Real Clear Politics this morning linked to a column by Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette entitled “Obama Is Not That Bright.” In it he wrote,
Could it be that Mr. Obama’s “superior intellect” is a myth created by journalists to mask what may be the thinnest resume of anyone ever elected president? An example of puffery is the description of Mr. Obama as a former “professor of constitutional law.” Mr. Obama was a part time instructor at the University of Chicago Law School, without the title or status of professor. And, according to blogger Doug Ross, he wasn’t very popular with the real professors.
“I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back,” Mr. Ross wrote in March 2010. “According to my professor friend, [Obama] had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. … The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified.”
As readers of this blog have probably noticed, I’m not the national president of the Obama Fan Club, so this was music to my ears. But was it true? It’s the oldest dictum in journalism that, “if your mother says she loves you, check it out,” a splendid idea all too often honored in the breach. So I checked it out.
Fortunately for me, that was easy because the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, Douglas G. Baird, is my first cousin (the “G” stands for Gordon). So I asked him about the quote and about the possibility that the reason Obama has refused to release his academic records was that his grades weren’t all that good. Here’s what he wrote back:
… The idea that Obama had lousy grades is demonstrably untrue. He graduated magna from Harvard Law, which means that he was at least in the top 15 or 20 percent of his class at HLS. Most of the exams are blindly graded. I don’t want to argue about the relevance of grades, but the idea that they weren’t very good is just not right.
It also mischaracterizes his position at Chicago to say that he was only a part-time instructor. Not being full-time was a matter of his choosing. (He wanted to pursue a political career. Our efforts to persuade him to teach fulltime at Chicago didn’t succeed. With respect to this, I should emphasize that I’m not speaking with second-hand knowledge. As dean at the time, I was the relevant decision maker.) Moreover, he was a “senior lecturer.” This is not your typical part-time instructor. At the time, it was a position reserved for people who would otherwise be full-time faculty, but who choose not to. (He got full medical benefits, large office, secretary, and faculty-type perks that were given only to [Richard] Posner and [Frank] Easterbrook [who are vastly distinguished appellate federal judges as well as senior lecturers at the law school], and not any other adjuncts.)
To say that some professors hated him because he was unqualified is mystifying. His credentials (president of HLR and magna) are completely traditional law professor credentials. His classes were consistently popular. He spent relatively little time schmoozing with faculty or hanging out with them (and this, at least in retrospect, has made at least one conservative colleague speak ill of him), but this is different from him being unqualified.
Someone who says Obama is not smart is someone who hasn’t met him. I’m completely confident you wouldn’t like him if you met him and you would think him ideological and not warm and fuzzy, but I would be stunned if you didn’t think he was smart.
Doug is undoubtedly right that I wouldn’t like Obama if I met him, which I haven’t (White House invitations have been notably sparse the last three years for some mysterious reason). And his ideological mindset is a big reason for that. A rigid ideology, after all, can make very bright people act stupidly.
Obama is clearly very smart. He is playing a vastly more sophisticated game of political chess than any Republican opponent. His political smarts is a major reason why he can ride pretty high in the polls despite utterly disasterous policies. His approval should be zero, yet is is actually quite high. Either we are quite stupid, or he is quite smart. Or both.
His political standing is no doubt boosted by a fawning media and political cleverness is not the same thing as a formidable intellect, learning and sophistication but your point is well taken.
I think Obama is very smart, but being essentially a BS artist, all the smarts go to the snow job du jour. That's why he is ignorant of so many things that any educated man should know. When you are as arrogant as Obama, and as ideological as Obama, there isn't that much you feel you need to learn. So functionally, he isn't nearly as bright as he and his followers think he is.
Wellll, I think that we would have to first change the color of his skin from faintly mocha to white. We will never know exactly how much of his "popularity" (unwillingness to tell a caller their true feelings?) is based on his race. And his race (and his ideology) also account for a lot of the media's oversampling certain groups and otherwise "playing around" with the numbers. n nHowever, yes, many voters ARE either "quite stupid" or ignorant, because information on obama and his background was widely available on the net before the election. (and still is.)
