The worst thing about the political debates isn’t the format or the content, but that it magnifies debating skills to such an extent. I keep hearing that Gingrich would demolish Obama in a debate. I disagree. Republicans would watch such a debate and decide that Newt had mopped the floor with Barack; Democrats would see it the other way around. And the next day, the liberal media would announce that Obama won by a knockout in the first round.

As we all know, a president no more needs to be a great debater than he needs to know how to juggle plates, play the accordion or yodel.

Apparently, in Jodi Kantor’s book, “The Obamas,” the thing that unites Barack and Michelle is the sincere belief that America needs to be radically transformed. Apparently, they both subscribe to the nutty notion that the gap that exists between those who are successful and those who are poor has nothing much to do with hard work, dedication, talent and ambitious goals, everything to do with “opportunity, power, access and wealth.”

Even I have to grant that power and access explain how it was that Michelle came to be paid an astronomical $350,000-a-year working as a part-time administrator at a Chicago medical center once her husband was elected to the Illinois legislature.

It also appears that when some of us have accused Obama of being arrogant and narcissistic, we weren’t just whistling “Dixie.” He has apparently told his staff that he knows more about banking than bankers, is a better writer than his speechwriters and knows more about issues than his policy directors. In 2008, he was quoted as saying, “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it.”

That’s pretty big talk coming from a guy who never held an actual job prior to being elected president, unless you’re one of those people who believes that being a community organizer for ACORN looks impressive on a resume.

One of the scariest things I’ve gleaned from the book is that Barack relies on Michelle to let him know the pulse of the nation. This is a woman who is either jetting off on exotic vacations at taxpayer expense or hosting galas at the White House for the likes of Paul McCartney, Tom Hanks and Oprah. Using Michelle as a sounding board sounds a lot like Louis XVI relying on Marie Antoinette to tell him what was really bugging the French peasants.

Apparently, Obama, who in conjunction with his attorney general, Eric Holder, has created the most racist administration in American history, is of the opinion that the only reason he could possibly lose his bid for re-election is white racism. In his opinion, it can’t possibly have anything to do with ObamaCare; an additional six trillion dollars in national debt; taking his marching orders from George Soros and public sector unions; playing politics with the XL oil pipeline; the first ever downgrading of America’s credit rating; 47 million Americans on food stamps; an unemployment/underemployment rate of 16%; and his giggling like a school girl when he announced, after blowing a trillion tax dollars on his stimulus bill, that apparently shovel-ready jobs weren’t quite as shovel-ready as he’d insisted.

So, Obama would have us believe that the same country that elected him over John McCain in 2008 is now the land of bigotry if the folks don’t make that mistake again. He’d do well to recall the old adage: fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us.

He reminds me of the black basketball coach who, a few years ago, sued the college that fired him, claiming racism. He somehow managed to overlook the fact that, one, over the course of three seasons, the team had lost three times as many games as they had won; and, two, that the bigots who fired him were the very same people who had hired him in the first place.

Speaking of “basketball,” over the past few years, conservatives are taken to task if they even utter the word in connection with Obama, even though he loves being photographed driving for an uncontested lay-up. He also enjoys establishing his street creds by talking about March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament, lest people start thinking he spends all his time on the golf course, just like all those rich white guys he’s always whining about.

But conservatives are also accused of speaking in racist code if they even say words like “entitlements” and “food stamps.” As you may recall, Juan Williams, who’s no stranger to playing the race card, scolded Newt Gingrich for that very thing during the GOP debate down in Myrtle Beach.

It’s a strange world when white conservatives stand accused of bigotry if they vote against someone whose policies and philosophy they find equally offensive whether advanced by Obama or promoted by his white allies in Congress. But nobody dares mention racism, or even misogyny, when prior to giving 97% of their votes to Obama in the general election, a huge majority of blacks supported Obama in his run against the equally liberal Hillary Clinton.

Finally, I suppose most of you have heard about the policy recently introduced in Washington, D.C., mandating that exterminators treat rats as if they were an endangered species, and transport them painlessly to a different location. When I first heard the news, I threw my hat in the air and hollered “Hurrah!” The letdown came a few minutes later when I found out they were talking about actual four-legged rodents and not Harry Reid and his cronies in Congress.

Although it is difficult to understand why D.C. politicians would create such a goofy program, I suspect the answer lies in the old joke about the reason that sharks never attack lawyers swimming in the ocean; namely, professional courtesy.