President Obama.
I [Gore Vidal] was all for him. I’d vote for him again if he were up for election tomorrow. But his problem is a very complicated one. It would take me a long time to explain it. He lacks imagination. He doesn’t know what a terrible country he’s president of. He doesn’t know who owns it. He doesn’t know how to talk to the military. He’s an outsider. A lot of people far less intelligent than he have managed to get the point across to the country, but he hasn’t done it...As I said, President Obama is one of the most intelligent people we’ve had in the presidential chair, and George W. Bush is certainly the stupidest by any given standard. But Obama doesn’t know what our rulers are like. He’s met them all by now. But he’s no more up on them than he was before he became president. I mean, when he’s having beers with that policeman from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/11/qa-gore-vidal-discusses-sarah-palin-william-f-buckley-and-an-unexpected-visit-from-the-secret-service.html
Yes - it is a terrible tragedy that a super-genius like President Obama had the misfortune to follow a cosmic moron like George Bush.
ReplyDeleteBush's moronic powers ruined the world so badly that super-genius powers are unable to reverse the ill effects.
Vidal's argument would be more compelling if he cast Bush as evil and Obama as righteous - at least then you would have an intuitive tension between actors of similar capabilities.
Gore Vidal attempts to persuade us that idiocy is more powerful than intelligence. Obama is intelligent yet hamstrung while Bush was an effective moron. What benefit then does being intelligent confer?
Vidal probably just hasn't read Ecclesiastes lately where the question of "why have I become so very wise?" gets asked explicitly. ;)
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