By the way, I think Obama is an extraordinarily intelligent man...but curiously enough, although his calm and lucid intelligence delights intellectual types...thinkers....like many of us here on Mudcat, it does not work in his favor in dealing with Congress (because Congress is utterly corrupt and ruthless and couldn't care less to listen to an intelligent man who is on the other side of any issue) and it does not work in his favor in dealing with most of the American public, because most of the American public doesn't have the patience or the attention span to relate to anything except the crudest and most primitive appeals to their emotions.

A cerebral, intelligent speaker is at a great disadvantage before the American public, unless he also has a gift for pandering to crude emotional knee-jerk triggers that will get people all worked up...but not require them to think.

The American public is actually suspicious of intelligent and calmly spoken people. They are not trusted by the majority. You know who the majority trusts? Some blowhard who raves on and gets them all emotionally worked up over something, that's what. A demagogue. A rabble-rouser.

Obama's way too calm for most Americans. He's too sober. He's too thoughtful. He's too analytical. That is interpreted as being "weak" by the average American.

Now, those calm and cerebral qualities naturally make him beloved on a forum of folkies who are now in their 50s, 60s, and 70s....but they do not work well with mainstream America. And that is part of what is crippling Obama's term in office, in my opinion. He's simply too smart for the American public. They don't trust or relate to people like that. They relate to emotional actors like Ronald Reagan or Sarah Palin...people who deliver braindead, utterly simplistic appeals to their emotions, their fears, their patriotism, and various other feelgood nonsense that we've all heard about a billion times by now. And none of it means anything...but it SOUNDS like what the people want to hear. It makes them feel the way they want to feel.

It is the candidate who can harness feeling most effectively who gets elected. Obama did that very well during the 2008 election. He has not done it very well since being elected, though. If and when someone comes along who can do it better, then that someone will replace Obama.