Comments on: Obama the intellectual?

By: Diagramming for dummies « Likelihood of Success

Diagramming for dummies « Likelihood of Success — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:28:09 +0000

[...] of the Honorable Barack Obama; we know that is unnecessary seeing as how he is a certified intellectual and academician. His words are beyond diagramming; they are our future, made [...]

By: Diagramming for dummies « Likelihood of Success

Diagramming for dummies « Likelihood of Success — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:28:09 +0000

[...] of the Honorable Barack Obama; we know that is unnecessary seeing as how he is a certified intellectual and academician. His words are beyond diagramming; they are our future, made [...]

By: Professor Obama « Likelihood of Success

Professor Obama « Likelihood of Success — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:42:14 +0000

[...] point, I think, is that the Obama myth, despite the efforts of some of us to address it on precisely this point, is so inflated that people would actually believe that he would be the subject of a level of [...]

By: craig mclaughlin

craig mclaughlin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:01:57 +0000

I went to a landgrant college– which is a shout out to my favorite essayist Joseph Epstein– and I have no intellectual pretensions, I really don’t. I know there’s lot’s of stuff I don’t know. Lot’s of categories of stuff.

Yet every ‘intellectual’ I encounter in mass media is of the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Or Barack Obama. Worthless and weak, the lot of them.

I’ll bet you five dollars I’ve read more books and understood them better than Obama.

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:13:45 +0000

Intellectuals always make the best leaders.
Take Churchill for instance.

Not Winston, of course, I mean Ward Leroy…

By: Ron Coleman

Ron Coleman — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:04:11 +0000

Cindy, you may be right. I will take a great speech as a beginning point; it’s certainly more than Clinton can point to even at the end of his career. Only time will tell, as tends to be the case with speeches; contemporaneously, they are views through the usual partisan lenses.

This is not true, by and large, of scholarly writing, of course. Certainly not to the same extent. And that is one reason that sort of work is a better indicator of intellectual merit.

It’s also nastier to have someone else ghostwrite a law journal article or treatise than a speech — though it happens all the time.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:41:35 +0000

Eh, Obama’s “Faith From My Fathers” is pretty impressive, could become a classic in literature on race, identity, or culture. Obama is clearly a thinker, someone who reads widely and is well-expressed; whether he will be able to translate this into leadership remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic. There’s no reason to believe bottom-of-the-class McCain reads much at all, his lack of basic knowledge is regularly on display, that’s going to be a problem.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:59:11 +0000

I think a lot of people confuse political genius with real genius, and therefore easily confuse the idea of political achievement with real achievement.

Then again a lot of people are easy to confuse.