Liberals Saying Obama Sounds Like A Fool Because He’s Just So Darned Brilliant

Do you remember how liberals went off on Bush as stupid for eight years (not including the primary season leading up to the 2000 election) because of the way he talked?

Bush and the word “nuclear” was a favorite, of course.  And there were always a few awkward sentence constructions from a president who – unlike Obama – wasn’t slavishly attached to a teleprompter:

Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he’s been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.

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The same left that ridiculed George Bush over his every verbal slip are now rushing in with “intellectual” defenses as to why Obama sounds like a babbling fool every single time he can’t read his lines off a screen.

Case in point from today’s Los Angeles Times:

Meghan Daum: Obama’s fast brain vs. slow mouth
It’s not that the president can’t speak clearly; he employs the intellectual stammer.

Apparently, a lot of people consider President Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. “The guy can’t talk his way out of a paper bag!” a reader wrote to me recently. “Sarah Palin is a brilliant speaker. It’s the president whose sentences are undiagrammable,” said another in response to a column I wrote about Palin. It’s not just my readers, nor is it exclusively conservatives, who hold this view. A Google search of “does Obama have a speech impediment” turns up several pages of discussion among the president’s supporters and critics alike.Admittedly, the president is given to a lot of pauses, “uhs” and sputtering starts to his sentences. As polished as he often is before large crowds (where the adjective “soaring” is often applied to his speeches), his impromptu speaking frequently calls to mind a doctoral candidate delivering a wobbly dissertation defense.

But consider this: It’s not that Obama can’t speak clearly. It’s that he employs the intellectual stammer. Not to be confused with a stutter, which the president decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can’t keep up. The stammer is commonly found among university professors, characters in Woody Allen movies and public thinkers of the sort that might appear on C-SPAN but not CNN. If you’re a member or a fan of that subset, chances are the president’s stammer doesn’t bother you; in fact, you might even love him for it (he sounds just like your grad school roommate, especially when he drank too much Scotch and attempted to expound on the Hegelian dialectic!).

If you’re not, chances are you find yourself yelling “get to the point already!” at the television screen every time Obama’s search for the right word seems to last longer than the search for Osama bin Laden. And thanks to its echoes of the college lecture hall, you may think it comes across as ever so slightly (or more than slightly) left wing.

That’s kind of ironic, given that the godfather of the intellectual stammer is arguably none other than the paterfamilias of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. With his slouch, his glazed-eyed stare and a speaking style that suggested the entire Oxford English Dictionary was flipping through his mind while he searched for a word like “dithyramb,” he makes Obama’s extemporaneous speech seem canned — not to mention pedestrian — by comparison. In fact, if the people critiquing Obama’s meandering speech patterns were to see an old “Firing Line” segment, I daresay they would think Buckley was drunk or otherwise impaired.

Granted, Buckley didn’t hold political office (he made an unsuccessful run for mayor of New York in 1965). He was more an observer than a decider, which is pretty much the opposite of what you need to be to lead a nation. Obama, as much as his critics might hate to admit it, is more than a phlegmatic egghead. He’s proved he can act decisively; whatever his faults, he’s leading the nation far more effectively — albeit less colorfully — than Buckley would have led New York. (When asked what he’d do if he won the mayoral election, he famously responded, “Demand a recount.”)

Obama’s problem is not that he’s an intellectual (for the sake of argument let’s define it as someone who is scholarly, broadly informed and distinguished as a thinker). It’s that he sounds like an intellectual. Unlike other presumed political brainiacs — Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich, for example — he isn’t able to bury his ideas behind a folksy regional accent or good-old-boy affectations when he wants to. Nor is he effective at “keeping it real” when he falls into traditionally African American cadences that he clearly never used when he was growing up.

By speaking as though he hails from everywhere, he ends up being from nowhere. The result is that people look at him and see not a Hawaiian or a Chicagoan or even a black man, but a university man.

Of course, the president enables that stigma by stammering his way through town hall meetings and other public dialogues as though they were philosophy lectures. Irritating? Sure. But inarticulate? Sorry, folks, but you’ll have to find another adjective. And take your time. The right word is usually worth waiting for.

Okay.  I understand.  Obama sounds so stupid because he’s so damned BRILLIANT.  And here, look.  There’s a conservative out there who did the same thing.

