OpEd Contributor
Maybe 'brilliant' isn't exactly the right word for Obama
By: Douglas MacKinnon
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April 14, 2009
“He’s brilliant,” said Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.
“He’s brilliant,” say most members of the mainstream media and basically all democrats.
Who are they speaking of? President Barack Obama, of course. With the already legendary intellect, unrivaled understanding of any situation - - domestic or global -- and omnipotency being assigned to our 44th President, it’s almost sacrilege to even ask the question.
Recently, while riding on a train with an older and admittedly liberal couple from New York, I mentioned Obama. Instantly, the reaction from both was, “He’s brilliant.”
When I asked the couple what made Obama “brilliant,” they answered “because he’s articulate and went to Harvard.” Okay. I guess that’s one measurement. I then asked them if they knew Obama’s SAT scores, or his GPA from Occidental College or Columbia University? They said they did not but assured me they had to be high.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines brilliant as: “Marked by unusual and impressive intellectual acuteness.” For all I know, Obama meets or exceeds this definition. For far too many members of the media however, the brilliance of a politician is based solely on how far left he or she leans. The more liberal, the more brilliant.
A glaring example of this unethical rating system can be found in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In both elections, many in the mainstream media ascribed great intellectual prowess to Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and then to Senator John Kerry in 2004.
All the while painting first Gov. George W. Bush and then President George W. Bush as outright dumb or worse. Then the facts came out. It turns out that Bush had equal and better grades then both liberal democrats while an undergraduate in college.
Did Obama have a higher GPA as an undergraduate than Bush? Does a higher GPA or 800’s on the SAT mean you will make a better president? I don’t think so, but many on the left falsely used the intellectual argument against Bush and Ronald Reagan before him.
To go back to the rationale offered by the couple from New York regarding the brilliance of Obama -- that being that he’s “articulate” and “went to Harvard.” As one who did some low-level writing for two presidents, I could certainly make the argument that Obama’s heavy reliance on teleprompters helps him to come across as more articulate.
With regard to Harvard, that begs a very important question. A question that Attorney General Eric Holder may approve of as he said we were a nation of “cowards” for not discussing race relations in a more open manner.
That question being, did Obama get into Harvard based academic qualifications or because of Affirmative Action? As the left strongly believes in affirmative action, surely they will not object to this question.
Still not 100 days into the Obama presidency and we literally can’t go one day without someone on network or cable television telling us of the “brilliance” of our new president. Leaving the media bias aside, what makes a president “brilliant?”
Does bowing before the Saudi king make one brilliant? Does praising Turkey’s AKP party and pushing -- against the strong opposition of Europe -- for the admission of Turkey into the EU make one brilliant?
Does proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that will create a deficit this year of $1.8 trillion make one brilliant? Does adding -- according to the Congressional Budget Office -- $9.3 trillion to our debt from 2009 to 2019 make one brilliant? Does allowing your Secretary of Education to bury a positive study on the value of school vouchers make one brilliant?
Obama may be brilliant. He may be the most intelligent president to ever occupy the Oval Office. I would just like somebody to tell me what makes him so.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the novel, “The Apocalypse Directive.”
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