'Is Barack Obama too smart to be President?'

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/6694
Is Barack Obama too smart to be President?

I have recently come across a few articles that actually seem to be questioning if Obama is too intelligent to become President. The first article above asks if Obama can give Americans what they really want, being ‘fewer real ideas and more schmuck and jive’.

The article provides the views of Roger Simon who suggests that Americans do not want their Presidents too be too brainy and are ‘too dumb to know what they want from their leaders’, calling upon the idea of America as a stupid nation.

The problem with seeming too intelligent is that ‘braininess is elitist’ and to be elitist in America is never seen as a good thing – especially as President.

Obama is said to have to ‘modified his has modified his stump speech to try and broaden his populist appeal’ – in other words dumb down his speeches, so that he can appeal to ‘stupid America’.

As Obama’s intelligence is now being questioned, the idea of Clinton being criticised for being too intelligent for a woman can also be re-assessed. There have been arguments that Clinton is criticised because people do not like intelligent and powerful women, but if Obama is now being criticised for the same thing maybe it is not just a sexist idea. It is said that Bill Clinton had to hide his intelligence whilst in office and played on his southern roots instead to keep his mass appeal, so it seems as though Obama may have to do the same thing appeal to America.

As Susan Jacoby has stated in her book The Age of American Unreason, 'America is ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism', which Obama and Clinton now have to play to, to maintain popularity with the masses.