Smarty-Pants In Chief

With Alma off having fun in New York, Z. and I watched President Obama's prime time press conference. At this rate, Obama will have addressed the press and public more in his first year than Bush did over the course of eight, but that's no shock. Simply put, Obama has more to say, and is better at saying it to boot. Again, that's no shock - Bush was historically dim and disengaged. But, man, what a consistent joy it is to have a President able to speak lucidly and intelligently on a number of different subjects, all with great calm and intellectual curiosity, even in the midst of several potentially world-ending crises. Frankly, it blows my mind that some on the right can't even bear to acknowledge that, like his policies or not, Obama is totally on the ball as a communicator. These nuts actually think he's stupid, which seems about as far from objectivity as you can get - total up-is-down, left-is-right thinking.

But that's no shock, either. The right is growing increasingly marginalized as the conservative crazies who continue to circle the wagons ever tighter and listen only to their own internal echo chamber of conspiracy theories and short-game faux populism. I have a theory of my own, actually. These people who think Obama is dumb or incompetent? Is it possible that maybe they just don't understand what he's talking about, but like petulant children, won't own up to their own ignorance? If Bush was a set of handed-down pre-highlighted Cliff's Notes, Obama is a text book, and we all know what Bush and his ilk thought and think of textbooks.