The thinker vs. the viper

Chait's summation:

Probably the best way to understand Obama’s listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones. Obama, perhaps, was not prepared for that, and he certainly didn’t think quickly enough on his feet to adjust to it.

If I may, as an amicus curiae. It has always been my contention that Obama's greatest failing as a politician is that he vastly overestimates the perspicacity of the American electorate. Obama isn't a natural populist, a Steinbeckian Man of the People, or a Robert Penn Warren demagogue--all sublime examples of that peculiar political species that knows, just knows, how to relate to registered-voter ignorance. Notwithstanding his labors as a community organizer, Obama is a student, a reader, a thinker--a sublime example of intellectual integrity that assumes others understand essentially what he understands; hence there's no reason to pound away at the obvious.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a slithering viper. In good part he made his fortune either relieving unsuspecting victims of their treasures or burdening them with massive debt, all along convincing them that they were merely doing what was in their best interest. He was only there to help. He's a con man, a bunco artist, an emotionless exploiter of others' hopes; and as his business skills went, so go his politics. He'll say, do, maneuver, scheme, plot, intrigue, manipulate, conspire and contrive in any possible way and to any necessary degree to just close the damn deal. Moral and ethical consequences can't be quantified--deontology has no known applicable "metrics"--so fuck 'em. The only thing that counts is winning.

Personality A, that of Obama's, is rarely "prepared" for the "utterly bogus" Personality B. It simply doesn't occur to the ethical, thoughtful man that anyone could be, would wish to be as ruthlessly unethical and deliberately thoughtless as, let's say, a Mitt Romney. And if a Romney does pull his little tricks, well, won't they be immediately obvious to everyone? If not--if others' perspicacity indeed comes up wanting--then it becomes time to "adjust."

Which we'll see in two weeks.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

Plato describes this dilema in one of his writings (The Republic?). He notes that the best judge is one who is truly good, but that same person will be a bad judge in his youth because he will erroneously believe everyone is as good as him. So he must spend many years suffering at the mands of bad men to acquire the wisdom to be a good judge.

A more recent quote is good judgment is what you acquire from exercising bad judgment.

the good news is Obama is a pretty quick learner and the Chicago boys are pretty good teachers.

[japa21]

I do think that Obama at times has a higher judgment of the general population than it deserves. And sometimes that is, if not a failing, then a weakness of his.

At the same time, a general problem relating to debates in general when there is an incumbent running against a challenger is that the challenger only has to worry about the debate. The incumbent has all his/her other job responsibilities to be concerned wit, such as the situation with Turkey and Syria.

Obama generally is pretty capable of separating the two, i.e. the correspondents dinner while the OBL situation was developing. But it does limit his ability to toally prepare.

[Peter G]

I wonder what Obama might learn from the game tapes, as it were, that he would, given his nature, change. I am not even sure I watched the same debate as everyone else. I do not pretend to know what people who say he "lost" the debate even mean. It clearly isn't that their own minds were changed but only that they feared that Romney's arguments were more powerful or persuasive than Obama's and therefore likely to change other people's minds. People presumably, less enlightened or more intelligent than themselves. Who's that exactly among the crowd who watched?

[Peter G]

Pardon me but that should obviously been "less" intelligent in the post above.

[japa21]

Well, Sununu is out there saying Obama lost because he is "lazy" and he won't be any better in the next debate because "when you aren't that bright you can't be better prepared."

This isn't a dog whistle any more, it is a dog air raid siren.

[Marc McKenzie]

@japa21:

"I do think that Obama at times has a higher judgment of the general population than it deserves. And sometimes that is, if not a failing, then a weakness of his."

Well...if that is the case, then what should he do about it? Have a cynical, basement-level judgement of the gen-pop--see them only as sheeple (hat that term, but hey...)? That's the thinking of Nixon and GWB. I'm not trying to knock you down here--you made a good observation--but it seems that the only other alternative is for Obama to decide that the gen-pop are only fools.

That type of thinking is for extremists at the edges of the political views.

As for Romney...he 'won' by lying is @$$ off (which is what Thom Hartman has been pointing out for some time now). I saw a man flinging out more lies and distortions and basically being a freaking putz. If THAT is what pundits are looking for in a President, then we are all in trouble.

....Oh wait, I forgot about the pundits and 2000. My mistake.

[Robert Lipscomb]

If lies had wings, Romney would be an airport.

[japa21]

Marc, I don't expect him to do that. I just think he needs to take it into consideration, and he probably already is. One of the problems with the whole health care debate is he believed, by his own admission, that the public would see through the Tea Parties claims and recognize the positiveness of the act. As a result, the administration did not make a full scale defense and neither did other Dems.
It isn't a question of speaking doen to the mass's level, but recognizing that you can't assume they will understand something automatically.

[Marc McKenzie]

@japa21:

Understood. If it seemed that I was being rather harsh, I apologize for that.

You are right about the HCR fight--I remember when despite the constant barrage from the TP, the support from Dem and Progressives was either lukewarm to being outright hostile against the bill (the "Kill the Bill!" faction and Dave Lindorff's nonsense comes to mind).

"It isn't a question of speaking doen to the mass's level, but recognizing that you can't assume they will understand something automatically."

...Definitely correct on this one.

As for P.M.'s title--the sad truth is that we've had the "viper" in the White House from 2001-2009. Are the pundits aware how this worked out, or have they flushed it down the memory hole?

[HLH]

A very astute analysis. This is one I can fully agree with and accept about last night's debate. I personally don't think it was as bad as all the liberal punditry has been apoplectic about. Of course, I didn't see the debate. I listened it to in my car on the road and it sounded substantive to me in that I could clearly tell that Romney was lying and changing his positions and Obama was trying to explain his. That's what I heard. But your analogy of the thinker versus the viper are spot on. Romney is a "refined" snake oil salesman and it's easy for people to get suckered by him because he looks clean-cut. But a snake is a snake to me, no matter how pretty it is or how many colors it has. I wish people would wise up about him.