Not So Smart After All?
Jack Kelly has written a masterpiece column that’s must reading for everyone. In it, Kelly essentialy says that Sen. Obama is too thin-skinned for a commander-in-chief. Here’s the opening to Kelly’s column:
What should be the theme song for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign? Some think it should be Carly Simon’s 1972 smash hit, “You’re So Vain,” (I bet you think this speech is about you).
Most of us have a higher opinion of ourselves than objective circumstances warrant. But in few of us is the gap between how we view ourselves and reality as wide as it is with Mr. Obama.
Barack Obama is a bright, handsome, personable guy who gives a good speech (when he’s working from a prepared text). But he’s never actually done much of anything. The biggest tic on his resume to date is that he was president of the Harvard Law Review. That’s impressive, but not exactly the stuff of Churchill, Roosevelt or Reagan, guys who could turn a phrase, too. Mr. Obama’s self regard is such that he already has written two autobiographical books.
Little seems to annoy Mr. Obama more than when others do not hold him in as high esteem as he holds himself. Mr. Obama apparently was dozing in the pews when his pastor said America is no better than al-Qaida, and that our government created the AIDs virus to exterminate blacks. But his ears perked up when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright implied that he had been insincere in describing their relationship:
“That’s a show of disrespect to me,” Mr. Obama said.
There are times when Sen. Obama sounds intelligent, like when he’s reading a prepared speech. There are other times where he sounds like a less than educated man. I’m thinking specifically of the YouTube debate when he said that he’d meet with the axis of thugs without preconditions. I’m thinking of the ABC debate when he gave a flailing answer on the capital gains tax. I’m not saying that Sen. Obama is stupid. I’m simply saying that the packaged product is more appealing than the reality.
Many is the time that Rush has ridiculed Obama when he’s delivering a speech without a TelePrompTer. The ridiculing is well-deserved. When he’s speaking off the cuff, he sounds less and less informed, there’s alot more hesitation and umm’s to his speech and he makes statements that later have to be retracted. His “57 states” comment leaps to mind.
The truth is that people are slowly figuring it out that Sen. Obama, while he is an intelligent man, is still an empty suit at this point. Had he gotten more seasoning, that would’ve undoubtedly have changed.
The Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti has written a great editorial on behalf of the editors in which he exposes another Obama weakness. Here’s the most telling statement he makes in the column:
We keep hearing that this year’s presidential election will be about judgment. If so: advantage McCain. For when it comes to the surge, not only have Obama and his party been in error; they have been inflexible in error. They have been so committed to a false narrative of American defeat that they cannot acknowledge the progress that has been made on the ground. That isn’t judgment. It’s inanity.
there’s an old saying that stupidity is what gets you in trouble. Pride is what keeps you there. It sounds exactly like what’s afflicting Democrats, especially Sen. Obama, right now.
We can’t afford more of that from the next commander-in-chief. Frankly, we can’t afford more of the same from Congress either.
Frankly, it’s time to change parties course in Congress.
Technorati Tags: Obama, Judgment, Foreign Policy, Iraq War, Elitism, Jeremiah Wright, John McCain, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog