Intellectually Challenged President
By pm317 on February 18, 2009 at 4:45 PM in Current Affairs, Obamaisms, President Barack Obama, Qualifications
No, I am not talking about Bush. But I can’t escape the feeling that I am looking at a Bush redux.
It seems that the autocue technique is not enough for President Obama. His handlers now think he needs in addition to a teleprompter, a hidden computer screen on the podium during his press conferences, giving him hints on how to answer questions. From American Spectator writing about his first national press conference:
“It looked scripted beyond the scripted part, the speech,” says one former communications adviser, who has been feeding notes and suggestions to the White House team and worked with them on the inauguration. “Every president has gone into one of these things knowing that there were some pre-arranged questions or journalists to be called on, but this one was pretty ham-handed.”
To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.
The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.
The key there is “pass along notes or points to hit.” Let me understand this correctly. Is the White House saying that we have a President who can not think on his feet or needs help in formulating a cogent thought on any of the topics he is expected to be knowledgeable? A person in his position should be able to offer substantive discourse on most topics, don’t you think? Or is it too much to expect from this President?
The article goes on to say:
Using a screen is nothing new for Obama; almost nothing he said in supposedly unscripted townhall events during the presidential campaign was unscripted, down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions. Teleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions.
Do you all remember this video on the campaign trail? Oh boy, did he need his teleprompter screen!
I wonder what will happen if his teleprompter breaks down on his SOTU speech. Bill Clinton could deliver his speech from memory when his teleprompter failed but I have my doubts about this guy, in spite of his much acclaimed (or should I say artificially inflated) oratorical skills. I hope they are ready with a recorded version and he could lip sync in case the teleprompter, the computer screen or anything else breaks down (absurd as it sounds).
Who can take this (deception) anymore? He is not an oratorical genius. He is not a natural even with the teleprompter, the way he moves his head from side to side and seldom looking at his audience. Now you know why he needed those big stadiums and big crowds during his campaign, so that these little quirks won’t be magnified.
If he is so smart and intellectual, why can’t he answer those damn questions without external help?
by Ronald Scott
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