Obama is a booger-eating retard who can't string four words into a cogent sentence.
Speaking of intelligence, you don't sound like you have much.
I would love to know why Douglas Gordon Baird hired Obama and why he wanted him full time. I know a Harvard graduate law professor who was also in the top of his class and on the Harvard Law Review. He was obligated to do something Obama apparently was not- PUBLISH. Publish not only as a student on the Harvard Law Review but as an non tenured professor. Now he has tenure but the requirement for him to publish hasn't evaporated. Baird suspiciously says "most" tests are blindly graded, leaving open the possibility re: Obama. Why did not Baird hold Obama to the same standards as is the NORM for almost ALL professors at all universities? Do part-time professors (known as adjunct professors in most places) have different lower standards of performance at the University of Chicago? Why did a part-time, aka adjunct, professor have full medical benefits and other perks? (John Steele Gordon, I think your cousin isn't helping his cause to defend Obama because he doesn't look so good himself now.) n nI believe Obama is bright but nowhere near brilliant. I think people want to believe, want to have faith, so they see what they want to see in Obama. Baird will never see the stupidity that others without the "faith" see.
Other than the "birther" argument this claim – that Obama is not smart – mystifies me to no end. Where does it come from? Is it entirely ideological? I.e., he's a liberal and liberals aren't smart? n nI don't doubt that Obama's race and background gave him some additional points in academia. But they alone can't carry a person at the heights of the academic world that he succeeded in. He was successful because he worked hard, was diligent and disciplined and because he's smart. Innately so and developmentally so. n nIn addition to smart he's also very cynical (thus his relationship with Wright and Ayers and his "evolution" on gay marriage). Perhaps the most cynical man to be in the White House since Nixon. Nixon too was smart, wasn't he?
The errors he makes in language are non-sensical. Remember when he said we were on the "precipice" of something wonderful — and he didn't know that "precipce" has a negative connotation? When he thought Hawaii was in Asia and didn't know the number of states? "Corpseman:? High school seniors would be embaressed by some of the things he has said off-teleprompter.His main iinterests are basketball and golf. He is not known as a scholar, even a reader or a writer, let alone a great thinker. n n He seems cunning, yes. But anyone who has read of his (true) past and knows the state of academia and Chicago politics knows that he has had a "hand-up" that you and I can only dream of.
Aren't most people who rise to the White House pretty bright? Come on now, why the obsession of Barry Soetoro's supposed brilliance? LIke "57 states"? Like comparing the atomob bombing of Japan to the "bomb that Japan dropped on Pearl Harbor"? Like pronouncing Navy corpsman "corpse-man"? n nYeah, he's brilliant. n nAll liberals/Democrats are considered oh so very smart by the MSM; conservatives/Republicans are considered back-water rubes. It hasn't changed in half a century. The fact that most of the "commentariat" come from people in NYC, Wash DC and Hollywierd just might have something to do with that……..
Can you really imagine yourself making such a mistake?
You learn about these things, the number of states for example, in grade school, and they are paid attention to by older people only if they are keenly interested in them. Obama was raised in Indonesia and learned the number of islands in it at the stage you learned about the number of states. Since he was never, when older interested in it, it is quite probably that he had no knowledge of the subject. When and how would he have discovered the number of states? nPerhaps he remembered Heinz 57 kinds instead. nThis is the kind of thing that happens when a person has an entirely foreign upbringing, and has no real interest in American history. n n
How does one make the slip, it's rather odd. You would think the right number would be so deeply ingrained this could never happen.
when Obama said "57 states," he probably had in mind the slogan of the Heinz food company, "57 Varieties." Maybe just a slip of the tongue as most of us make from time to time. That said, I consider Obama both smart and slick, and maybe sinister, but not decent or well-informed.
Tell me, are you also curious when liberals trot out totally untrue fabricated statements attributed to Governor Palin like "I can see Russia from my house"?
