An answer to the question no one is asking, "What if Obama isn't so smart?"

In a running debate over the years with a blogger from Colorado on RotLC, one point I have made consistently is to not confuse education with intelligence. Beautiful example:

Much was made of the intelligence of B Hussein Obama since he came onto the national scene when he read his speech at the 04 Democratic Convention. Harvard Law School, President of the Law Review, etc. Now much as been said but little has been proven.

Where are the transcripts that show his superior grades? Where are the papers written while he was on the Law Review that would show his intellect. It's been an open secret for years that the Ivy League is not a place to go to be academically challenged but to get connections for a career. So again I ask, where is the proof that a man who claims to have visited 57 states and needs two teleprompters to address a kindergarten class is reasonably intelligent?

I ask these questions because of this column from the Washington Examiner reminded me of the subject.

What if Obama isn't so smart? | Noemie Emery | Columnists | Washington Examiner

...The question this time is not just whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry is dumb -- the Left claims the obvious answer is yes -- but also whether he is as dumb as George W. Bush, or even much dumber, moronic where Bush was simply "incurious," and also much less gently bred.

Either way, few on the Left doubt that neither is, as Steve Benen says, "an intellectually curious, creative thinker, capable to examining [sic] complex issues in a sophisticated way."

Fortunately we have such a thinker, "capable to examining" things to perfection, and that is the problem: President Obama is their ideal of a thinker. He is president, and he has been -- how to put it? -- a bomb.

And in every other business he was a bomb. Again, a man-child with absolutely no accomplishments unto his records.

...He's the political genius who blew up his coalition in his first months in office, who led his party to annihilation in the 2010 midterms (while showing utter indifference to the fate of congressional Democrats), and gave the Republicans -- who were on the floor, in a coma -- more than they needed to come roaring back from the dead.

He is the policy genius who "leads from behind," whose engagement ideas have gone nowhere, whose stimulus stimulated only the deficit, whose health care "success" helped kill off his recovery, and whose efforts to create jobs all fell flat.

Again that term "lead from behind" strikes me. Like Lady Thatcher's definition of what is not leadership, "Consensus is the absence of leadership." Leadership must be from the front. At the gate of Ft Benning GA, home of the US Army Infantry School is the statue of Iron Mike with a two work definition of leadership, "Follow Me". I've know many a great leader in my time in the service and no one would every say their position is "behind". Unfortunately the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue cannot understand that. He's not intelligent enough.

...If this is idiocy, we may want some more idiots, as Lincoln once asked for more drunks in his army, rather like Gen. Grant.


...Kevin Drum at Mother Jones thinks Perry may be too dim for even the doltish American public, while Paul Waldman thinks otherwise. "The doltish candidates seem mostly on the Republican side," he writes in the American Prospect, while only Democrats have and/or treasure intelligence.


"So while there are many things to dislike about Perry, his tiny brain" might do him no harm. But the real examples of those who campaigned well and bombed afterward are Democrats, such as Obama and Carter, whose careers peaked on the day they took office and went steadily downhill from then on...

I've always loved how the idiots, err writers at Mother Jones know what is intelligent. I've been skimming it off and on for over 20 years and they predicted the default of America sometime at the end of the Reagan administration. I think we are still here. I wonder if they are calling the alarms on the BO administration.

I guess we should take a look at what we are talking about.

Definition of INTELLIGENCE

1: the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled use of reason
2: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)

Definition of EDUCATED:

1: having an education; especially : having an education beyond the average
2: giving evidence of training or practice : skilled

Now back to the quote of Lincoln on General Grant. I am reminded of a high school friend who started as a mechanic building large cranes (things for off shore rigs, etc) in 97. He worked his way up and now is a supervisor. He knows how to build these machines and one of the things that would frustrate him would be arguments he would get into with the engineers who design the project. D would have to explain how it may look great on paper, it would never work in practice. The senior management finally figured out he knew what he was doing and now the engineers must get their design plans blessed off by D (a high school graduate with a year of college) before they are sent in for final approval. He may not have a degree but he has experience and knowledge and knows what he's doing.

These people figured out something that not enough Americans figured out in 08. If you want to take a leadership position, you must be a leader. That requires experience. Something B Hussein Obama has never gotten.

Hopefully enough people will know that come 2012.