Obama, whatever else he is, is not an intellectual *UPDATED*
Some things are timeless, and I think Sir Francis Bacon, writing almost 500 years ago, pretty much nailed what constitutes an intellectual and a wit: “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
In modern English, an intellectual can be described as someone who is extremely well read. He or she has a fully furnished mind and, at the drop of a hat, can delve into that internal room of books, and resurrect quotations, ideas, and information.
Being an intellectual is not necessarily virtuous. People can have stuffed their brains without achieving wisdom, morality, decency or even common sense. Intellectuals are often boring, and pompous, with a simple conversation converted into a pedantic lecture. That’s not always the case, of course. Combine an intellectual with a wit and you suddenly have someone whose every word is a delight, as that person draws on a vast fund of knowledge to support amusing conversation.
And then there’s Barack Obama. Eleanor Clift, yet another worried liberal who is trying to buck up her idol and make him functional again, offers him five bullet-points of advice in her Newsweak column (h/t The New Editor). As part of the justification for giving this advice, she concedes that the Great Orator isn’t really so great after all. In other words, she says, he’s no Reagan — but he is an Adlai Stevenson:
If Michael Deaver, Reagan’s image maestro, were still alive, and working for Obama, he would convert these glimmers of hope into “Morning in America.” Reagan had a natural ability to touch the emotions, a trait that Obama doesn’t have. He’s not going to get a personality transplant; he’s an intellectual’s intellectual, more Adlai Stevenson than Ronald Reagan. (Emphasis mine.)
I gaspled (a cross between a giggle and a gasp) when I read that highlighted language. Obama could not be more unlike Adlai Stevenson. If you’re going for ridiculous comparisons, you may as well compare Obama to Marilyn Monroe. It would make about as much sense.
I wasn’t around when Stevenson ran for office, but my Dad loved the guy. It wasn’t just his Democratic politics (which, incidentally, were also staunchly anti-Communist), it was his incredible wit. He had a supple, creative, pointed but seldom cruel, humor that revealed a breadth of intellect one seldom sees today. Although a sometimes indifferent student, Stevenson had a well furnished mind that, coupled with a powerful sense of humor, left him scattering bon mots left and right.
Iknow also this because my Dad cherished a book called “The Wit and Wisdom of Adlai Stevenson.” I no longer have that book but, thanks to the miracles of the internet, I can share some of his humor with you. None of these quotations reveal his immense breadth of knowledge, although the elegance of his phrasing implies it, and they certainly do reveal a flexible, creative mind, and one with some old-fashioned morals to back it up:
A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.
Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.
An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity – in short, of tyranny – and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
Flattery is all right so long as you don’t inhale. [A certain prescience about Bill Clinton there….]
I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign… and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.
In America any boy may become President and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes.
It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look his neighbor in the face and see a man — not a color. [A notion that is anathema to today’s Democrats.]
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for. [Subtle, and one that modern Democrats would do well to understand.]
I have a question for you: Has Barack Obama ever said anything witty? Sure, he can speak in orotund cadences when the speech is spelled out, but have you ever heard the man make a reference to anything that shows knowledge beyond the Marxist canon? Has he ever made a joke other than one that would be most at home in a Middle School cut session (i.e., an insult competition amongst barely pubescent boys)?
Barack Obama has nothing of the intellectual about him. He’s a documented ignoramus when it comes to history, something worrisome, because he often tries to get history to back up his policies. He’s an almost laughably stereotypical “Ugly American” when it comes to his knowledge of the world around him. He’s embarrassingly slow on learning the nuances of the military culture he leads. (You can amuse yourselves in the comments by providing more examples of Obama’s horrific errors, linquistically, historically, culturally, etc.) And if you’ve cudgeled your brains after reading the paragraph immediately preceding this one, you’ll definitely have come to the conclusion that, not only is he uninformed, he’s no wit.
As I already warned at the beginning of this post, the fact that Obama is neither a wit nor an intellectual doesn’t automatically mean he’s dumb or immoral or lacks common sense. We can discern those qualities from his conduct, if we’re so inclined. Thus, we could say that his rigid insistence on following a failed path indicates that he’s not too bright, that his allegiance to a Leftist world view means his beliefs are antithetical to traditional morality, or that his failure ever to work in the private sector deprives him of ordinary common sense. But those are thoughts for another post.
Suffice it to say for this post that he’s no Adlai Stevenson.
UPDATE: Just the most recent example of Obama’s lack of intelligence, neatly coupled with a complete lack of honesty.