LOL! n nOK, so when pressed on your hypocrisy…you retreat…..I fail to see the difference…. n ncheck please
LOL! n nTell me, are you also curious when liberals trot out totally untrue fabricated statements attributed to Governor Palin like "I can see Russia from my house"? n nAgain…..I asked you a simple question, why can't you answer it? n nOr, will it be crickets?
LOL! n n n"I'm sure you think that you proved something, but exactly what is beyond me. " n nexactly n n n
LOL! n nIt is always a pleasure having an intelligent discourse with one of you 'open minded' and fair individuals on the left side of the political spectrum….
Inane? nStupid? n nReally? n nLOL! n nSo…….are you still trying to whistle past the grave yard and pretend to not comprehend my point? n nYou can show a little personal integrity here, or as I like to call it….a little class, you can step up to the plate, be an adult and admit there is media bias between conservatives and progressives in main stream media coverage….or not…. n nEither way I was right all along, you know it and I know you know it…. n nBTW n nHe said 'Navy Corpse Men' numerous times throughout his speech that evening…….apparently he was able to get though life without knowing that…..
Its relevant because when Sarah Palin or George W make much less patently stupid tongue slips the left views them as prima facie proof of their stupidity. So, to turn the question back, are tongue slips only tongue slips when Democratic darlings make them? n n
Yes. And there is something about a black man in a suit speaking standard English that, sadly, makes many people see him as automatically "brilliant."
For a “smart” guy he says lots of stupid things. Most people who think he’s smart are confusing glibness with intelligence. When he’s off script, it’s beyond embarrassing. When he’s on script, it’s demonstrably wrong and hopelessly ideological. His grasp of history is appalling, and his blathering on con law is pathetic. Sounds like the author’s cousin is covering for him, like virtually all of his media-academic praetorian guard.
so your cousin confirmed that Obama was a part time instructor and he also confirmed that he has no idea what sort of grades may have gotten pre-law school … what facts did they get wrong ? n nYour cousin is full of it and he knows it … Obama was part time because he was an unpublished BS artist …
can you substantiate that claim?
There is no discussion that Obama never published any academic paper, usually the required step to have any academic shine.
The idea that Obama isn't very smart is almost as risible as the proposition that he is an ignorant, lazy bigot is incontestable. n nDean Baird isn't exactly right to the extent that grade inflation meant that, at the time, as much as a 25% of Harvard Law class could graduate MCL and averages could be inflated (slightly) through seminars and the like, but his larger point is very well taken: Obama could not have graduated that high (even top 25%) without having done well in a meaningful number of doctrinal classes, blind graded on a curve, and to me that means he is a very smart man. To be clear, he may have graduated in the top 5%, even the top 5 people, but we cannot know specifically because his grades have not been released. He could have done that well, but I doubt it because of that incontestable laziness. n nPeople often assert that Obama benefited from affirmative action. He himself admits (in his book) to being a less than diligent high school student, and we know (I believe) that he did not graduate with Greek Honors from Columbia. Even assuming, arguendo, that he achieved a perfect LSAT score, there is precisely zero chance that he would have been admitted to HLS absent a very strong racial preference (it is very unlikely that a normal white legacy applicant would have been admitted – a nice donation from dad might have helped). I do not take this to mean Obama isn't bright. His academic record at HLS itself (minimum top 25%) indicates that he was easily bright enough to be there and could very likely have gained admission absent any racial preferences. The fact that he did not graduate with honors from college and benefited from such preferences is indicative of some considerable laziness a this stage. n nBeyond that professional career is almost certainly the least distinguished of any President of the Harvard Law Review. He never published a note or legal article, did not clerk for an appellate judge (and those clerkships would certainly have been open to him, almost certainly including one with a Supreme Court justice), never practiced at an elite level or in any serious way at all (as a direct illustration of a truly distinguished legal career one nee look no further than Ted Cruz, whom the Texas Republicans might be just contemptible enough not select as their nominee for the Senate). This, too, seems illustrative of either extreme laziness, an arrogance sufficiently ostentatious as to make him believe he was too good for these positions or perhaps an appalling combination of both. (There might have been some insecurity on his part but I doubted this a) because it might genuinely not have been warranted and b) because Obama regards himself too highly to think in these terms even if a greater degree of modesty would be warranted than was probably the case here. n nObama's ignorance of history, political philosophy and economics has been far to extensively documented on this blog and elsewhere to need further rehearsal, with his lack of awareness of the record of lower capital gains generating higher capital gains receipts (evinced in response to Charlie Gibson's question in the debate ahead of the Pennsylvania primary in 2008) being only of the more prominent examples. n nBeyond that Obama spews pedestrian left wing shibboleths and fetishes with such frequency and such genuine conviction that there can be no doubt that he has internalized these but very little beyond his (in this respect convincing) grades at Harvard give any indication of real intellectual competence (however extravagantly underused). n nThus the media and general left wing mantra about Obama's intellect while not exactly false in a very narrow technical sense, does tend to obscure (for some) the overwhelming lack of experience, accomplishment, learning and sophistication, defects abundantly on display in the course of his abysmal presidency, defects that will in time accord him a place of notable odium among thoughtful historians, a place much lower than that of some presidents who may not have been his absolute intellectual superiors.
