...For a comment I made on one of Lee's posts, here.
Crystal had commented that president Obama was paying attention to the thinkers, and not the doers.
I remarked that in fact, he wasn't; the people he has surrounding and advising him aren't the best or brightest, but instead people who can be portrayed as such.
Lee asked me to explain, so here goes.
Academic credentials don't necessarily indicate a fine mind.
See, if you're patient and stubborn, you can grind away at schooling until you eventually get a degree. But even that's not necessary; most of the big-name Ivy League schools from which Obama's colleagues have arisen have turned, in the last 5 decades, into sort of a sinister version of the good ol' boys' network, only for communists.
And they help each other out to a really amazing degree.
So, many of these people - in the administration, the cabinet, throughout the upper echelons of government - have credentials that aren't as water-tight as they may seem at first blush.
Just recently, we as a nation have witnessed, repeatedly, people in the highest reaches of government make really, really stupid decisions; Obama himself is no exception. An example of this would be betraying our allies by dropping the ballistic missile defense systems in "exchange" for Russian pressure on Iran - which then predictably never materialized.
Each time a new crisis arises, this administration brings out a new "czar," someone who is loudly touted as the best and brightest in their chosen field, and will of course magically solve all the problems within their bailiwick.
How often has this actually worked?
See, the thing is, President Obama knows that most people - even today - blithely accept whatever the TV news shows tell them; they watch the shows closest to their chosen convictions and that's all the information they get.
So he doesn't have to actually FIND the best and the brightest; he just has to find people who play well on TV, and can be hailed as saviors without any actual substance.
Because he isn't about having thinkers, or doers; he is about having the APPEARANCE of having such, without the problems such people inevitably present.
As evidence for this, I hasten to point out General McChrystal, who was appointed BY PRESIDENT OBAMA to command over U. S. forces in Afghanistan. He is, by all accounts - I myself never served under him, so I can't say first-hand - an extraordinarily competent officer, and a passably gifted military thinker.
...So when he realized the depth and scope of the problems faced by our forces in his theater of operations, he went to his boss - El Supremo himself - and laid forth a plan to turn things around over there.
...And Obama tossed him under the proverbial bus in short order.
See, if someone is ACTUALLY a thinker, or ACTUALLY a doer, it means they think, and do, things; some of those things, due to the fact that rational thought at its base is a means of dealing with real-world situations as they actually exist, don't agree with the party agenda Obama wishes to put forward.
Which makes those people perpetually the bearers of inconvenient truths.
Kill, kill, kill the messenger.
...Or better yet, don't let them bring their messages at all; the Obama Administration's tactic thus far has been to surround and interpenetrate the administration with yes-men, people who can be portrayed as intelligentsia while retaining sufficient party loyalty that they don't actually interrupt the president's self-contemplative navel-gazing with facts, figures, logic, or good ideas.
Thus my statement: President Obama doesn't care about thinkers or doers; only about people who can be portrayed effectively as such to the media.
And the result is - and will remain - a staggering culture of institutionalized incompetence masquerading as partisan loyalty.
