He was making a point about intelligence not being the only benchmark of good leadership, not equating Obama with Hitler...but I find that people do this automatic reflex thing of comparing basically ANY politician they are really against to Hitler in some way or another...and it's generally an unwise thing to do...it arouses equally extreme responses.

That's because Hitler has become the automatic mental example of "ultimate bad politician" to people the world over. It's never wise to name him in connection with some present politician, because it just distracts from serious analysis of a situation by reducing it to a huge stereotype.

For example, every time the USA decides to "get" some foreign bad guy, he is compared in the American media to who? To Hitler, of course! This happened with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhaffi, and it has been done with Ahmadinejad too. It's an equally lazy and predictable label no matter who uses it on whom, as far as I can see, because there's so much historical baggage attached in people's minds to Hitler as the symbol of ultimate evil that the conversation gets derailed the moment his name comes up.

Stalin was probably just as bad or worse than Hitler. Pol Pot was probably worse than both of them...though he affected a much smaller area of the world. Regardless of that, the name "Hitler" remains the ultimate insult, the ultimate provocation, the ultimate word to cause rational discussion to cease and people to go totally off the deep end in their responses to each other.

It's like calling someone "Satan"...it kind of precludes having any kind of worthwhile conversation about the subject. ;-)