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 how liberals manage to paint republicans as too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time, but yet still claim they are diabolical enough to pull off mass election fraud and Halliburton-controls-the-world type conspiracies." 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.
I guess the more important point is that he was wrong about what he was writing. In particular, I believe that the elder president Bush was probably the most intelligent president we’ve had for many decades, and Reagan and Ford were very underrated. However, I think he has a point that voters don’t like candidates that come across as too intellectual.
Obama might not be “too elite” to get elected, but he is definitely too Marxist.
“Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all were far brighter than their GOP opponents”
The Towering Intellect of Mike Dukakis??? Huh?
Al Gore who flunked out of divinty school and failed his science courses is just a major thinker!
Pa-LEASE!
One thing I do know—he is SUCH A WHINER!!!!!
I called my two Dem Senators today—Biden and Carper—about Feinstein’s amnesty amendment to the Iraq supplemental bill.
Then I told their staffer to have these two, as superdelegates, to call Sen. Obama and tell him to stop being such a crybaby about the “appeasement remarks” by President Bush. I told them the President didn’t mention Obama by name, and everything the President said was factually and historically accurate.
I also gave the Biden staffer what for because of Senator Pottymouth’s swearing yesterday.
I then called Sen. McConnell’s office and asked why more GOP Senators aren’t joining in to defend the President on his remarks and to tell Obama to stop being such a crybaby.
The GOP once again risks losing an advantage by sitting around and letting the Dems run to the microphones and shape public opinion.
"Like George W. Bush, with his Harvard MBA, is "dumber" than Al Gore, who flunked out of Vanderbilt Divinity School??? "Must be awfully embarrasing, then, that George Bush got better grades than John Kerry at Yale.
Original thinking is on vacation when Barack Obama gives a speech. That’s why he needs to say “Just Words?” when quoting great speeches. The men who uttered them first did so at the risk of their lives. When Barack repeats them, they are in fact “Just Words”.
“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.”
This is a non-issue. Just because you meet with someone doesn’t make you an appeaser. You are an appeaser only if you make some concessions to them. Reagan met with the leaders of “the evil empire” and he was certainly no appeaser.
There are many reasons he is not qualified to be POTUS - lack of experience, Rev. Wright issue, etc.
Weren’t Bush’s GPA’s higher than Kerry’s?......
"Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all were far brighter than their GOP opponents” Keep in mind that they are so smart that only one Democrat since 1964 (44 years ago) has won the position of POTUS with a majority of the electorate. And that was Jimmy who promptly thrown out on his butt after four years.
Notice that all the examples are of leftist/dhimmirat geniuses and conservative dunces.
Of COURSE, you have to be dumb to be a conservative, duh!
What an arrogant ASSumption on the part of the author of this piece.
John W. Dean, of the “Watergate” Dean’s?
I thought he was dead.
Note that Obama will NOT release his transcripts. Easy to act too intelligent when being fed Duval Patrick’s lines.
“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.”
John Dean is a real SOB
That’s the problem with the leftist paradigm, the leftist worldview -
they believe that some are more “perfect” or elite than others,
and therefore have the knowledge, wisdom, and the OBLIGATION to make decisions in the lives of others. This is just an assumption on their part, due to their worldview.
This needs to be challenged. They think they know more about running businesses than any businessman running his own business. CHALLENGE IT.
DEMAND to know what they know about small business, and what gives them the right and the authority to tell those who DO know how to run businesses how to run them differently.
DEMAND to know how they can possibly know how any individual child needs to be taught, better than the parents that are raising them.
EXPOSE these arrogant asses for what they are.
A quote from the Oxford Dean of Students during BillyJeff's tenure: "Fat, stoned and stupid is no way to go through life son."
Bush also beat Kerry’s scores on the military assessment tests.
"Must be awfully embarrasing, then, that George Bush got better grades than John Kerry at Yale. " 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
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