Now THAT was a brilliant summation. Well-put.
This topic is hilarious. Is Obama smart? Well, what does that mean? He doesn't appear to know "stuff" that I would expect a smart, educated, intellectually curious person to know, that's for sure. His fabled mistakes along these lines are proof of that (Americans liberating Auschwitz, mispronouncing "corps" (twice), 10,000 dead in a Kansas tornado, the Austrian language, etc.) These aren't just unforced errors that were the result of speaking off the cuff or succumbing to stress. And his off the cuff arguments in favor of healthcare reform were often downright stupid, remember? nWhat's interesting is that those who claim he is so "smart" offer absolutely no evidence of his intelligence, other than his success, and seem more than willing to ignore evidence that suggests otherwise. nBDZ – his approval ratings are not the result of his Machiavellian brilliance, but are instead the product of the unwillingness of the media to pound away at him the way they did with Bush. To use but one of my previous examples, does anyone doubt that fewer than 25 books would have been published about how stupid Bush was within five minutes of his mispronouncing "corps"? Or another example – Would the media let Fast and Furious go unmentioned for all these months under a Republican president? Of course not, and all the evidence we need of that is the recent Romney as high school bully story. Obama's approval rating remains higher than it should be because he is largely left untouched. nObama isn't stupid (though he is shockingly ignorant), but he sure as heck isn't the brilliant guy David Brooks wants him to be.
I see, so in the mind of this bunch, even if a putative liberal is smart, he's still stupid. n nLet's face it, from time to time a cohort in America get their guy elected. They used to vote for someone better than themselves — up to Stevenson vs Eisenhower. Now, they vote for someone like themselves. Or more the converse: They vote against someone not like themselves. That was Romney's problem in the primaries. It's a pretty sorry commentary on what this society has become, thanks to that little screen. n
"I see, so in the mind of this bunch, even if a putative liberal is smart, he's still stupid." nI think you are misreading the comments. I don't think anyone is saying he is stupid – just ignorant. There is a difference. nThe bigger question is why liberals are obsessed with the intelligence of politicians. (I suspect it is because it is easier to attack an opponent for being stupid than it is to engage them on their well-articulated positions – see Bush, Iraq War.) It's not a question that drives conservatives, who are more concerned with the product of intelligent consideration of issues – in other words, policy positions. nOne other observation – I think this discussion occurs within the framework of some unstated assumptions. Many people seemed to assume that Obama was a total genius. Many of us never saw evidence of that. So to say that he isn't "smart" doesn't mean I think he is a moron. He just ain't anything special. n n
I was mainly riffing on Gordon's last line and the drift of the comments. n nHey, this is me, in a recent post here, referring to Obama: "Affirmative action student, affirmative action scholar, affirmative action president." I further remarked that at a moment of history like 2008, the nation could ill-afford a feelgood exercise. But this nation is nothing if not self-indulgent. n nIt's difficult to link presidential IQ to effectiveness. Reagan, the "amiable dolt," created the impression of success, as impressions were his specialty, and the GOP was so ecstatic to have, at long last, a president who wasn't a disaster, that they called him "great". Teddy Roosevelt was brilliant and perhaps the GOP's only great president, but was deemed an apostate by the GOP because he favored the regulation of greed. I think both Ike and Nixon were brilliant and successful. Other GOP presidents have at best been not embarrassments, rendering their intelligence moot, though most were not the brightest bulbs. n nJimmy Carter was