{"id":7936,"date":"2014-10-17T08:50:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T15:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2014-10-17T08:50:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T15:50:42","slug":"the-president-we-deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-president-we-deserve\/","title":{"rendered":"The President We Deserve?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Americans choose a difference course for the country this election season?<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via FrontPage Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1920 H.L Mencken wrote prophetically, \u201cAs democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart\u2019s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the long tradition of antidemocrats from Plato to Founding Father Fisher Ames, Mencken believed that a democratic leader would reflect the self-interested aims and passions of the necessarily mediocre mass of voters. The disaster of Barack Obama\u2019s administration invites reflection on the truth of this proposition.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s narcissistic self-regard by now is obvious to all but the most besotted of tingle-down-my-leg, smartest-president-ever, trousers-crease-bedazzled Obamaboppies, as Mark Steyn calls them. Obama\u2019s favorite words are \u201cI,\u201d \u201cme,\u201d and \u201cmy,\u201d except of course when he\u2019s dodging responsibility for his failures, as he did recently when he blamed his intelligence agencies\u00a0for his own neglect of the growing threat from Islamic State in northern Iraq. He\u2019s still blaming George W. Bush for many other failures, most recently when he blamed him for the lack of a status of forces agreement with Iraq\u2013\u2013something he really didn\u2019t want so he could brag, as he did in 2011, \u201cThe tide of war is receding. Now, even as we remove our last troops from Iraq, we\u2019re beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan . . . Our troops are finally coming home.\u201d A year later he made this political calculation explicit when he said of the SOF agreement during the foreign policy presidential debate, \u201cWhat I would not have done is left 10,000\u00a0troops in Iraq that would tie us down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dodging accountability and refusing to confess one\u2019s mistakes are classic signs of the egomaniac. So too is seeking out audiences that uncritically accept one\u2019s own estimation of personal greatness. That\u2019s why the president prefers fund-raisers to governing. It\u2019s not just about garnering money for his party; it\u2019s also about bathing in the waves of adulation from the carefully selected audience of fans. That\u2019s certainly more gratifying than sitting through the Presidential Daily Briefings, 56% of which he missed in his first term, and 62% in his second. George W. Bush, in comparison, almost never missed the PDB.<\/p>\n

And when someone does get by the gatekeepers and asks an even slightly challenging question, Obama gets a bit snappish, as those convinced of their own brilliance are wont to do. For example, when asked at a recent town-hall gathering about double-digit rate-increases for health care, he sniffed, \u201cThe question is whether you guys are shopping effectively enough.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s your fault, not mine. So too when his handlers can\u2019t control the questions, as in presidential debates. There he relies on juvenile snarkiness to defend his amour propre. Remember when he responded to Mitt Romney\u2019s warning about Russia, which recent events have proven prescient? \u201cThe 80s called, they want their foreign policy back,\u201d he jeered with the air of a junior-high witling.<\/p>\n

Overestimating one\u2019s abilities, however, is the most obvious indication of crippling self-regard. Way back in 2008 Obama sent us a very clear signal of what would make him a dangerous president: \u201cI think that I\u2019m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I\u2019ll tell you right now that I\u2019m gonna think I\u2019m a better political director than my political director.\u201d Such a preposterous statement, proven false by the events of the last 6 years, points us to the reasons for those failures\u2013\u2013his unwillingness to listen to advice from anyone other than his servile courtiers. As former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta writes in his new book, Obama and his spaniel advisors refused to listen to Panetta and military commanders about the importance of leaving a residual force in Iraq. Instead, the administration gave up on securing an agreement it didn\u2019t want in the first place, choosing the self-flattering political narrative about \u201cending the war\u201d over the long-term strategic dangers of walking away from the still fragile political order in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

But why should Obama question himself, when his closest and most trusted advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has gone on record with astonishing claims about the president\u2019s brilliance? The following statement from 2010 is one of the most embarrassing displays of toadying I know of outside a Versailles fop or a Hollywood press agent:<\/p>\n

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability \u2014 the extraordinary, uncanny ability \u2014 to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy . . . He\u2019s been bored to death his whole life. He\u2019s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We know now that this whole encomium is false in every detail\u2013\u2013except for the claim that Obama \u201cknows\u201d that all Jarrett\u2019s claims are true. In a position as powerful as the presidency of the world\u2019s greatest economic and military power, such self-delusion is lethal.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s claim to his own brilliance, reinforced by enablers like Jarrett, brings us to the issue of intelligence. With his typical hyperbolic sarcasm, Mencken uses the word \u201cmoron.\u201d But the problem with Obama is not his level of intelligence, which I suspect is above average. Rather, Obama\u2019s mind has never been properly trained. Like physical strength, intellectual development needs resistance. The novice needs to be regularly scolded that his callow opinions and interpretations are badly argued or uninformed, and then sent off to improve them. Does anyone think that an affirmative action admit like Obama was ever subjected to such ego-wounding criticism? I\u2019ve been in the university for 40 years, and I\u2019ve seen repeatedly the anxious cossetting, inflation of ability, tender solicitude for feelings, and unwillingness to apply rigorous standards when it comes to minority students, what George Bush has called the \u201csoft bigotry of low expectations.\u201d All Obama has had to do is show up, and white people have done the rest.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Back in 2008 we had an example of this dynamic when esteemed presidential historian Michael Beschloss\u2013\u2013a Harvard-trained holder of numerous prestigious\u00a0fellowships and visiting scholar positions\u2013\u2013claimed Obama had the highest I.Q. of any president ever, without having a clue about what his I.Q. actually is. For the rest of us, there is scant evidence of this brilliance. No college transcripts, no LSAT scores, no peer-reviewed articles, nothing other than a couple of books of uncertain authorship.<\/p>\n

