After Disastrous Debate Performances, Obama Doubted His Ability to Win the Election

Also from this upcoming book called Double Down.

Before getting to the key quote, let me once again quote Valerie Jarret in 2010, talking about the Extraordinary Intellect of Barack Obama. This will tie in in a minute, swearsies. From John Fund's piece on the high court flatterer of Obama's Camelot.

“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.”

Did Jarrett get that last idea -- that when Obama fails, it's just because he's too talented to do what other people do -- from Barack Obama himself, or did Barack Obama get that defense from Valerie Jarrett?

I don't know. But reading Obama's assessment of his talents with regard to his poor debate performances, it does seem as if he is using that ego-protecting excuse: I'm too smart to do this.

After President Barack Obama’s mediocre first debate performance against Mitt Romney in 2012, he reportedly told advisors, “I just don’t know if I can do this,” when they urged him to turn around his re-election campaign.

In “Double Down,” journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann say that Obama followed up his presidential debate by conducting a “dismal” mock debate with then-Sen. John Kerry.

“If we don’t fix this, we could lose the whole f---ing election,” Obama advisor David Plouffe reportedly said following the mock debate.

Obama’s advisors attempted to shift his tone and approach in advance of the second presidential debate, leading Obama to respond, “I can’t tell you that ‘Okay, I woke up today, I knew I needed to do better, and I’ll do better.’ I am wired in a different way than this event requires. … I just don’t know if I can do this.”

He's too talented to do what ordinary people do, you know.

But I hear he's really good at killing people. He told me so himself.

Incidentally, "too smart for the job" is precisely the explanation that Morning Joe's Chirpy Parrot Mika suggested as the explanation.

The author of Double Down suggested that this was likely Obama's preferred explanation.

posted by Ace at 03:16 PM

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