Or not.  I don’t recall William F. Buckley Jr. having moments like this one:

But that is a fact.  And such things are hindrances to most of the mainstream media’s “narratives.”

I don’t recall Buckley telling us about the 57 states (with one left to go) he’s visited in those sophisticated tones of his:

Nor do I remember Buckley making a visit to Westminster Abbey and getting the date wrong by three years as Obama just got through doing:

I don’t remember Bush – who of course was a moron (just ask any liberal) doing anything this braindead either.

Nope.  It’s brilliant, intellectual “university men” who ascend to such marvellous heights of intellect.

One fellow pointed out that “Bush could not pronounce Nuclear but he knew what it was (Iran, Obama).”  And, of course, that stupid Bush was right, and those “brilliant” Democrats were all wrong.

THE NATION – Democrats rip Bush’s Iran policy – Presidential candidates say a new intelligence report shows that the administration has been talking too tough.
By Scott Martelle and Robin Abcarian
December 05, 2007

Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.

While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of them sought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.

“I vehemently disagree with the president that nothing’s changed and therefore nothing in American policy has to change,” said New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We do know that pressure on Iran does have an effect. I think that is an important lesson.”

Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the new intelligence report indicated that Iran dropped its program before international pressure came into play.

“It was like watching a rerun of his statements on Iraq five years earlier,” Biden said. “Iran is not a nuclear threat to the United States of America. Iran should be dealt with directly, with the rest of the world at our side. But we’ve made it more difficult now, because who is going to trust us?”

The debate was aired without a studio audience over NPR, live from the Iowa State Historical Museum. It covered Iran, China and immigration, offering the contenders a chance to delve more deeply into subjects that often receive less detailed debate treatment.

Clinton and Biden were joined by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.

But why should it matter that Bush was right, and we are now facing a disastrous crisis that it’s just a damn shame that liberals basically ENTIRELY created with their abject REFUSAL to deal with a crisis, and their DEMONIZATION of anyone who tried?  Bush said “nuclear” funny, and that’s really all that matters if you’re properly sophisticated and, you know, professorial.  Bush was stupid even though he was entirely correct and the liberals who attacked him (including the three top liberals of the Obama administration with VP Biden and Secretary of State Clinton) were entirely wrong.

It doesn’t matter how many times we’re right and how many times they’re wrong.  Because they won’t acknowledge the truth and because the facts don’t really matter worth a damn to them.

There’s a concept in psychology called “accommodation and assimilation” that fits liberals in their steadfast refusal to follow the rules of normal learning.  In normal psychology, one assimilates new information into one’s worldview and accommodates one’s worldview as new facts come in that run contrary to the picture one has of the world.  Liberals don’t bother with that nonsense.  Rather, they rigidly adhere to their doctrines and simply paste-over whatever reality happens to get in the way.

I think of Harold Camping and his followers.  It didn’t matter than he falsely predicted the end of the world before in 1994.  It didn’t matter that the Bible that he’s doing all his “calculations” from specifically says no man can know the day or the hour of such things.  It doesn’t even matter that his prediction for the end of the world on May 21 turned out to be wrong.  Such facts don’t work, so so much the worse for the facts.  Now we’re assured that the world will end on October 21.  Really.  Better get ready.

Like Harold Camping and his followers, liberals are immune from any genuine learning.  They simply lack the character to deal with reality in an honest way.

Obama is brilliant because he graduated from Harvard, but Bush is stupid even though he graduated from Yale.  Previous Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was brilliant because he graduated from Yale, even though Bush had also graduated from Yale and even though Bush actually had a better accumulated grade average (77 versus 76) than Kerry.  Oh, and by the way, even though Bush also actually had a higher IQ than Kerry.  But so what?  Kerry had that arrogant Massachusett’s tone that just sounded so… so smart.  And of course, Bush was stupid because he had a few gaffes; ergo sum Obama is brilliant whenever he’s off his teleprompter because his gaffes are supposedly somehow kind of similar to brilliant people’s.

Or Bush was evil because of Gitmo, and rendition, and the Patriot Act, and domestic eavesdropping, and indefinite detentions, and military tribunals, etc. etc.; ergo sum, when Obama goes back on his demagogic rhetoric and pursues all the same policies that he demonized when Bush did them, it is Obama magnificently adapting his foreign policy.  Bush was evil for using enhanced interrogation and Obama was righteous to dismantle the CIA program that relied on such intelligence – even though Obama should get all the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and even though enhanced interrogation and the CIA program that Obama dismantled were absolutenly essential to getting Osama bin laden.

