{"id":12798,"date":"2010-08-20T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12798"},"modified":"2014-02-19T11:04:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T17:04:00","slug":"overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12798","title":{"rendered":"Overrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the campaign, two of the lefty memes that irritated me the most were “Obama’s smart<\/em>“, and “Obama was an Ivy Leaguer<\/em>” and, its close cousin, “Obama was a constitutional law professor”.<\/p>\n

None of them is especially a qualifier for the office of President.<\/p>\n

The “ConLaw professor” is the easiest disposed of; the President will never need to litigate the Constitution; he or she only needs to understand it. \u00a0Indeed, all the ideal president really needs to know about the Constitution is how to follow it<\/em>. \u00a0Any good policeman or modestly-bright college graduate knows more than enough about the Constitution to be President. \u00a0And the President who thinks they can outfox the Founding Fathers is especially dangerous.<\/p>\n

The Ivy Leaguer bit is a little harder – but I think it’s getting to the point where going to an Ivy League school should be a disqualifier<\/em> for the Presidency; indeed, maybe we should trade the whole “natural-born US citizen” requirement to drop in that restriction. \u00a0I dunno.<\/p>\n

But the fact is, the very best <\/em>thing an Ivy League education, in and of itself, says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 22 or so, that person understood how the paper chase was played well enough to earn spectacular grades and punch all the other Admissions Committee-friendly tickets and earn the scholarships it takes to afford to attend an Ivy. \u00a0In vastly more cases, it means that they come from families that both impressed upon the young ‘uns the need to have that upmarket diploma (and its most important fringe benefit, access to the upmarket alumni network), and the means to make it happen. \u00a0After about age 23, the best question for an Ivy grad is “what have you done for us lately?; too many wave their diploma around in their mid-thirties like Andy Bernard in The Office <\/em>and his years at Cornell; they remind me of high school quarterbacks whose lives peaked at the homecoming game their senior year, and never quite got that good again.<\/p>\n

And of course, while several great or at least decent presidents have gone to Ivy League schools, our best have been self-educated (Lincoln) or come from obscure midwestern schools (Reagan, who attended Eureka) and have had to earn their way through life on merit, rather than alumni connections.<\/p>\n

But the “he’s smart” bit is the one that strikes me, ironically, as the dumbest “qualification”.<\/p>\n

Doy.<\/p>\n

Betty McCollum notwithstanding, it’s hard for anyone to get anywhere in public life without being “smart” in some sense of the term or another, whether it’s Thomas Jefferson’s world-altering intellect or Lyndon Johnson’s brutal political “street smarts”.<\/p>\n

But the least useful, it’d seem, is the bookish, “Lookit me, I’m an Ivy Leaguer and you’re not!”, air of unearned\u00a0condescension\u00a0that you get from the overpraised, the overweening, and…<\/p>\n

…the President<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively\u00a0praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so \u201cevery economist\u201d believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations\u2019 fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman? Let\u2019s get some perspective here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a deadly combination \u2014 intellectual arrogance and lack of sympatico with the public \u2014 that leads him again and again to stumble. And when his shortcomings lead to embarrassment or failure, he strikes out in frustration \u2014 at Israel, at the media,\u00a0and at the American people. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he\u2019s so prickly. You\u2019d be, too, if everyone your entire life had\u00a0told you that you were swell but now, when the\u00a0chips are\u00a0down and the spotlight is on, you\u00a0are failing so badly in your job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That, indeed, may be Obama’s great legacy; \u00a0that “The Peter Principle” may soon be called “The Obama Principle”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the campaign, two of the lefty memes that irritated me the most were “Obama’s smart“, and “Obama was an Ivy Leaguer” and, its close cousin, “Obama was a constitutional law professor”. None of them is especially a qualifier for the office of President. The “ConLaw professor” is the easiest disposed of; the President will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[282],"class_list":["post-12798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","tag-idiot-elite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12798"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41921,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12798\/revisions\/41921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}