brilliant but, by current consensus, a failure. Woodrow Wilson was brilliant and a success, until he took on Senate Republicans over the League of Nations treaty. Johnson's will rendered moot his intellect or lack thereof. Clinton is brilliant and was a successful president despite the GOP's — and his personal demons' — best efforts. n nFDR had a "second-class intellect and a first-class temperament". Truman had a first-class intellect and temperament, but lacked experience in the crucible of national politics. I think maybe Obama is like Truman, whose record was mixed. n nActually, from a lifetime of sizing up people, not always correctly, I think Obama is quite a bit more than just not stupid. That said, a president's success largely depends on those he places around him. I think some, like Geitner and Hilary Clinton and, yes, Biden, are terrific, others not so. The problem is the same with all presidents: You want your advisers to be both brilliant and trustworthy; alas, it's usually an either/or choice. n nAnyway for a president, maybe temperament indeed trumps intellect. I thought it a shame we didn't give Colin Powell a chance without putting him through the meat grinder. His wife had been treated for depression or something. Hell of a note.
I don't find liberals stupid per se, but I do find them extremely foolish. I observe daily the failure of liberals to live up to their own ideals of peace, love and harmony, especially with all the insulting and sneering behavior that flows so easily from liberals that I wonder if it has evolved into a knee-jerk reaction. I observe daily the intellectual dishonesty of the liberal news media in the choice of topics, words, and visuals. I have observed far too frequently the shocking lack of historical understanding and context amongst liberals who refuse, absolutely refuse, to accept that their liberal ideas are both unsustainable, unworkable, unfair, and ultimately destructive. They truly believe that liberal ideas have simply never been applied properly and that proof to the contrary never mind, liberalism is so noble it's a goal society should keep pursuing (to it's own damnation unfortunately). This is why I find liberals completely foolish.
Insulting and sneering? Well, not all liberals, not even most — only wretchedly overbearing New Yorkers, who presume to speak for liberalism, yea the nation, but who are in fact a provincial, self-referential enclave, who have made lemonade from the lemon that is their one-off and thoroughly dysfunctional society. But the superbia that informs their self-image — bred by their monumental spaces and overweening sensibilities — deludes them into believing they are still the center of the universe — which they haven't been for a half-century — and that their culture is normative. n nAnyway, H. G. Wells had it scoped long ago: liberals are Eloi, conservatives are Morlocks. n
Obama is poorly read and intellectually shallow. It is beside the point that he might possess a fairly high IQ. He never put in the effort to get his act together. Obama is only a genius at exploiting white guilt. Nothing else.
Seems rather beside the point. Obama's problem isn't lack of brain power. But like most smart people, he greatly overestimates the value of intelligence. (Yes, its value can be overestimated.) Tom’s Rule applies here: Most really damaging screw-ups are perpetrated not by stupid people, but by smart people who mistake themselves for geniuses.
I agree with Davidthomson1. . . key characteristic of BO is his laziness! One can be brilliant and nworthless if one doesn't work. It's clear that HLS was much more interested in ticky marks for diversity than anything else (Warren) and eschewed investigation of same. How much credit did they get for having a minority (Kenyan? African American?) and head of the HLR? Was that more valuable than their insisting on what was required of others in that position: publishing? Who knows, but in this 'diversity overrules everything else' world, one can't expect equality. How fair was this to the hard workers who weren't minorities who lost out on being head of the HLR?
