nose 2On October 8, 2012 I published an article in the “ Saving the Republic; Why Barack Obama Must Be Defeated” series: Reason 37: “The Impossibly Intelligent Yet Terribly Bored President.” As even the Lamestream Media is beginning to admit, Mr. Obama no longer seems to want to do the job.  He’s really bored with it all.  He has a greater destiny, like emperor of the world, or perhaps, the galaxy.   The Middle East is in flames, Israel is under attack, Mr. Obama’s “pivot” to the Pacific is a disaster with China’s belligerence threatening our allies Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and many more, the terrorists that were on the run are running toward consolidating a caliphate from which to attack us and the rest of civilization, and Mr. Obama’s invitation to any and everyone in the nations south of the border to “come on down [up] and get citizenship has been accepted beyond his wildest dreams, flooding border states in a human tide of criminals, terrorists, and people with little or no education, and no marketable skills. On the positive side, many of them are infested with parasites and infectious diseases.

In response to these debacles of his own making, Mr. Obama has erected straw men, blamed Republicans and George W. Bush, told Israel that it should not be mean to people whose reason for being is the murder of all Jews, and who are actively lobbing missiles into Israel, and to really demonstrate his competence and brilliance, he has announced he will soon be taking a 15 day vacation.

When I wrote this article, I had no idea how prophetic it would be. Of course, one really didn’t need to be brilliant to see what Mr. Obama was, and where he would lead–from behind–us. Read on, gentle readers, but take your blood pressure meds first.

Categories: Debilitating narcissism, incompetence, laziness, inattention to detail, cultural confusion, inability/unwillingness to learn from history, teleprompter withdrawal syndrome, inability to accept responsibility/blame.

In the aftermath of President Obama’s disastrous first debate performance against Governor Mitt Romney, a great many excuses have been offered by Obama surrogates and by Mr. Obama himself.  Among them:

* Mr. Romney lied.  Every word he spoke, including “and,” “the,” and “a” was a lie.

* Mr. Romney’s lies so befuddled the President he was unable to deal coherently with Mr. Romney’s lying arguments.

* It was only Mr. Romney’s lies that enabled him to get the better of Mr. Obama, who, without being befuddled by those lies, surely would have soundly trounced Mr. Romney.

* It wasn’t actually Romney; someone else showed up.

* The high altitude of Denver—the “mile high city”—so debilitated Mr. Obama, he was helpless before Mr. Romney who somehow was immune to the effects of the altitude they shared.

* As president, Mr. Obama has a great many responsibilities, like campaigning and golfing and ignoring security for diplomats and other similarly important things, so how could anyone expect him to be prepared for a debate, of all things?

* It was George W. Bush’s fault.

* The sun was in his eyes.

* He slipped on a banana peel.

* He was so busy thinking about lowering the oceans and healing the planet he didn’t realize he was actually in a debate until the final applause began.

* He was so busy worrying about the posterior-chewing Michelle was going to give him, he spent the evening looking for a chance to escape.

OK, so I made up the last four, but they’re hardly less plausible than the excuses actually being bandied about, and in truth, I expect him to use at least some of them any minute.  But before I get to what I believe to be the real reason for Mr. Obama’s lack of those sterling qualities for which he is supposedly famous, lets review one semi-famous statement from Obama advisor and ex-slum lord Valerie Jarrett:

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 — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — 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’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

This from a book titled “Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” by David Remnick as reported at National Review Online by Katherine Jean Lopez in November of 20120.

Consider too this ecstatic rendition of Mr. Obama’s many gifts from no less an authority than Mr. Obama himself (Via Brett Stephens at the Wall Street Journal Online):

I think I’m a better speech writer than my speech writers…I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.  And I’ll tell you right now that I’m…a better political director than my political director.

So.  According to Mr. Obama and the woman who—possibly including his wife—knows him better than anyone, the answer is clear.  Mr. Obama is so extraordinarily talented, possessed of such a giant intellect, an intellect unfathomable by lesser beings, an intellect capable of considering “a thousand different perspectives,” and in the grip of such a “restless spirit” he has yet to be intellectually challenged and “he’s been bored to death his whole life,” because “he’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”  So there.

Consider too this excerpt from an essay by Jeremy Lott suggesting that Mr. Obama purposely blew the first debate just to make things interesting:

I was throwing assignments in the recycle bin for the same reason I suspect Obama threw the first debate: to create a hole that I had to climb out of and thereby keep it interesting. Obama, most of his biographers agree, has a great capacity for boredom in government but really enjoys campaigning. Given the Republicans’ free-fall in the polls lately, if Obama had put Romney away in the first debate, that would have effectively ended the campaign.

But that, gentle readers, is not the final word.  Remember that we have it from Mr. Obama himself that he knows more about policy than his policy directors and more about politics than his political director, and more about communication than his speech writers.  With that background, no wonder he beat Mitt Romney like a rented mule…oh.  That’s right…Mitt Romney beat him.  Resoundingly.  But how, considering all we’ve just learned, is Ms. Jarrett’s explanation possible?  Is Mr. Obama really superhuman?

A great deal has been written on this topic, with all manner of explanations– psychological and social–for the yawning chasm between the opinions of Mr. Obama and his sycophants and his actual performance and accomplishments.  Mr. Stephens further suggests:

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.

Mr. Stephens is, perhaps, a bit hard on poor Mr. Obama, who after all, won the Nobel Peace Prize for…for…well, for being Barack Obama.  I was tempted to write the Nobel Committee doesn’t just hand those things out for nothing, but remembered they gave them to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore too, so there goes that argument.  And of course, they gave one to Mr. Obama because he’s just so darned wonderful!  I mean, how could you look at Mr. Obama and not be seized with the irresistible urge to give him as many Nobel Peace Prizes as he wanted?  Would that not be the first thought that came to mind?  And besides, he’s humble!  He admitted he didn’t deserve it, but that didn’t prevent him from humbly accepting it and humbly ignoring a lunch invitation from the king of Norway.  I mean he’s just another penny ante head of state like the rest of those losers at the UN.  Mr. Obama is restless, you know.

The real explanation is simplicity itself: Mr. Obama is a con man.  Successful con men are, in fact, smart, but it is a particular, peculiar kind of intelligence, a feral intelligence that allows them to manipulate others, and to be essentially a blank screen upon which others can project their hopes, fears, dreams, and hopefully for the con man, delusions.  Ultimately, the intelligence of the con man is destructive, not only to the con man but to his marks.

But Mr. Obama attended Columbia and Harvard Law School!  Doesn’t that mean he must be smart?  Wayne Alan Root, Mr. Obama’s classmate at Columbia, is unconvinced, even about Mr. Obama’s attendance at Columbia(by all means, read the whole article). 

If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia have ever met him, saw him, or heard of him.

But don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama.

Think back to college, even high school. Wouldn’t many people remember you?  Wouldn’t someone remember you? Wouldn’t they have informed opinions about your scholarship and therefore, your demonstrated intelligence and ability?  Not so Mr. Obama who was, even then, developing his skills in manipulation, skills later put to use to utterly bury any evidence of his grades and any information about his life and accomplishments as an undergraduate and graduate student.  We do know that as editor of the Harvard Law Review, he published not a single article, a remarkable non-accomplishment in and of itself.

But Mr. Obama has been repeatedly elected! Indeed he has, to the Illinois State Senate, the U.S. Senate and the presidency.  These elections and the political dirty tricks involved have been exhaustively covered elsewhere but consider his run for the presidency.  He won because of the financial backing of leftist sponsors like George Soros, because he was black, because he was able to use his con man skills to the maximum, because his hip, young blackness and chameleon abilities convinced the Democrat establishment to drop its support for Hillary Clinton, and because of unprecedented support from the media, a media that dropped any pretense of objectivity and labored ceaselessly to elect Mr. Obama.  Having a tired, old and cranky opponent who refused to actually attack Mr. Obama’s record and unprecedentedly radical background were also major factors.

All of this reveals nothing but manipulation reminiscent of that of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, who was eventually caught when he violated the con man’s most important rule:  When the con is completed, run!  Never stick around long enough for the marks to figure out what hit them.  Because he fell in love, “Professor” Hill stuck around too long and his marks realized he actually knew nothing at all about music.  All turned out well in the end, but that’s Broadway and the movies.

We do have to hand it to him though; it has been a brilliant, record-setting con.  Put aside conning the nation into electing him in the first place, Mr. Obama has put over Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, blew billions on “green energy,” wasted nearly a trillion in payoffs to his fellow political con men in the “stimulus,” and the list goes on and on.  Don’t forget the fact that his own daily schedule reveals a man who barely works at all yet enjoys unlimited and highly expensive perks like more than 100 golf outings and innumerable ridiculously expensive vacations.  It’s impressive, and particularly so because every little bit of the con is destructive.

Mr. Obama’s problem is one common to all con-men: Hubris—excessive pride.  In Renegade, The Making Of A President by Richard Wolffe, Wolffe reveals a telling insight (via the Claremont Review of Books):

‘You know, I actually believe my own bullshit,’ Obama told Wolffe with a smile.

Mr. Obama is the first con man to be essentially above the law.  He owns the Department of Justice—there will never be an investigation or prosecution that can reach him.  He owns the Senate—even in the highly unlikely event he might be impeached, he’ll never be convicted.  When he leaves office, he’ll pardon himself and his cronies—there will never be a successful prosecution of anyone who could harm him and certainly no prosecution of Mr. Obama. All of this, and his boundless self-regard, led him to become careless, to forget the con man’s most important rule.

Many have praised Mitt Romney, claiming his performance was nothing short of superhuman.  Nonsense.  Mr. Romney is a capable, intelligent, kind, generous, decent and hard-working man, a self-made man in the finest traditions of America.  With Mr. Romney, what you see is what you get.  There is no concealment of his past and accomplishments.  His life is an open book.  Mr. Romney is what Americans have traditionally hoped to have in their executives: good men, competent men, men who fully embrace America and Americans and who believe without reservation America is the last, best hope of man.  What more do we need in a president?

Part of the great danger of Mr. Obama is the Marxist cult of personality he embodies, a cult that is at its core anti-democratic and anti-American. Mr. Obama is an invention, a sham, a political construct changeable as the political winds shift.  As such, he needs no abilities or skills beyond the ability to read a teleprompter with some small degree of competence.  He has been praised, deified and worshipped, not only by the press, but by millions of Americans who ought to know better.  In that worship, too many have allowed themselves to be conned, to see the empty chair as something wonderful, to accept the potential future promise of peace and prosperity as actual peace and prosperity even as our credit rating has twice been downgraded and the economy continues to fall down around our ears.

Barack Obama, con man, stuck around far, far too long.  After a remarkable run of successful cons, he believed himself invincible.  He went into the debate believing in his own bullshit, and for the first time, tens of millions of Americans saw the real Barack Obama, the least prepared and capable person ever to occupy the Oval Office, a man who doesn’t believe in America or Americans and who works every day—through incompetence and malice–to damage both.

And we elected him president