Or Bush was a poor leader because he wanted to raise the debt ceiling versus Obama showing his magnificent leadership in demanding that we raise the debt ceiling.  Or Obama standing for the Constitution when he attacked George Bush for wars that he got congressional approval for, versus being the bold defender of human rights when he launches a third war in Libya without bothering to get congressional approval.  Or Bush was a partisan hack and a failure as a leader because he divided the country, but the fact that Obama divided the country far more than Bush EVER DID after promising to “transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics” and “end the partisan and ideological wars ” is entirely due to conservatives.  Because Democrats have a moral obligation to attack a Republican president, but Republicans have a moral obligation to bow down before a Democrat messiah.  That sort of thing.

One has to wonder how their heads don’t just explode from containing all the contradictions.  But it turns out that when you live in your own little world – and particularly when you get to control the media and shape the “narrative” for society to consume – irritating things like facts and contradictions just don’t really matter.

Justice Finally Comes To Osama Bin Laden, American-Style

It had to happen eventually.  And it finally has.  Osama bin Laden is in hell where he belongs, where seventy-two very un-virginal demons will tear his flesh for all eternity.

And it came the best way: by the trigger fingers of individual heroes, rather than by the faceless push of a button to activate a missile by a Predator drone.  It is fitting that bin Laden died at the hands of Americans who got to look him in the eye as they facilitated his journey to the eternally burning trash pit in the sky.

And just to add some icing to the cake, the reports are that they killed Osama bin Laden’s oldest son in the attack, too.

Osama bin Laden Killed; ID Confirmed by DNA Testing
By DEAN SCHABNER and KAREN TRAVERS
May 1, 2011

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst-ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, sources told ABC News.

Bin Laden was killed in a ground attack by Joint Special Operations Command forces working with the CIA, not a drone strike, a national security source told ABC News.

According to a national security source, a compound in Pakistan where  the terrorist mastermind was believed to be had been monitored for months. When the decision was made to move on it, special operations forces were sent across the border from Afghanistan to launch a ground attack and take the body.

DNA testing confirmed that it was bin Laden, sources told ABC News.

Vice President Biden has reached out to congressional leadership to update them on the news tonight.

“This is a terrific day for America and quite frankly the whole world that cares about winning the war on terror,” former Bush chief of staff Andy Card told ABC News. Card said the news is “particularly significant” for the intelligence community.

“They’re the ones who kept their nose to the grindstone and worked very hard to allow this day to be realized … finally,” he said.

[The rest of the ABC story is mostly biographical on who bin Laden was and what he did.  You may read it here].

My congratulations and heartfelt appreciation go out to all the intelligence and military professionals who brought about this fitting end.

As President George Bush put it on October 11, 2001:

“In terms of Mr. bin Laden himself, we’ll get him running. We’ll smoke him out of his cave and we’ll get him eventually.”

It was just a matter of time.

Anyone who has read one paragraph of my blog knows that I am a fierce critic of President Barack Obama.  But he and his administration deserve credit for approving the actions that led to this day of reckoning.  Obama also displayed some class in how he first called former President Bush and then cited him in his announcement of bin Laden’s killing.  

That said, the city where bin Laden was killed – Abbottabad – was a military district headquarters.  And the early releases are claiming that the Pakistani government was not informed prior to the raid that got Osama bin Laden.  And the fact that bin Laden was staying in a large walled security compound only 100 yards from a Pakistani military facility tells you that bin Laden was almost certainly being protected by at least a faction of the Pakistani military.

Given how badly we need Pakistan and other key Muslim countries to cooperate with us if we are to be able to use anything other than a “Kill them all; let God sort them out” policy, Pakistan’s apparent duplicity and its cooperation with al Qaeda is not good news.

The war on terror isn’t over.  It might even intensify, as the terrorist network al Qaeda looks for vengeance.  It’ s who they are; it’s what they do.  Here, for instance, is a story that al Qaeda threatened a “nuclear hellstorm” if America killed or captured bin Laden.  Rest assured, al Qaeda will be determined to do something that will seek to restore their honor and credibility in the Islamic world as a result of this raid.