On his absolutely worst day George W. Bush never said anything so unabashedly stupid as Obama when he claimed, several times, that under his ACA "health-insurance premiums will be lower by 300 percent." That is not a failure to grasp a complex actuarial analysis. It is a failure of arithmetic. It is a deficit in elemental reasoning. It's plain innumeracy. It's brain-dead stupid. n nAt around the same time the President was treating us to such steel-trap analysis of health insurance, you may recall, he lectured the Republicans whom he'd invited to a health-care summit about the perils of private automobile insurance as he had experienced them up close and personal. It seems that, years before, having been rear-ended in his 12-year-old clunker, he was shocked, simply stunned, to learn that the (liability) premiums he was paying on a beater, which, in the early 1980s, could not have been — what? — much more than a few hundred dollars a year, amazingly did not allow him to recover collision damages. Puzzled, as anyone that dense would naturally be, as to why liability insurance, all that was mandated in his state, did not and could not repair his car, he latterly decided that the whole business was a scam, as he put it, in which he'd been lured into purchasing supposedly "low cost" car insurance only to discover, when it was, alas, too late, that his crummy $300 didn't insure against everything possible that might befall an automobile and that the company had maliciously sold him only what he asked for: the cheapest coverage required by law. It's scarcely believable, I know, but every fact of the foregoing is true and on the record. n nSo there he sits, decades later, retailing this horror story in a hectoring tone to the Republicans, and apparently he STILL doesn't seem to grasp the difference, as regards pricing or applicability, between liability and collision insurance, a subject that any (non-stoned) junior in high school who yearns to escape from driver's-ed class comprehends to a fare-thee-well. He STILL believed he had been "ripped off" all those years before! As a day-to-day matter, people simply do not get much more stupid than that, and it was only the bedrock politeness of those at the table that kept them from calling him out for the pompous, uninformed, and un-informable ass that he is, confining themselves to trading uncomfortable stares. n nAfter that little stroll down memory lane, having established his bona fides on the subject, as he saw it, the President then proceeded to take up health insurance. n nSmart? Good friggin' grief!
Remember when the Prophet Obama told a woman at one of his stage-managed healthcare "townhalls", something like the woman's elderly mother should perhaps just take a pill instead of having another heart procedure? Can you believe a POLITICIAN (aka, a lying whore), said that to a citizen? In another time, in another America, said politician might have been chewed out by said citizen for all to see, if not more. n nBut back to whether the Prophet Obama is smart………as others have said, "does it matter"? nA strong case can be made that it is better to have TEMPORARY office holders (aka, politicians) who are a little less than "brilliant" because the "brilliant" ones tend to want to ORGANIZE society and people's lives like oh………..Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, etc. n nPolitical philosophy (ideology) is more important in an office holder than academic IQ. n n
"This is not your typical part-time instructor. At the time, it was a position reserved for people who would otherwise be full-time faculty, but who choose not to. (He got full … benefits, thatwere given only to … vastly distinguished appellate federal judges , and not any other adjuncts.)" n nIn the military there are many Pfc's who, despite being fine soldiers, do not want to get promoted into the Officer class, for one reson or another. The brass, while not liking it, live with it. But what they don't ever do is to reward this unwillingness with all the respect and perks given to a full general. n nWhy was an adjunct given high privileges, identical to those given only to "vastly distinguished appelate federal judges" but not to other adjuncts? The reason is clear. This was Chicago and Obama's backers (or, more accurately, the men who were leading him from behind) knew what their neophyte needed. This is politics. Fair enough. n nBut don't call him intellectually sound. Any man, professor or not, President or Senator, who reads out a telepromter word like "corpsman" as 'corpse-man' is not adequately educated.
Obama is so smart he needs a teleprompter to talk to 6th graders.
No question Obama's smart, but he's not an intellectual or a deep thinker. Few pols ever are.
But Obama knows how to pose as intellectual. He's got the pose down pat — and for most of our liberal elites, that turns out to be good enough, when combined with Obama's skin color and rhetoric.
Douglas Gordon Baird wanted Obama for his race — no one with Obama's lack of publications got hired in a tenure track position. n nThis isn't an open question. n nBeing "smart" or well educated had nothing to do with it.
