The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘The President’s Supreme Confidence in His Intellectual Abilities …’

Posted on | October 11, 2011 | 9 Comments

. . . has proven sadly mistaken.”

Just kidding. That’s not how the sentence in Scott Wilson’s Washington Post column actually ends. No credentialed member of the White House press corps would ever write a sentence like that. But dishonesty as a prerequisite for membership in the White House press corps was not a subject of sufficient interest for Jonah Goldberg, who instead wondered about something else in Wilson’s column:

Obama certainly does see himself as a policy wonk, and he’s surrounded himself with people who see the president in precisely the way the president likes to be seen. Funny how that works. Also Obama is one of the most zealous members of the cult of experts we’ve had in the White House in a very long time. . . .
Where’s the proof that Obama is a master of public policy? To be sure there’s ample proof that he’s a master at talking about public policy, describing the problems, summarizing the current thinking, regurgitating all of the reigning clichés and platitudes. But where’s the evidence that he’s actually good at public policy?

Read the whole thing.

Bookmark and Share
Category: Barack Obama, Jonah Goldberg

Comments

  • Finrod Felagund

    I have yet to see any significant evidence that Obama is competent in anything, other than convincing people that he is competent, and reading a teleprompter.
     

  • http://twitter.com/rjacobse Roy Jacobsen

    OK, it’s an old meme, but…

    But where’s the evidence that he’s actually good at public policyanything?

    Fixed it for you.

  • Anonymous

  • Pingback: Obama a Master of Public Policy? | The Lonely Conservative

  • http://twitter.com/ThatChristyChic Christy Waters

    Obama may be an intellectual, but he has no “horse sense”. He’s not fit to run a lemonade stand, let alone be POTUS. What the hell does a community organizer do, anyway?… Find an urban outdoorsman > stand him on a street corner, with a sign promoting the “cause of the day” > pay him with a baloney sandwich. 

    The only thing that people of Obama’s ilk have produced is a bunch of malcontent thumb-suckers, who think they’re entitled just because they take up space, aka the OWS crowd.

    Gee, I just can’t understand why the economy’s not recovering. Why don’t we let those who the intellectuals might refer to as the real-world “riff raff” have a crack at it?

  • http://twitter.com/russemerson Russ Emerson

    Way ahead of you, Stacy.  Way ahead.

  • Tennwriter

    Cause the answer to the question is ‘Grow gov’t and attack morality and put more power in the hands of intellectuals.’

    It doesn’t matter what the question is, the answer is always the same.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Obama “intellectual”?  Maybe in his dreams (rewritten by Bill Ayers).

    He’s never accomplished anything worthy of note.  No matter how lackluster his performances, he’s always been promoted and admired.  He’s a spoiled, arrogant brat with no concept of his own severe limitations.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    The rumor now is Obama is depressed and isolated, cutting himself off from everyone except Valerie Jarrett and Axelrod.  He’s never actually been held accountable for his results, and he can’t deal with it.

    Supposedly the NYT was working on a story about this the editors killed when they found out.  But the info is out there being talked about by Democratic Party peeps and newsies in NYC and DC, according to several second-hand reports.

    So maybe he resigns to get treatment and sympathy?

Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE