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The Smartest President Since Forever
Barack Obama They suggest that among presidents, he ranks as the most learned since John Quincy Adams, the most profound since James Madison and the most visionary since Thomas Jefferson. And he is, of course, the most rhetorically gifted politician since Pericles. What about Carter? How does he compare to Carter? We'll let Fred answer that one... Yet, remarkably, he is frequently misunderstood. How can this be? Oh, c'mon, George! You and I and our fellow travelers are all dumb! We voted for George Bush! After the June 8 news conference in which he said "the private sector is doing fine," he, responding to the public's strange inability to parse plain English, held another news conference in which he said: "It's absolutely clear the economy is not doing fine; that's the reason I had a press conference." Well, that and get my picture taken. Of course. In Roanoke, Va., he gave what any reasonable person must admit was an admirably pithy and entirely clear distillation of his political philosophy: "You didn't build that." The public's obtuseness forced his campaign to run an ad saying "my words about small business" had been taken "out of context." Ah, context. As Obama tries to cope with the public's peculiar inability to discern his meanings, perhaps he can take comfort from very similar difficulties of another candidate for national office. On Aug. 18, 1920, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee, campaigning in Butte, Mont., said that it would be fine for the United States to join the League of Nations because our nation would have multiple votes. Care to guess his party affiliation? He assured listeners that "the votes of Cuba, Haiti, San Domingo, Panama, Nicaragua and of the other Central American states" would not be cast "differently from the vote of the United States," which is "the big brother of these little republics." When, inevitably, the candidate's words caused consternation here and there, he insisted he never said them, adding magnanimously, "I feel certain that the misquotation was entirely unintentional." But the controversy continued, so on Sept. 2, in Maine, he added: "I should think that it would be obvious that one who has been so largely in touch with foreign relations through the Navy Department during the last seven years could not have made a deliberate false statement of this kind." Idaho's Republican Sen. William Borah dryly said: "I am willing to admit that he didn't say it, though I was there and heard him say it at the time." Thirty-one witnesses of the Butte speech signed an affidavit attesting that the candidate had said what he was reported to have said, but public attention had wandered and the issue faded. Idaho's highest peak is Mt. Borah, by the way. Far from being badly injured by this episode, the vice presidential candidate went on to become one of the three presidents in "modern history" -- Obama includes Lincoln -- whose achievements in their first two years are, Obama says, "possible" to compare to his. The candidate was one of liberalism's saints, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thus endeth the lesson. Posted by: Bobby 2012-08-12 |
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