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Obama’s Greatest Asset: Clueless Americans
By Bernard Goldberg
H.L. Mencken made Andy Rooney look
like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Both gave curmudgeons a bad name.
But Andy was shrew; he played to Middle Americans. He would say something
like, “Have you ever wondered why we collect string?” – and they would
swoon. He was one of them, they thought. I knew Andy. He
wasn’t one of them and I suspect he didn’t think much of them. Mencken,
on the other hand, made no secret of his disdain for ordinary Americans, whom
he saw as hopeless dolts.
Mencken, a Baltimore newspaperman,
once said this about his fellow Americans:
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in
the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as
I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help
me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses
of the plain people.”
Pretty cold. But given that
the great masses of plain people elected Barack Obama twice, maybe H.L. was
onto something.
They elected him the first time
because he was a historical figure. He wasn’t Mondale or Dukakis or Gore
or Kerry. He was young and cool and black and liberal. And
Americans wanted to make history.
But the second time around?
Unemployment was high, a big majority of Americans thought we were on the wrong
track, the economic recovery was anemic, and most Americans had little
confidence that things would get better anytime soon.
Yet he won again. So how do we
explain it? Yes, you could pin it on a weak Republican candidate, but
maybe Mencken was right. Maybe Americans – or enough of them anyway – are
just not that smart.
Obama’s Greatest Asset: Clueless Americans
Obama’s Greatest Asset: Clueless Americans
Obama’s Greatest Asset: Clueless Americans
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