More to the point though, the evidence seems conflicting.  On the one hand, he ran a remarkable campaign in 2008.  He sensed what the American people needed to hear, and he emerged from nowhere to defeat vastly more qualified opponents.  On the other hand, his performance as President has been dismal.  Most Americans recognize that his policy preferences range from the irrelevant to the counterproductive, and leftists contend that he has been ineffectual in pursuit of their agenda.

So is Obama smart?  Yes.  Obama is a certain kind of smart.  Unfortunately, it’s the wrong kind.  President Obama is the sort of smart that our finest institutions recognize, promote, and reward.  There is no surer path to academic success than learning the orthodoxy of your field and the particular bent of your professor; explaining why only those blessed with suitable experience, training, and insight can comprehend the complex problem under consideration; and then parroting the professor’s previously articulated answers shortly before he or she reveals them to the class.  Mastery of this skill continues to pay dividends in the real world, most prominently among business consultants versed in telling corporate boards what they want to hear, and attorneys capable of tailoring their arguments to the predispositions of the judges before whom they appear.

It is unclear that these skills bear any relationship to problem solving acumen, but they do earn high grades, glowing recommendations, consistent promotions, and top dollars.  They also perpetuate a self-congratulatory status quo by ensuring that the current generation of leaders selects successors whose uninspired, orthodox thinking most clearly mirrors their own, and who have little incentive and less ability to seek innovative solutions to challenging problems.  Furthermore, the preference for such skills institutionalizes the idea that our challenges are so complex that only a trained priesthood can grasp them—much less address them.  The central belief of our academic elite is: “Trust us.  We’re smarter than you are.”

Only folks possessing this type of smart comprehend that every aspect of human existence is more complicated than it appears to be.  Thus, for example, only they can see: How paying people not to work increases employment; How penalizing the successful motivates investment in productive ventures; How embarrassing allies motivates other nations to operate in America’s best interests; How apologizing for the spread of liberalization and democracy invigorates those fighting for their freedom; How kowtowing to dictators encourages them to reconsider the morality of their governance; How threatening uncertain regulation reassures businesses considering expansion; How partially nationalizing industries improves competitiveness; How favoring some racial or ethnic groups above others reduces discrimination; How diverting money from a productive private sector to a stagnant public sector improves productivity; How promoting union benefits above meritocratic promotion enhances efficiency; How growing the government expands freedom and reduces dependency; or any number of comparable truths and the policies they imply.

There are two important points to note about all of these complex connections and their policy implications.  The first is that they are undeniably true.  The second is that those who take a narrow-minded approach to factual observation and logical inference may nevertheless deny them.  And that is precisely why expertise and academic training are critical.  In the absence of such training, our leaders might well succumb to the seduction of common sense, and ignore the intricate theories that explain the appropriate path to preferable policies.

President Obama is smart enough to know that he is always the smartest one in the room.  His biggest fans—Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman come to mind—consistently wish that the lesser lights of America would step out of the way and let Supersmart Obama solve our most challenging problems.  But facts, logic, and common sense have seduced much of America.  Only two groups appear immune to their allure: those with little interest in either facts or logic, and those whose training tethers them to the mast of expertise in the face of the sirens’ song.

So is Obama smart?  Absolutely.  He possesses the skills necessary to navigate our most prestigious institutions and to perpetuate our most important mutual admiration societies.  He is smart enough to impress in any role that does not require innovation, problem solving, or execution.  Unfortunately, the Presidency is emphatically not that sort of job.

In a potentially unrelated note, the educational groups that gave Obama the widest margins of victory in 2008 were those lacking a High School diploma and those possessing an advanced degree–accelerating a 30-year trend .  I suspect that there may be a simple connection between these observations, but I regret that I hold far too many advanced degrees to see it.

Thomas Paine: Wordsmith

Yet this man who made such an impact on the early days of the Revolution was an utter failure in business back in England, was dismissed from his position as excise officer because of neglect of duty, and separated from his wife in 1774 just as he decided to emigrate to America. If not for Common Sense, in particular, his influence on the new nation would have been negligible. Some people are great with words and little else. Paine fit that mold.

When the American Revolution ended, he tried his hand at inventing, but being unsuccessful at that, he eventually traveled to France to take part in the Revolution stirring there. He became a French citizen, served in the Convention [legislature], though without distinction [he couldn't speak French], and ended up in prison when the Revolution took an even more radical turn. Only the intercession of the American ambassador James Monroe extricated Paine from that predicament.

He then wrote The Age of Reason, an attack upon Christianity that did not go over well with the American public. Upon returning to America in 1802, he was not well received because of his radical religious views. Poverty, poor health, and alcoholism dominated his final years; his funeral in 1809 was attended by six people.

The name John Jay is relegated to the dim recesses of this same time period, at least among those who have only a cursory knowledge of the beginnings of the United States. Those who have studied it in depth realize what a debt is owed this man.

