Notable comment

From an online discussion with Robert Scheer:

11:27 Comment From erniesfo
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:27:39 GMT
Comment: Bob [Scheer]: I may not put this right, but Garry Wills recently wrote an article about “what he told Obama” at a secret meeting with prominent historians in NYRB. Turns out they all told Obama not to go in on Af-Pak, to get out. He was warned about his economic advisers—Summers, Geithner, Goolsby, et at, that they were retreads who had never made a correct economic assessment in their careers. Yet here we are. Could it be that Obama is such an ideologue, and, it must be said, such an elitist (fawning over folks from Ivy League schools, etc.) that this degrades any native intelligence that he might possess?

1:33 Robert Scheer
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:33:14 GMT
Comment: (To erniesfo) I don’t think I could put it better myself. I do think, sadly, because I still find the guy quite appealing, but sadly I think you nailed it. The elitism, the unwarranted respect for someone like Summers, even screwed up being head of Harvard, has a terrible track record, is responsible for the deregulation, why would he have such a high position in the White House, it’s mind boggling. [Rest of Scheer's response deals with the folly of Afghanistan.]

I don't think "ideologue" is the word erniefo really meant to use, because Obama is anything but an idealogue in my book. That is someone who is rigidly, even blindly wedded to a particular set of principles and assumptions, often unable to compromise or to be pragmatic. If Obama subscribes to any principles, I'm sure I no longer know what they are. He's compromised away most of the principles I voted for.

But "fawning...elitist" I'll go with.

11:40 Comment From erniesfo
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:40:04 GMT
Comment: Bob [Scheer]: That’s what I was afraid of—that we need an FDR and get a Hoover instead. Summers is so galling. The guy trashes women, pisses off the faculty and the students, then hoses Harvard’s endowment and ...Obama promotes him. It hurts thinking about it.