Because, if you take Milbank’s idea to its logical conclusion, effective leadership springs from muddled stupidity?
Seeking a template to understand the enigmatic president, I consulted three leading academics in the fields of psychology and behavior. With their help, I put Obama on the couch and came away with a reasonably coherent diagnosis: There’s too much going on in the poor guy’s head.
“What distinguishes Obama particularly is the depth and carefulness of his thinking, which renders him somewhat unfit for politics,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at the University of Virginia. “He is a brilliant social and political analyst, which makes it harder for him to play hardball or to bluff.”
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses come from his high degree of “integrative complexity” — his ability to keep multiple variables and trade-offs in mind simultaneously. The integratively simple thinker — say, George W. Bush — has one universal organizing principle that dominates all others, while the integratively complex thinker — Obama — balances many competing goals.
Or, and I’m just spitballlin’ here, perhaps Barack Obama is a lousy president because he’s a pointy-headed academic with no real world experience in leading or managing anything of any significance. You can make all the excuses for Obama’s awful record that you want, but, and again I’m just spitballin’ here, when the president knows his policies will make energy prices skyrocket, and he relentlessly pursues those policies, and energy prices skyrocket, you can’t say that he’s too complex or intelligent for the job. You can say he brought lousy policies to the job, those policies are hurting the country, and you’d be right. But you can’t say he’s too smart for the job.
You can also say he has been a failure at fulfilling many of his promises, among them the pledge to work with both sides, the pledge to be post-racial, and so forth. He broke those promises. It’s fair to point that out. It’s not fair, though, to just make excuses for him.
But this is what the press often does when a liberal fails: They make excuses, say he’s too brilliant for the job, find a way to blame Republicans, play the race card, whatever gets them through the night.
I take offense at the classification of Obama as an academic. He’s no scholar. of anything.
The premise pretty much highlights the sad truth behind most self professed intellects and acadenians of today…does it not?
Years of working with intelligent men in fancy universities and engineering firms has accustomed me to spotting some of the characteristics they share. I’ve seen none of these in Obama (judging by what’s presented by the press, of course, which is a poor substitute for personal dealing with the man, but it’s all that’s available). I’d peg his as a very pedestrian intellect. More importantly, perhaps, it seems to be an intellect which hasn’t learned to grow – it’s stuck at a highschool-level grasp of concepts, and now, in middle age, it’s far too late for Obama to outgrow that failing.
But that’s not terribly relevant. Intelligence has never been shown to be a major qualification for the presidency. We’ve had some intelligent men in the Oval Office, men vastly more intelligent than Obama or any of the current Democratic crop, but most of them can’t be claimed to have been particularly good Presidents.
The Presidency was intended to be an executive position. It has evolved, perhaps for good reason, into a leadership position. But Obama is no leader, and he never will be. And I don’t believe he has the intellectual horsepower or the aptitude to be a serious analyst. He is, at best, a cheerleader, though not a terribly good one. There’s a place for cheerleaders, of course, but it’s futile to pretend that they make acceptable Presidents.
What’s betraying America right now is not Obama’s intelligence, or the lack thereof, but his personality.
A better political and social analysis than anything attributable to Obama of which I’m aware. Given his expressed standard of excellence, Professor Haidt might just get the vapors reading it.
Very well put tom swift. Just listen to Dear Leader when he’s off the teleprompter. He sounds like a petulant child in the middle of a temper tantrum. The man knows nothing of the private sector and the obstacles that he and his ilk put in front of businesses hampering their struggle to succeed. I get disgusted every time I hear one of his lectures, AKA speeches.
The fact that Milbank believes Obama to be intellectually superior indicates that Milbank is an idiot. There is no end to the lies that issue forth from the Left in order to make Obama appear something that he is not. I think Obama is a lazy, affirmative-action, Marxist ideologue who is adept at organizing thugs and bullying others. He is also lawless and would very much like to reign over a dictatorship. Milbank and others like him are nearly as despicable as Obama is.
Academics overestimate the importance of classroom learning and underestimate the importance learning from experience. They have an incentive to do so because their jobs depend on people valuing classroom learning. If they were to admit that many things cannot be learned in the classroom but only by doing, people would be less willing to pay the high tuition rates that colleges charge these days. People who understand the importance of learning from experience are not surprised that Obama has been a disaster as president–he had no significant learning by doing to prepare him for the presidency. He has learned how to promote himself, which is why he is always in campaign mode, but never learned how to lead.
Two plus years into a disastrous presidency and we’re still playing the ‘he’s too smart’ card? Without an iota of proof? It’s Onion-worthy hilarity.
“There’s too much going on in the poor guy’s head.”
Ah yes. A relative of mine refers to his as, “he is wandering the corridors of his mind.”
As Dirty Harry Callahan might say, “Swell.”
“He is a brilliant social and political analyst, which makes it harder for him to play hardball or to bluff.”
Someone might want to ask Professor Haidt where one might find a record of this brilliant social and political analysis? Is this the same Professor Haidt that, to his credit, confronted his professional colleagues with their insularity? If so, this might be a good time to remind him of his own words.
Thank God we had an amiable dunce as President. We could sure use another amiable dunce. (For those of you too young to remember, liberals frequently referred to President Reagan as the amiable dunce.)
Amen, James Wise! Where is the Great Communicator when we desperately need him?
Im thinkin someone COULD be too smart to be a good leader. But I just wonder of the uber-intelligence would be the disqualifying feature. Natural leaders are smart, certainly. They have to be able to string data points together and come up with working solutions. On the other hand, really smart individuals rarely have the patience to deal with the masses. Einstein was not really a leader. He was a thinker and a very smart one at that.
But to actually be too smart to be a leader would mean that you would not really WANT to be a leader. From all the history here, from lies, cover-ups, world apology tours, Chicago thuggery lessons, I’d say this guy pretty much wants to be president. Or at least he wants the power associated with being president.
But too smart? REALLY? THat would imply that he could solve problems that others would not see their way clear to developing. I immediately think of the Olympic site disaster. How smart was he on that one??? Not really. Or how about sending a 747 over NY city without telling anyone about it? How’d that work out??? What did he solve with that one? I’ve never heard how the video looked, or how the cards came out.
How about the 20 years sitting under Rev. Wright? How smart was that? No, I think Milbank is up to his usual kissing up and missing the main point. Obama is not a leader because….well, because he’s just not inclined to lead!! He has no creative thoughts, everything has to be done NOW, without discussion. He reminds me of the idiotic Lieutenant in the 6th or 7th show of Band of Brothers. The guy had no business being there, everyone knew it, but the officers in charge had to let him stay, in spite of the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of quite of few soldiers. That is Obama. We all know he is incompetent, at least for leading. He seems to be doing a great job destroying our country, but that is more or less checking off a list created my none other than Mr. Soros. NO, this guy is not a leader and he is not smart. Other than that, hats off to Milbank!!