Obama’s speeches frequently include passages that flatter their listeners who aren’t quite intelligent enough to realize how shallow his thinking actually is into thinking that they are more intelligent than they are.
– Stephen Bainbridge. Ouch.
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Samizdata quote of the dayApril 7th, 2008 |
 22 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Try telling this to his listeners. The guy himself is very intelligent, which is not the same thing as ‘deep thinker’. A dangerous combination.
“It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. It spoke
English words, but the resonant clarity of each syllable made it sound like a
new language spoken for the first time. It was the voice of a giant.”
Ellsworth Toohey Speaking, from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
He’s got Blairish qualities. A lot of intelligent people went into a daze when he spoke. America should beware, but I can’t honestly recommend either of the other two over Mr. Smooth.
Yep.
Change.
But, what else is new?
Have you not just defined a politician?
Sorry – too cynical – just.
Bill Clinton, too, was “very intelligent”, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford degree, etc.
Bill Clinton managed not to do too much harm, only a little here and there. (some insignificant impeachement …). He was smart enough for that.
Of Obama I’m afraid. Afraid he might turn out to be a major catastrophe. Afraid of a real nut behind that charm. I don’t know exactly why.
Steve, I was going to comment similarly, but there is a difference, at least from what I have seen. ALL politicians are such, but Obama has The Cult of Personality. The Oprah Winfrey set swoon over him. When the average politician trots out their populist rhetoric, it always has an impact, but there are a few who somehow capture so much more.
Not to get too carried away in a sense it is like Dune wherein the the Bene Gesserit sow the seeds of superstition amongst the masses and use it to their advantage when the need arises. Several generations have been programed via the Socialist Apparatus and Obama has a special talent of plucking the strings just right. It scares me, it really does.
He scares me too. Jacob is right, he is quite different from Bill Clinton (and his wife).
It’s that lean intense look about him… worrying.
Jacob, Alisa: That reminds me of a story my father tells of an aunt and uncle discussing Harold Wilson:
“Oh, but you have to admit he’s clever.”
“Clever? He’s fly [cunning, devious] – it’s no’ the same thing.”
So what he’s saying is that Obama is the not-too-bright person’s thinking man.
Berzelius Wind-rip, he’s our man!
Yes it can! Yes it can!
🙂
Laird: unfortunately, many (most?) people are too busy/lazy to think deeply about politics. They know things aren’t good the way they are, and here is a decent-looking, confident, intelligent*, self-made (must be, after all he is black) man, who promises CHANGE.
*Sam: they say there are different types of intelligence. I tend to think that there is only one type, applied differently. Either way, this one is definitely a fly.
Berzelius Wind-rip, he’s our man!
Yes it can! Yes it can!
🙂
The fact that the press loves Obama so much should be our first clue that something is very wrong with him.
Obama’s women reveal his secret
Barack Obama Hid His Father’s Socialist and Anti-Western Convictions From His Readers
I don’t know why you’re all so scared of Obama.
Just because he’s a Socialist, steeped in black liberation philosophy, and brought up in the Chicago school of politics doesn’t mean he’s about to turn the USA into Venezuela or somethng.
Does it?
Bainbridge’s article is terrible, like much of his non-corporate-law commentary. Obama is making a political speech and laying out generalities. It’s for certain that he doesn’t understand the complexities of financial regulation (neither do I). But he’s telling you what he’s going to appoint people who do understand it to do. I disagree with Obama’s solutions, but there’s nothing particularly shallow in his thinking. It would be like criticizing a biotech CEO for not understanding the biological properties of Chinese hamster ovaries. That’s not his job.
Two parts of the speech I think are worth note:
1. A half-black frontrunner for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party has just said, “As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.”
Obama just admitted that the well-being of the American people is bound up with the well-being of the capital markets. That’s a stunning admission from a supposedly hard-left liberal Democrat.
2. He neglects to mention that the people profiting from manipulation instead of production are now getting their asses handed to them. Were it my speech, I wouldn’t have changed the line about people getting rich by manipulation – I think that’s largely correct – but I would have noted that the bust is destroying them. Cheating gives short-term gains but long-term losses.
The point Bainbridge doesn’t quite get to is that flattering Democrats into thinking they’re much smarter than they actually are is the ONLY way to win their support as voters. It’s really quite a great strategy from Obama.
And given the alternative, can we be that incensed about Obama? Sure, he’s a slippery political operative who has no idea what he’s talking about and who’ll try to f— up the economy, but how does that make him any different from anyone else in either party in the last 20 years? Frankly I’ll happily put up with 4 years of his bumbling if it means being spared 4 years of Hillary’s paranoid, incompetent totalitarian streak.
Your quote of the day is uncannilly similar to the line from a bloke named Karl Krauss that goes:
“A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is”
And that often seems to pretty much sums up most populist wannabes in contemporary democracies, except for those politicians who are just plain as stupid as their audience. We do get the leaders we deserve.
He sounds like a successful typical politician. We get the same thing with PM Rudd, or ‘Lu Kewen’, as his Beijing constituents call him. Have you noticed the blandness? Has he me-tooed any of Brown’s policies yet? Have you compared him to Tintin yet? I would ask you to keep him with you forever, but then Julia Gillard, the deputy PM, red-haired and red-policied, would take over!
Of course, if Obama wins, he’ll have more power than Rudd, but Obama sounds no worse than an average politician.
Nick E. (and nick g.), read the links Just Sayin posted above. He is different.
I’d rather have a tooth extracted than having to chose between those two.
Still, I’d choose Hillary. When she campaigns mentioning her “experience” people ridicule her, but they are wrong. Her experience is Bill. No other candidate (maybe with the exeption of Bush) had as much experience. With Bill at her elbow to stop her from going overboard, there is a better chance for keeping away from deep trouble with Hillary than with Obama.
The known evil preferred over the unknown.