Reading Obama 3

Obama surely ranks as one of the more intelligent presidents. Reading his books though it becomes clear that his intelligence is more that of a poet than an intellectual. He recoils from the rigors of logical reasoning. Rather than choose between alternatives, he invents beautiful verbal formulas to obviate the need for choice. And while he always respectfully engage his opponents as human beings, he resents having to engage their arguments. Here’s a fine example of this tendency embedded in the middle of his speech:

"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works …."

Those of us who question Obama’s long-term spending plans are not cynics and we do not object to big ideas. What we object to are irrational ideas, like investing in windpower when nuclear costs so much less.

Obama does not attempt to refute us. He argues by authority: Cost-benefit analysis, he says, no longer applies. And then, uh oh, he invokes the mystic judgments of history. “The ground has shifted.” Really? Prove it. “History” didn’t deliver for Hegel, Marx, or Toynbee, Mr. President – why are you so sure it will deliver for you?