Too Intellectual To Be President? - By JOHN W. DEAN

[kpete]

Barack Obama's Smart Speech "A More Perfect Union": Did It Reveal Him To Be Too Intellectual To Be President?
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Mar. 21, 2008

By way of disclaimer, I do not have a favored candidate in the 2008 Democratic nomination contest. But I do appreciate the new (or perhaps simply long-forgotten) and higher levels to which Senator Barack Obama is taking political discourse. His historic speech on race this week, for example, was as smart as they come.

There was a time in this country when political debate was actually rather sophisticated, but that was long ago (for as mass media grew, the level of debate went down). Only time will tell, however, if Obama's powerful speech was also politically smart.


Obama Speech Was Frank, Direct, and Intelligent - But Was It Pitched to Too Advanced an Audience?

With his speech addressing race in America, Obama has done something that few politicians are willing to do: speak with compelling intellectual honesty. Rather than fuzzy-up difficult and troubling questions about race, he confronted them directly. Rather than avoiding issues that are typically ignored, he brought them forward for public discussion. Most strikingly, he did this with nuance, great tact, and conspicuous intelligence.

more at:
http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20080321.html

[polichick]

1. It's about time someone speak to Americans as if they had brains.

[dtotire]

11. Unfortunately

The average voter will choose a mediocre person over a statesman. The country can't afford any more mediocrities.

[Faygo Kid]

2. I'm a great admirer of John Dean

If he had not spoken honestly, Nixon may have gotten away with it.

Plus, he's a snappy dresser, and Mo Dean is hot.

[theoldman]

3. I think it's great to have an intelligent president who can make

wise decisions. However in order to win an election you have to tone it down to the lower intellectual lever of the average person. This is why Reagan fit right in with most voters. He was able to come across as a person of average intelligence in spite of his ignorance.

[baldguy]

4. Has Bush set the bar so low?

That intelligent, capable people will find the Presidency to be demeaning to their abilities?

[unpossibles]

5. god, I hope not

but I know there are a lot of people who take it personally if they think you are smart, or rather if they feel dumb around you. Those same people - for some unknown reason - hate the idea of a smart President. I guess it's kind of par for the course though, when I think about it: why would someone who is ignorant not make an ignorant choice for President?

[pscot]

6. He can always dumb it down

Start talking tough, using sports metaphors and handing out goofy nicknames.

[LibDemAlways]

7. The American people do not demand intelligence of

their President. They'd rather have someone they would feel comfortable having a beer with. There is simply no other way to explain Bush making it close enough to steal - twice. The moron is incapable of formulating a coherent sentence. His knowledge of world affairs is non-existent. He has no ideas. He isn't respected anywhere in the world.

McCain isn't much better. He doesn't know what he's talking about half the time, makes up shit as he goes along, and is stupid enough to hang Lieberman around his neck like an albatross - never mind being photographed clinging to the chimp like a life raft.

It doesn't matter that Obama and Hillary are smart. There are millions of Americans who hate and resent smart people. It will all come down to whether there are enough voters with the common sense to do the right thing and, finally, throw the bums out.

[kentuck]

8. Isn't that what they said about Adlai Stevenson?

And we know what happened there.

[Peace Patriot]

9. "But Was It Pitched to Too Advanced an Audience?" That's a bit snobbish,

Mr. Dean. And it reminds me of our best leftist commentators--Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, the whole crowd at Counterpunch, and our sort of leftists, like Paul Krugman and Markos Moulitsas, and many others--none of whom have ever mentioned the rigged voting machines (that I know of)--and seem to base their impression of the American people on fascist/corporate news monopoly imagery.

How can this cartoon America of couch potatoes and Nazcar enthusiasts and oblivious soccer moms, that leftist writers seem to buy into, be the same American people who have, amazingly, resisted relentless, 24/7 warmongering and fascist propaganda--with a significant majority of them opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb '03, 56% opposed, NYT poll; other polls 54-55%), with a whopping, unprecedented 60+ to 70% of them opposed to it now, and wanting it ended?

And still they can't get their will enforced. Hm. Wonder why.

If you consider the FACTS--and pay attention to what real Americans actually believe--and, for instance, study a wide swath of polls, both corporate and independent, over time, you have to face an astonishing realization, hiding beneath the delusionary portrait of America on the front pages of corporate craprags and as presented on the infotainnment airwaves, that most Americans are peace-minded and justice-minded progressives. Most! The overwhelming majority. And you don't get to being a peace-minded, justice-minded progressive by being stupid. You have to think about things. You have to be pretty well-informed.

One of the things I liked about Obama's speech is that he seems to know this. He didn't pitch it high. He pitched it wide.

And all of us (including Obama--and he hasn't said much about this) need to ask: How is the will the American people being thwarted?

I am sick and tired of this abiding stupidity of leftist opinion-makers that heaps abuse on the American people, and fails to look at the evidence for their deliberate, systematic, "under the radar" disenfranchisement, with the complicity of the goddamned Democratic Party leadership--every goddamned one of them--and aided by the lofty obliviousness of our touted leftist intellectuals.

Count all the votes, in the public venue--and you'll find out what the American people are really like. Most Americans are not stupid, are not fascists, are not racists, are not warmongers, and are desperate for good government and for proper representation of the real America--tolerant, generous, peaceful, fair-minded, progressive, democratic America--the greatest multi-cultural experiment in human history.

And if you want to accuse the American people of being stupid and uninformed on the voting system, okay. That's fair. But they didn't have much of a chance--with the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and the Democratic Party leadership, and the Left, black-holing what has been done to our voting system by rightwing Bushite corporations and their "trade secret" code. The war, they grokked. And just about everything else. But this, they didn't. And you gotta wonder why.

[Lucky 13]

10. God knows the last person we need leading our country is an intellectual.

So smug with all their fancy talk and insistence upon using restraint while getting all the "facts".

:eyes: