So, why is no one asking if President Obama is “stupid”?  After all, he has made plenty of bigger gaffes than former Vice President Dan Quayle’s misspelling of the word “potato”. 

Take his comment during the election campaign that he had visited 57 American states and had just one left to go.  Or how about St. Patrick’s Day, when the White House teleprompter malfunctioned and he declared, “I want to thank President Obama…,” before realizing that he was reading Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s speech.  Or his May reference to Defense Secretary Robert Gates as Bill Gates (the head of Microsoft).  None of these raised much of a chuckle from the drive-by media – they were barely even reported. 

First of all, let me thank myself...

The President’s comments on substantive political issues have not always been very smart either.  He said that government spending and stimulus are the same thing.  The media bit its lip.  He said the world would be safer if the U.S. got rid of all its nuclear weapons.  There were a few polite coughs.  He claimed that his policies would “save” or create 4 million jobs and the media looked the other way. 

News producers might have reacted differently if these things had been said by George W. Bush or Sarah Palin.  For most of his presidency, certain media, intellectual and cultural circles took the view that President Bush was stupid.  And they weren’t afraid to make fun of his supposed naivety. 

During the election campaign, NBC and CBS sent teams of journalists to Alaska to find evidence of some sort of gaffe by Mrs. Palin. 

Liberal political and media elites not only have little wish to make President Obama look stupid, they have a relentless desire to promote the idea of stupidity among conservatives.  President Reagan was ridiculed by commentators for his foreign policy, which turned out to be triumphant.  Even today, Democrats complain that the opinions of Supreme Court Associate Justice Thomas lack rigor. 

Yet when the misspeaking originates from a Democrat politician right in front of their noses, the drive-bys use their editorial authority to suppress it.  It is not just the President.  When Joe Biden revealed the secret location of his vice presidential bunker, they barely reported the gaffe. 

This goes much deeper than simple media bias.  Liberal elites believe that big problems can only be solved through an intellectual process.  The most efficient health care can only be fixed by devising an intricate system that ensures that the best medical choices are always made.  A just society, they believe, can only be created by transferring wealth to the disadvantaged through complex social programs.  The well being of minorities can only be improved through a program of positive discrimination. 

Conservative solutions just don’t have the same intellectual appeal because they are much more straightforward.  Let the free market and enhanced choice bring down health care prices, encourage entrepreneurship by maintaining a low tax base, enforce anti-discrimination laws and treat everybody the same.  It sometimes sounds almost like a call to do nothing.  It seems heartless and selfish.  Couldn’t we be busying ourselves with something more tangible to make things better? 

Since Democrat Presidents are the standard bearers of engineering a better society via government intervention, the liberal media is hardly likely ever to label them as “stupid”.  To do so would undermine their own interventionist orthodoxy.  If it comes to be believed that the people doing the engineering are not especially smart, voters might reject the very idea that the state could be an effective vehicle for fixing society’s ills.   

On the other hand, Republican leaders are standard bearers of a laissez-faire approach.  It is natural for liberals to portray them as simple or too ill equipped to tackle the complex problems of the world. These lightweights don’t seem to recognize the need to engineer solutions.  They don’t want to interfere.  They just want to leave it to the market.  How quaint. 

Conservative commentators tend not to linger on questions of intellect because statist policies are considered equally damaging whether they are introduced by an intellect or a fool.  Rousseau and Marx were intellectuals but between them they have undermined prosperity and freedom for centuries. 

In Barack Obama, liberals believed they had their answer.  Here was a man who was articulate, well educated and charismatic.  He would lead them to the Promised Land, a utopia of equality and fairness.  And they didn’t even wince when conservatives caricatured him as some sort of political “Messiah”. 

But now, as the President splutters and stumbles in health care meetings, contradicting himself again and again, some of that intellectual sheen is wearing thin.  The President is not stupid but neither was his predecessor, or Governor Palin.  Yet the more he talks, the more people object to the President’s reforms because they realize that he doesn’t understand the issue.  And the folks are beginning to tire of his didactic tones.   

Whatever happens to his healthcare plans, the economy or any of his other policies, one thing we can be certain of is that the liberal media elites will never paint President Obama as anything other than smart and sincere.  By contrast, Sarah Palin and other Republican pretenders will always be caricatured as intellectually deficient. 

But if the economy continues to struggle – as it surely will following the President’s massive increase in government spending – liberal intellectualism as a whole may find itself discredited, even if its adherents are not accused of being stupid.

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