We do have, however, Obama\u2019s astonishing blunders like \u201cthere are 57 states; Canada has a president; \u2018Austrian\u2019 is a language; America is \u201820 centuries\u2019 old; Arabic is spoken in Afghanistan. He\u2019s called the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) the Maldives, and declared it would be \u2018unprecedented\u2019 for the Supreme Court to invalidate a law passed by Congress,\u201d as Jack Kelly has written.<\/a>\u00a0And let\u2019s not forget the \u201cintercontinental railroad\u201d and the reference in the 2009 Cairo speech to Muslims in 15th<\/sup> century C\u00f3rdoba decades after they had been driven away. Such mistakes bespeak not a stupid mind, but a lazy and untrained one completely lacking in Socratic self-awareness of how much it doesn\u2019t know but only thinks it knows.<\/p>\n

Obama will be history in 2 years, so the real question is whether Mencken was right when he said that such a president reflects the \u201cinner soul\u201d of a democratic people. Has narcissistic self-regard become a defining characteristic of the American people, as Christopher Lasch argued in his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism<\/i>? Is the electorate dominated by what Rush Limbaugh calls the \u201clow-information voter,\u201d as Ilya Somin documents inDemocracy and Political Ignorance<\/i>,<\/a> published last year? In short, is the antidemocratic charge that \u201cAmong the common people [is] the greatest ignorance,\u201d as the Athenian called the Old Oligarch wrote around 450 B.C., really true?<\/p>\n

The next 2 elections may give us an answer to that question. Perhaps the residual common sense of Americans, once awakened by increasing crises at home and abroad, will reassert itself, and prove Abe Lincoln correct: \u201cYou can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can\u2019t fool all the people all the time.\u201d\u00a0Let\u2019s hope the future proves Lincoln a better prophet than Mencken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Americans choose a difference course for the country this election season? by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine In 1920 H.L Mencken wrote prophetically, \u201cAs democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[842,22,247,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-240","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8377,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/republican-senators-and-the-battered-wife-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":0},"title":"Republican Senators and the Battered Wife Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"What the confirmation of Loretta Lynch really means. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Front PageMagazine [1]For 6 years Barack Obama in word and deed has battered the Constitution and slapped around the Republicans. Abetted by his Luca Brasi, Harry Reid, he has run roughshod over the separation of powers and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2228,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-lefts-selective-outrage\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":1},"title":"The Left’s Selective Outrage","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it. Last week Friedman worked himself up into a paranoiac frenzy over the tone of some of the criticism Obama and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8421,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/were-still-dumbing-down-the-iraq-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":2},"title":"We\u2019re Still Dumbing Down the Iraq War","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The truth about the danger of Saddam Hussein and why we went into Iraq. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Jeb Bush tangled himself up recently when he tried to answer a dumb question on the intelligence failures about Iraq\u2019s WMDs and their role in going to war with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/war-450x312.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8182,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/more-delusional-apologetics-for-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":3},"title":"More Delusional Apologetics for Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine It\u2019s pretty embarrassing when the on-line comments about an article are more logical and knowledgeable than the article. Such is the case with a Wall Street Journal\u00a0op-ed last week that argued Muslim violence does not reflect traditional Islamic doctrine, but is merely a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Turkey"","block_context":{"text":"Turkey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/turkey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Koran-cover-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8077,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillarys-bad-politics-and-worse-ideas\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":4},"title":"Hillary\u2019s Bad Politics and Worse Ideas","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Once again Hillary Clinton has given the Republicans some suicidal soundbites they should stash away for 2016 in the likely event she is the Democratic candidate for president. A review of some of her recent statements reveals that Clinton is not just entitled,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/141124111023-hillary-clinton-new-hampshire-story-top-450x344.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8093,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sloppy-thinking-about-torture\/","url_meta":{"origin":7936,"position":5},"title":"Sloppy Thinking About \u2018Torture\u2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Torture is one of those topics that often overwhelm sober reason with lurid emotion. Even people who usually are clear-eyed and rational sink into sloppy thinking and incoherent argument when it comes to torture. Peggy Noonan\u2019s recentWall Street Journal column about the Senate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mccainfein-450x282.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7938,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions\/7938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}