The Patriot Post® · The Essence of Obama's Problem

Peggy Noonan: “[W]e focus on Mr. Obama personality and psychology – he’s weak or arrogant or ambivalent, or all three – and while this is interesting, it’s too fancy. We are overthinking the president. His essential problem is that he has very poor judgment. And we don’t say this because he’s so famously bright – academically credentialed, smooth, facile with words, quick with concepts. (That’s the sort of intelligence the press and popular historians most prize and celebrate, because it’s exactly the sort they possess.) But brightness is not the same as judgment, which has to do with discernment, instinct, the ability to see the big picture, wisdom that is earned or natural. Mr. Obama can see the trees, name their genus and species, judge their age and describe their color. He absorbs data. But he consistently misses the shape, size and density of the forest. His recitations of data are really a faux sophistication that suggests command of the subject but misses the heart of the matter.”