The professorial President

Is Barack Obama really as clever as he looks? Ever since he first appeared in the public eye, it’s been taken as read that he’s a major intellectual. Liberals say, in fact, that brilliance is his greatest flaw. He’s too academic, too nuanced; too eager to understand both sides to be an effective leader. The right, meanwhile, regards him as a professorial Marxist, a tenured radical in the White House. Like or hate him, it seems, Barry got brains.

But does he? On Wednesday Obama faced Mitt Romney in the first of the three 2012 presidential election debates. The expectation was that the president, the celebrated rhetorician, would come out on top. Romney is hardly the sharpest tool. But we shouldn’t be too surprised if by the end of the debating season, those high expectations have turned to disappointment.

Obama’s past debate performances have been anything but impressive. Watch him closely during the next two debates, on October 16 and 22.