John Jay: Indispensable

In many ways, he was the anti-Paine. A New Yorker who lived in the New World all his life [his family were French Huguenots who had to flee Catholic persecution], Jay was far more conservative than his wordsmith counterpart. He participated in many of the meetings prior to independence, always offering words of caution. He even helped draft the Olive Branch petition to the king as a last desperate effort to keep the empire from civil war.

Once the decision for independence was made, however, Jay threw himself into the fray with total dedication. He worked at both the state and national levels during the Revolution: Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, then president of the Continental Congress. The Congress appointed Jay as ambassador to Spain to try to get more European backing for the new nation. He spent three years working in an almost thankless task, joining Franklin and John Adams at the end of the war as one of the chief negotiators with the British government for the Treaty of Paris.

Upon returning to the new United States, Jay was elected Secretary of Foreign Affairs, a post he held from 1784 to 1789. In the push to amend the Articles of Confederation, he collaborated with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in authoring the Federalist Papers. He didn’t write many of them simply because he suffered an illness at that time.

In Washington’s first administration, Jay was called upon to serve as Chief Justice of the new Supreme Court. When Washington needed an experienced diplomat to deal with Great Britain, he called upon Jay. We would never today mix the branches of government the way Washington did in this instance, but he felt no one else had the experience to handle the British.

He then did something no one would do now: he resigned as Chief Justice to become governor of New York. In that capacity, he had the privilege of signing into law a bill leading to the gradual elimination of slavery in that state, a goal Jay had been working for his entire life.

After his governorship, Jay retired from public life, but he didn’t retire from activity. He later became president of the American Bible Society, another indication that he was the anti-Paine.

Activists today revere Thomas Paine, due to his strong words. Few know of John Jay. Paine’s contributions were primarily words; Jay’s contributions were actions that helped shape what the nation would be. In our desire to change what we currently see taking place in our government, it’s tempting to be a Paine [and some people are, in both senses], but wouldn’t it be better to be a Jay? Paines have their uses, but Jays are indispensable.

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

– Esther 4:14

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. 

In this environment, Democrats in Congress are working on a bill to give President Obama emergency control of the Internet (S.773) which would permit the President to seize control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.  Meanwhile, the President has appointed Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  Prof. Sunstein support controls on free speech on the Internet.  He views the Web as a Wild Wild West that needs taming and wants new laws to corral wayward bloggers. His book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (not to be confused with Noodge) urges employing the force of government to make us all better persons (“New Soviet Man” anyone?).  In his latest work, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, the Harvard professor, now top Information apparatchik, worries about “…institutions (being) harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet.” 

Of course, one man’s “falsehoods” might be another man’s facts.  Czar Sunstein’s extreme concern likely grows out of his acute understanding that our postmodern President simply speaks reality into existence; words are reality in the Obama White House.

Into this breach come the bloggers.  There are about 120 million blogs today.  Many of them are political, most are not.  

America’s political bloggers trace their heritage, their place in the body politic, to the Colonial era.  Most of today’s political bloggers would have been quite comfortable defying the British Stamp Act of 1765, were they around 244 years ago.  The Stamp Act was designed to impose government content control on the then 23 newspapers which served about two million Colonialists.  Not one Colonial newspaper bought the properly stamped paper.  In fact, the political content of the papers increased, to the alarm of the British authorities. On the eve of the Revolution, there were 31 papers in the Colonies, by the time of the Constitution’s ratification, there were 92, and by 1835, there were 1,200 newspapers serving 15 million Americans. 

Political bloggers became a force to be reckoned with in 2002 with Sen. Trent Lott’s comments on Sen. Strom Thurmond and again in 2004, when Little Green Footballs took down Dan Rather and Mary Mapes (ironically, Mapes writes for the Huffington Post now) over CBS’ airing of forged Air National Guard documents purporting to show that President George W. Bush avoided service in Vietnam.

With many blogs attracting more readers than daily newspapers while newspaper circulation plummets and experienced journalists are being laid off, we can see why Professor Czar Sunstein is worried – no longer do like-minded liberals in the major media have a lock on what passes for truth in the news. (This brings to mind the cynical critique of the former Soviet Union’s main papers, Tass (News) and Pravda (Truth) “Ni pravda Tass. Ni tass Pravda.” “There is no truth in Tass and there is no news in Pravda.”)

There’s a certain urgency in today’s blogosphere – an understanding that we are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history.  Conservative bloggers, mostly unpaid – concerned moms, talented lawyers, activist students – are acting as a potent counterforce against the attempted rapid remaking of America under Pres. Obama’s direction.  As such, today’s bloggers are the most visible manifestation of the Conservative Movement.  And this, as the Republican Party largely tracks aimlessly in opposition to President Obama, but without any apparent objective, other than to regain power for power’s sake in numb repetition of the errors of 2006 and 2008.

Were Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton (Publius) around today, they would surely be blogging right alongside the likes of the paid and unpaid authors of NRO’s The Corner, Michelle Malkin, RedState, Hot Air, Big Government, Big Hollywood, Flopping Aces, Infidels are Cool, Riehl World View, Red County, Ace of Spades HQ, Flashreport, Right Wing News, and many others.

Let the blogs bloom, for they have come for such a time as this.