The arrogance and ignorance of Democrats

Dean Barnett:

In 1981, former Harry Truman consigliere and LBJ Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford memorably labeled the new Republican sheriff in town an "amiable dunce." At the time, Clifford was the living embodiment of the Washington establishment, and his glib analysis showed that while you can find the occasional memorable phrase on the D.C. cocktail circuit, facile conclusions delight the crowd more than serious inquiry. It comes as no small irony that in the years that followed, the discovery of Reagan's voluminous private writings revealed him to be the finest writer and most original political philosopher to sit in the Oval Office since at least Theodore Roosevelt. As for the condescending genius Mr. Clifford, he ended up the 1980s enmeshed in the BCCI scandal, thanks largely to his own confusion. At least that's how he told the story, complaining to the New York Times, "I have a choice of seeming either stupid or venal." Clifford opted for the former.

However obtuse, Clifford's summation of Reagan sat on the cutting edge of a new school of political partisanship. Starting with Gerald Ford, the inside-the-beltway class and its amplifiers in the media have routinely decided that Republicans who seek national office are dullards. Literally every Republican candidate for president since 1980 has had his intellect belittled. Even Bob Dole, a candidate who had spent decades proving his remarkable mental acuity in Congress, had to face such salvos because his age had allegedly dulled his mental edge. Sound vaguely familiar?

Of course, no such scrutiny greets Democratic candidates. Barack Obama can't make it through a 30 second extemporaneous statement on his campaign bus without a profusion of "ums" and "ahs." And yet Obama's stumbling diction has yet to interest his worshippers in the press the way that George H.W. Bush's periodic wrestling matches with the English language did. For those fortunate enough to have forgotten the 1988 presidential race, Michael Dukakis's principal talking point was that he was more competent, i.e. more intelligent, than Bush.

During the 2004 campaign, the New York Times's Howell Raines wrote, "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than (George W.) Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead." Of course, Raines could have done some research before making such a sweeping statement, but that wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable. Take it from one who knows--polemicizing is much more fun and much less work than analyzing.

If Raines had bothered with research, he would have found he was wrong on all counts. Kerry's college transcript which included four D's in his freshman year at Yale was a special embarrassment given that candidate Kerry had boasted about his serious pursuit of scholarship compared to the president's frat-boy frivolities. But in Raines's defense, how could he have known that research was necessary? Everyone understood that Kerry possessed a blazing intellect while Bush was some village's missing idiot. Everyone among the self-satisfied liberal media, anyway.

The pattern continues. When Barack Obama trotted out Washington warhorse Joe Biden as his vice presidential pick, the media immediately clucked "gravitas" and "experience." Okay, we can't deny the "experience" angle, as Biden has occupied a Senate seat since Obama was 11 years old. But one would think that "gravitas" would imply a political record noteworthy for more than just its length. Guys like Sam Nunn are respected by members of both parties; during his long stay in the senate, Nunn was always serious and often correct. Until Barack Obama plucked him out of tiny Delaware, Joe Biden's principal renown was for talking too much and saying too little.

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I can remember them doing the same with Eisenhower though not Nixon. Nixon was always considered just evil by Democrats. While Barnett's example from 2004 is right on, it was even worse in 2000. Democrats and even some Republicans claimed divinity school flunk out Al Gore was smarter than Harvard MBA Bush. How dumb is that?

This comes from the arrogance and conceit of liberalism which holds that if you were really smart you would agree with them on all the issues. This is despite the fact that liberalism has been wrong on most of the big issues of the last 40 years. The liberals were wrong on national health care and welfare reform in the 90s and they were wrong on the surge in the last year. They have been wrong on missile defense and we are just reaping the disaster of liberal energy policy. Palin is a genius on that subject compared to any liberal in politics today.