Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Great Pretender

The Great Pretender
By Aaron Goldstein on 10.9.12 @ 6:08AM

Obama isn't intelligent enough to be in the same room with Romney.

For years now, the American people have been told by the liberal media and other establishment figures about President Obama's superior intellect. We have been repeatedly told that Obama is "the smartest person in the room."

Naturally, most conservatives never bought into this myth. What with, among other things, his declaration he had visited "57 states with one to go," his reference to the "Austrian language" not to mention his inability to discern the Maldives from the Malvinas. As Bret Stephens wrote in the Wall Street Journal in August 2011, "I just think the president isn't very bright." Stephens concluded, "But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does."

Yet the liberal media would not be deterred: President Obama is the smartest man in the room, if not the entire world. And if that wasn't enough, President Obama apparently believed his own publicity. As noted in Stephens' article, Obama reportedly claimed he was a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, a better policy director than his policy director and a better political director than his political director.

Now consider this observation I made last August:

But the liberal media can't protect President Obama forever. The liberal media can't protect Obama from Mitt Romney. Obama has to stand on his own two feet when he faces Romney one on one in three presidential debates this fall. With no teleprompter to guide him, Obama simply isn't intelligent enough to be in the same room with Romney let alone qualified to fill an entry level position in one of Romney's companies.

So it was when President Obama and Mitt Romney finally came face to face last Wednesday. In less than ninety minutes, the myth of the President's intellect had been shattered as the American people finally came to realize that Obama was, in fact, not the smartest person in the auditorium at the University of Denver. Simply put, Obama did not belong on the same stage with Romney. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, as is the case with the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker featuring Romney debating an empty chair.

Obama's lackluster performance raised doubts even amongst his staunchest supporters. "Comedian" Bill Maher, who with much fanfare had given the Obama Super PAC Priorities U.S.A. $1 million last February, tweeted during the debate, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but Obama looks like he DOES need a teleprompter." While most people who voted for Obama didn't donate $1 million to his re-election campaign, no doubt many of them are feeling buyer's remorse.

Chances are Obama will be more vigorous and may acquit himself better in the next two debates. But he can't make his record any better and he won't be as good as Romney. It would come as no surprise if those performances aren't as strong as that of Vice President Biden in his debate with Paul Ryan later this week. Could it be that Obama is the weak link on the Democratic ticket?

Of course, the liberal media isn't going to abandon him wholesale. They will continue to make excuses for him as former Vice-President and current President of Current TV Al Gore did when he attributed Obama's poor debate performance to Colorado's high altitude. Some like the Democratic Underground claim that Romney only won because he had a cheat sheet masquerading as a handkerchief while others like Michelle Goldberg of the Daily Beast simply argue that Romney plain lied during the debate and that Obama allowed him to get away with it.

Nonsense!!!

The liberal media simply can't face the fact that Barack Obama isn't the genius they glorified to their readers, listeners, and viewers. They cannot fathom the possibility that Obama is far less intelligent than Mitt Romney, that he has accomplished far less in life than Romney, nor can they fathom that he is unable to stand on his own two feet against him. But if the liberal media finally come to the realization they can't protect Obama from Romney, then his fall will come fast and furious.

With that said, I don't underestimate President Obama one bit. Aside from a sympathetic and sycophantic media in his pocket (at least for the moment), he still has over a billion dollars at his disposal and has a powerful organization that is skilled at getting out the vote. Given the lengths he has already gone to retain his office, President Obama is a man who plays for keeps and this can never be discounted.

Yet it is worth noting that both The New York Times and his biographer David Maraniss have made the case that Obama doesn't like debates in the first place. Well, he certainly doesn't like debating Romney. Why would he? Obama knows he is simply no match for Romney.

But sitting in the Oval Office isn't an entitlement. It is a job that must be earned and then earned again and debates are part of the electoral process. Should Mitt Romney prevail next month, it will be largely on the strength of this first debate in which he established himself as a credible, viable alternative to Obama. Should this come to pass, it would mean this was the moment that Obama demonstrated to the American people that he was unable to handle the responsibility entailed with being the President of the United States. It would also be the moment Barack Obama demonstrated to the American people that he was simply not intelligent enough to be in the same room with Mitt Romney.
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To read another article by Aaron Goldstein, click here.

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