :dubious:) You do seem obsessed with his intelligence, IdahoMauleMan. Anyone half-aware already knew he was quite intelligent. Is he actually in the same league as Jefferson, J.Q. Adams and Woodrow Wilson? I don’t know. Does it matter?
Oh. Sorry. We babble on about what’s not important, is it? Is this what’s taught in post-literate rhetoric classes?
Wow!! And this is the “Humble” Opinion forum! 
Great fun.
Not all that impressive, if W did it twice.
Bullshit. You don’t give a fuck if a President is an “executive leader” or a “thinker” or a “consultant”. You want one who exemplifies your half-baked political philosophy.
Fortunately, the American electorate, while plenty stupid, is still light years ahead of you.
Some kind of Works Progress Administration program, perhaps? I don’t what it would take to drastically reduce unemployment. I’m about as clueless about what to do as the White House.
Yeesh, when I said I wanted Clinton, I wasn’t talking about Bill!