His dwindling band of supporters seem to think so.  Some of them even laud him as "the smartest President EVAH!"  The rest of us aren't so sure that he's even smarter than the guy who came to snake out the drain the other day.  (By the by, my nomination for smartest ever would be James Garfield, because his proof of the Pythagorean theorem using a right trapezoid was quite brilliant.  Yes, I am an egghead.)

So let's talk about "smart."  There's book smart, there's people smart, and when you are a politician, there's politically smart.  Is Barack Obama any of those kinds of smart?

I got on this subject based on the comments of three fellows that I know and have great respect for.  One said that his friend in Boulder had met Obama during the 2008 campaign season, and even had an opportunity to play basketball with him.  The Boulderite opined after the experience that Obama was "not terribly bright and a crappy basketball player to boot."  Another one simply stated, "I live with a genius, so I know what it looks like, and Obama isn't it."  The third, a now-disillusioned 2008 Obama voter, said "I still like the guy, but he ain't very smart, is he?"  Those three thoughts seem to suggest that Obama has none of the three kinds of "smart."

You would hope that he was book smart because he graduated from Harvard Law School with high honors.  They can't possibly be giving such accolades to the painfully average, can they?
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