What will happen as a result of this raid and the killing of bin Laden?  Will Pakistan be embarrassed into more cooperation with the U.S., or will they be embarrassed into LESS cooperation with the U.S.?  Did conducting a massively consequential military operation in a foreign country without notifying its leaders make that country a better friend, or a less trustworthy foe?  Under the presidency of Barack Obama, U.S.-Pakistani relationships have soured to an all-time low.  Did this attack on their country improve those relations?  What will happen as a direct result of this attack?

I don’t even want to think about what would have happened had a Pakistani military or police unit fired on the U.S. special operations forces.

If liberals are consistent, they will immediately denounce President Obama and demonize him for further antagonizing the Islamic world and for risking an escalation of terrorism.

The problem with that is that it is total crap.  And whether liberals like it or not, we are in a war for the survival of our culture against a culture of hate.

George Bush put it best describing countries and their attitude toward the United States: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”  That statement was met with incredible criticism and condemnation from the left.  And yet, in what way did Obama’s actions today do anything other than reinforce that that was the only attitude we could realistically take?

The left has been proven fundamentally and profoundly wrong in its attitude toward the war on terror.  And it should be obvious by now that the only way to be successful is to not just follow George Bush’s example, but to actually try to “out-Bush” Bush’s example.

And Obama has largely “out-Bushed” Bush in Pakistan.  President Bush did not want to cause a deterioration in U.S.-Pakistani relations, because he viewed Pakistani cooperation as key in the war on terror.  Obama, in using drone attacks and now direct military action, has been far more aggressive in “taking the war” to Pakistan.

Another example of “out-Bushing Bush” would be the Libya attack.  George Bush – decried as the “imperial president” for his attack on Iraq – at least had constitutional authorization for that action (i.e,. the Iraq War Resolution).  Obama took the “cowboy” route in Libya without bothering to obtain permission from any constitutional authority whatsoever.  Except the “world.”  Obama’s actions should serve to amply demonstrate just how hypocritical and utterly vacuous George W. Bush’s liberal critics truly were.

Liberals said that Bush’s attack on Iraq was a provocation that would make the war on terror worse.  They said that the war on terror was a provocation.  They said the surge was a provocation.  And we shouldn’t be provoking the Muslim world like that.

Let me assure you, what those spec op warriors just did in their raid on that compound in Pakistan was an in-your-face provocation.

What’s the long-term effect of this degraded relationship with Pakistan going to be?  I have no idea.  But any liberal who wants to tell me that “cooperative” liberal policies are working where “confrontational” conservative ones have failed is simply an imbecile.  Because what just happened clearly proves the exact opposite.  And when you consider the fact that Obama has already pursued Bush’s policies on Guantanamo Bay, rendition, domestic eavesdropping, the Patriot Act, military tribunals, indefinite detentions and a host of other polices, George Bush and Dick Cheney stand as men proven correct.

We cannot relent.  Because our enemies will not relent.  They are determined to murder.  It is a virtue for them.  It is a religious duty.  And the 9/11 attack was a religious act.

If these terrorists want to get in America’s face or try to intimidate the American people, America should make sure that its warriors give them a giant shot to the nose that they will never forget in response.  Whether we speak softly or loudly, I don’t really care; just make sure that we always carry one big giant stick, and demonstrate the willingness to use that big giant stick on anyone who wants to make trouble for us.

And so there is one more thing to say: if President Obama tries to take political advantage of the killing of Osama bin Laden, we should make sure the American people know that Obama is planning to gut the budget of the U.S. military that just killed bin Laden.

Our warriors should smile and give one another hearty high-fives for this victory.  And then they need to get right back to work.  Because what they do is vital for their country, whether their country has the moral intelligence to understand that or not.

What I most like about this is that it sends a message.  Even ten years later, the United States of America will continue to hunt you down and kill you if you kill her citizens.  And that is a message that Republican and Democrat alike ought to be able to unite around.

Update: we are now learning that it was a squadron of forty U.S. Navy SEALs from Team 6 who conducted the raid that got bin Laden.  God bless you guys.

And now we are even beginning to learn that “enhanced interrogation” may very well have given us the information breakthrough that got us bin Laden.