Thoughts on Generalissima Clinton's Adress

From Jane the Actuary,
who I agree with.

To add a little more to Jane's take:

To me, this was the first State of the Union address Clinton will never get to deliver. It was programmatic (without being specific -- a laundry list of destinations with no roads marked for getting there), enormously liberal, and very, very tired. Obama has delivered this laundry list thirty times, and he's The Greatest Orator Since Cicero; what new life can this brokedown old grifter pump into it?

Her criticisms of Trump might carry weight, except for the fact that an authoritarian, grasping con-artist and looter is calling Trump an authoritarian grifter.

One cut of Hillary's seems particularly un-self-aware. She recalled Trump's bluster in saying that he understood ISIS better than generals do. With the only approximation of humor in the speech, she deadpanned "No, Donald, you don't."

So: She's saying, essentially, it's dangerous to elect a megalomaniac to the presidency.

But our current president -- the one Hillary is now trying to emulate -- said this:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Politico noted, just before the 2012 Denver debate:

This quote was attributed to Obama by Patrick Gaspard, who was Obama’s first White House political director, in an interview with The New Yorker in November 2008.

Obama biographers and even friends have noted his tendency from a young age to sometimes to let self-confidence curdle into excessive self-regard — a trait he will try to suppress in Denver.

I don't know how much Obama is really trying to suppress his narcissism, but he's failing in any event.

Obama's Chief Flatterer, Valerie Jarrett, opined that Obama was too smart to do his job as president:

In his biography of Obama, “The Bridge,” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, quotes White House senior adviser and longtime Obama friend Valerie Jarrett: “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.”

Too talented to do what ordinary people do, like demonstrate a competency at their chosen occupation.

Now let's look at Hillary. Since the 90s, she has pushed one Branding Message to her media allies -- her Sisters in Solidarity -- relentlessly. That Branding Message is that she is, quote, "The Smartest Woman in the World."

She has pushed and pushed and pushed this claim out to her courtiers and haigiographers.

If you're lucky enough to be young, you don't know this. But when conservative deride Hillary, sarcastically, as The Smartest Woman in the World, we're doing that because Hillary cajoled her Distaff Praetorian to pump that out to the world for twenty years or so.

So is Hillary Clinton's complaint that Trump lacks humility, or is her complaint really that Trump has no right to his narcissism, unlike herself and her patron Obama, who clearly deserve to think of themselves as smarter than experts in their fields of specialization?

posted by Ace at 01:31 PM

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