The DNC's Daily Newsletter "Politico" Wonders: "Is Rick Perry Dumb?"

Let me save you the trouble and skip to their conclusion...yes.

Among the bits of evidence?

China policy, for example, has surely not been much on Perry’s mind during his time in Austin.

And that showed when, in an interview last week with Laura Ingraham, he responded to a question about whether a rising China is good for the United States with platitudes that prompted the conservative talk show host to complain that he was only offering “broad generalities.”

Anything beyond "hope' and "change" is far more detailed than Obama offered curing his campaign. Just a reminder, when Obama did dare to tread beyond platitudes in his campaign he failed miserably until he was able to cheat off John McCain's work.

Apparently flying planes in the military is for idiots.

Trained as an Air Force pilot right out of A&M, Perry was “taught to trust your information,” said Johnson.

And associates say the same lessons that Perry learned when he was flying C-130s apply now.

“Pilots execute flight plans,” said Miller. “They have a plan, they fly a certain pattern and that’s the way he’s always operated — he has a flight plan for what he’s trying to do and he executes.”

Where exactly does this guy think a flight plan comes from if not the pilot who has ultimate responsibility for the flight? I don't think being a pilot means you are a genius but it does mean a couple of things...

To fly a plane like a C-130 you have to understand how multiple systems work and interact with each other. You don't have to be an electrical engineer but you have to have a working knowledge of electrical systems. You don't have to be physicist but you have to have a passing familiarity with the physics of flight. You don't have to be a meteorologist but you have to have an understanding of weather and the mechanics of the environment you are going to fly into.

When you learn to fly, you get to learn a good bit about a lot of things. You might not be an expert on any one of these things but you have to be able to grasp the basics, how they interact with each other and how to balance competing challenges and limitations.

More importantly, as an intellectual exercise learning to fly (especially at the military level) means havi8ng a disciplined mind. You get hit with a lot of information and you have to be able to retain it, prioritize it and most importantly, when push comes to shove, be able to use it in the proper way.

That's actually not bad training for an executive when you think about it.

Mike Baselice, Perry’s longtime pollster, said his client is of the Ronald Reagan school of management: “Trust people and manage well.”

“His job is to go meet voters,” said Baselice. “We’ll figure out the details of the messaging.”

This of course has David "Big Brain" Frum in tizzy.

Voters would do well to ask: Who’s this “we” that will really be running the country during a Perry presidency?

Good advice to follow when considering voting for any candidate. This may come as news to Frum, but every President, Governor, and executive of any kind relies on advisers. No one can possibly master every bit of expertise required to run a large organizatio, especially one as large and complicated as the US government. Anyone who tries to do that is a fool who would be terrible at their job. (For more on the genius that is David Frum, here's a post I did at my little blog on his ideal health care plan. Short version...it's ObamaCare)

But even a presumed genius like Barack Obama has advisers (Tim "Turbo Tax" Giethner ring a bell?). Why just today the President nominated a new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger. Krueger's big idea a few years back? A $500 BILLION a year VAT. If that's smart, I'll take the so-called "idiot", thank you very much.

A lot of this comes down to what a person means by intelligence. Everyone just assumes Obama is a bright guy but there's precious little proof of it.

He hasn't released his college transcripts, so we have to take his academic genius on faith. Not that they would prove much beyond measuring his ability to regurgitate that approved liberal talking points to liberal professors.

We are told he's a "constitutional scholar" but his one bit of writing is a Harvard Law Review student note.

Even if you accept the premiss that Obama is a brilliant guy and we are lucky to have a man of such a singular intellect willing to lower himself to serve us, shouldn't we consider what that's gotten us? 9.2% unemployment when it was supposed to go no higher than 8%, an exploding deficit when he promised to cut it in half and yet..

Yet we simply are to accept on professions of Obama's mental genius on fatih (because you can be damn sure Politico will never do an investigation into Obama's intelligence).

This is the same garbage the press pulled on Reagan back in the day. He was the big talking, dangerous fool while Jimmy Carter was the thoughtful , well meaning intellectual. Which was the more successful President?

Politics is a results oriented business not a college faculty debating club. By that measure Obama has repeatedly shown he is an idiot that is in way over his head.

If Obama wants to be judged on the quality of his thoughts without the pesky problem of actually having to produce results, he should skip the reelection bid and get a cushy job at the college of his choice. The rest of us would be better off for it.

BTW- I'd love for any of our liberal friends who read the blog to offer some evidence of Obama's intelligence. I hear so much about it, I'm sure you guys will be able to rattle off three to five bits of evidence without breaking a sweat.

posted by DrewM. at 10:53 AM

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