Once again, you misunderstand what I’m saying, although I think I made myself quite clear. It seems you are defining words and phrases such as “notable uses” in some narrow and personal way. In other words, it is my opinion that Justin Trudeau has put whatever personal resources are at his command to extremely “notable uses.” Becoming the head of a huge nation at a young age most certainly qualifies. It is very notable. And it is very useful, to Trudeau and to his party. Whether he is competent to run a country or not is a totally different issue.

Obama was, as I already wrote, both a front man and a strong participant in setting the course, although he was hardly alone in the latter endeavor. I spent many years studying him closely and that is my firm conclusion. Obviously, you differ. But nothing whatsoever that you have said convinces me that your point of view is correct.

I think that’s because he really was a creature of the non-profit sector. His actual biggest early accomplishment (from a careerist pov, it was a failure as education reform) was his huge Annenberg grant with Ayers. The Obama admin was notable for containing few people with “real world” experience: they were almost always from the foundations or academia. I called them “A Students.” And I think Obama was more of an “A Student” (in his case, perhaps not literally) than a man with his own vision. I tend to think this mess is the 60s radicals trying to get their revolution before they die, coupled with the business/thought leader upper middle classes, who looked at China and said “We can keep our money? Okay, then! A nice cozy relationship with the government means we can’t even lose money. I’m in.” Add to that the social control possibilites of social media…

Who is sitting in the Canadian prime minister’s chair? Justin Trudeau. Idiocracy is now.

The Democrats had in Illinois moles in the court system who could provide confidential paperwork on his opponents’ divorce suits and the media were willing to use it. If they had any integrity, that paperwork would have been put through the shredder and any media outlet which made use of it would have been denounced by all other outlets. And if we had a healthy culture, the imbroglio would have wrecked his campaign. Idiocracy is now.

As for 2008, you’re assuming he was something other than On-Air talent. That aside he had absolutely optimal circumstances – a financial crisis coming to a head right in the middle of the campaign, a public too ignorant of the subject matter to have a clue as to whom the responsible parties were, his opponents’ unforced errors (putting Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt in charge of his campaign) and the media greasing the skids for him.

You really haven’t addressed what I’ve said, which has to do with your saying that Obama didn’t put his intelligence to “notable use.” For starters, just being elected senator and president are certainly “notable uses.”

You write, ” Obama himself did not ‘fundamentally transform’ anything.” Who said he did it himself? Or by himself? Those would be ridiculous assertions, but they’re not assertions I have made, so that’s a strawman argument.

But my point – which I’ve made many times now – is that Obama was a major player in that transformation. He was far far from the only player, but he was the telegenic front and seemingly-genial (although I never perceived him as genial, many others did) head of state, and his history was that he was highly involved in making his own myth and in carrying it out, although he had plenty of help and there were many others who had been working longer and harder to fundamentally transform America.

He was Spam in a can for David Plouffe. Joseph Biden was elected President. That’s where we are as a culture. Obama himself did not ‘fundamentally transform’ anything. Democrats have been taking advantage of extant currents in the culture of the professional managerial class. What Obama and Holder added was an unscrupulous willingness to make use of the tax collectors, the security state, and the federal prosecutocracy as political weapons. Keep in mind that those institutions all but volunteered to be used. Note, nothing Obama did accounts for the systematic dishonesty of the law professoriate, the federal judiciary, or the media. These people are also volunteers.

A minor point: Obama’s connection to the domestic black population is that he married into it. To date, the only vigorous presidential candidates from the domestic black population have been Jesse Jackson (in 1988 and 1984) and Alan Keyes (in 2000). The only one yet from the West Indian population has been Shirley Chisolm (in 1972).

You don’t seem to think it’s “notable” to become the first black president of the US and to “fundamentally transform” the country into a leftist establishment where the right is demonized and suppressed? A lot of people – including me – would differ with you on that.

And if your accent is on the word USE in the phrase “notable use,” and you define “use” as something that you yourself value and find useful, then you’ve defined it so narrowly that it lacks meaning for most people. I think it is crystal clear that Obama has put it to very notable use, which is the furthering of his own personal fame, fortune, and ambition, as well as the transforming of America politically and philosophically.

And no, of course he didn’t do it alone. But he was very much involved in it both as a performer and as a planner. He used to teach Alinsky methods, remember? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I made a passing mention of Jackson as being the one President whose upbringing might have been as hardscrabble as Lincoln’s. I never compared him to Obama at all. You’re having reading comprehension issues today.

There is no evidence that Mooch is ‘dumb as a rock’. She had a law license but no particular interest in practicing law, much less practicing in a BigLaw firm making severe demands on one’s time. (Most associates in BigLaw downshift after a run of years; she’d have received mulligans in the hiring process, so would have been less equipped than most to handle the demands). Mooch discovered over the period running from 1991 to 2008 that institutional managers were willing to pay her escalatingly handsome salaries to do no one knows quite what, so she wasn’t motivated to develop a real trade. Her actual interests and dispositions are a good deal closer to Nancy Reagan’s than they are to Hellary’s.

He’s generically intelligent, but it isn’t put to any notable use.

The operative word is “and.” It’s not either/or. Obama is no puppet, but he is allied with other people – many other people – on the left who found him to be an excellent public front for their program, as well as a willing ally. He is smart, not a genius, not exceptionally smart, but definitely smart, and his utterances (well thought out to seem much more moderate than they are, and yet signal to leftists where he’s at) are quite careful and show intelligence that’s wedded to leftist goals. He is smart about how to present himself and how to make people perceive him a certain way.

I’ve seen many people claim – like you- that he is not smart. I evaluate him very differently, and I have studied him very closely for a long time.

Biden, on the other hand, was never smart. He is much much closer to being a puppet now, although not entirely.