Obama's grades came from such classes as Critical Race Theory with such professors as Derrick Bell and Duncan Kennedy and "constitutional law" ie left wing supreme court excuses with Larry Tribe. n nClasses like Critical Race Theory is were grade inflation was invented, and Tribe grades on getting your politics right as much as anything.
RE Obama — It was really "smart" not to every publish anything of intellectual merit. n nThe two articles Obama did publish do NOT exhibit a first class mind, i.e. in the Hyde Park Herald and in a Columbia undergraduate "journal".
Of course the president is intelligent. But he lacks introspection. He does not argue with himself, he is not self critical. That is a serious deficiency. n nWhen your town is burning and a call goes out for a new fire chief, which responsible individual applies, having never held a hose in his hands, having no training in fighting fires, no experience coping with emergencies, no achievements of that kind? Such an application shows more than self confidence. It takes reckless conceit, selfishness and indifference to the well being of others. n nThe only way to remain best friends for 20 years with a bigot is either to share his feelings, or lack an inner voice that asks, what am I doing abetting this boiling kettle of rancid hate. n nWhat does it take to commit oneself to a "necessary war" during an election campaign and then, just two years later, in time for another election, decide on a pull out date, thought that necessary war is further from success than ever? Just today, with complete sincerity, President Obama, reminded us that, one of his most difficult responsibilities is sending Americans to war. That speaks of a vast inner blindness. n nIn 2004 Obama's Christian faith demanded he oppose same sex marriage and in 2012, again in time for an election, he feels a need to support it. Such caprice is only possible in the absence of an inner voice. n nIntrospection is a form of moral intelligence. Too much of it, the dare I eat a peach kind, immobilizes. But a reasonable quantity is essential for responsible behavior.
Does Doug know for a fact that top fifteen percent based on blind grading is what Harvard Law required to award of the Latin Honor magna cum laude in 1991? At that time latin honor inflation at Harvard had grown to epidemic proportions. The standards were tightened considerably some years after Obama graduated. n nDid any president of the Harvard Law Review — an elected, not an academic, position — ever graduate with any latin honor other than magna cum laude? n nHow does Doug account for the fact that Obama alone among Harvard Law Review presidents, and, apparently, alone among prospective tenure track faculty at the University of Chicago School of Law never had one academic article published under his own name? n nDoes Doug even know for a fact that Harvard awarded the magna cum laude honor to Obama? Apart from Obama, what is the source for that? Trust but verify as the saying goes. n nDid U Chicago obtain a Harvard Law transcript as part of its pre-employment vetting of Obama? Will U of Chicago release it? n
I'm not impressed. I went to an Ivy League graduate school and finishing in the "top 20%" is easily achieved by being a grind. And plenty of those people end up on faculty (OK, if you must know, it was medical school). Plenty of those people were idiots. No, not "idiots" as in adults with a mental age under 3 years, but idiots nonetheless. Above average intelligence? What, does Obama have an IQ of 110? Great! He's still a fool.
At Occidental, Obama was nominated by his professors and the school for the distinguished Truman Scholarship, which requires great grades as one of the tickets in. It is unlikely the faculty would have lied about that. n nAt Columbia, his professors complimented him on his writing and scholarship (see the Columbia University alumni magazine articles, at least). n nAt Harvard, Obama wrote a short note, without byline, on a fetus legal rights. His writing ability was much better than his ego was large. n nBy the time he graduated law, he had a contract for a book about his life — publishers don't give out such contracts without indication of writing ability (no ghost in the contract, by the way). n nThat book became a best-seller. While it's not a law review article, it's a pretty good indication of some significant mental prowess to be able to write a best-selling book. To dismiss the books as "about himself and race" rather suggests one hasn't read them, and doesn't understand the importance of race in 20th century America, especially American law and politics.
Obama did not get the supposedly high power, “almost” a professor job on merit. How many scholarly articles did he publish before he got the job and in the 12 years he held it? (Hint-zero). How many other faculty got their jobs without publishing a single scholarly article, or kept it for 12 years while not publishing a single scholarly work? (Hint-zero).