House of Eratosthenes

I could say all that needs to be said with a disrespectful and dismissive “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…” Word count: Seven, or five, or three, or whatever. Maybe twenty to capture the sheer magnitude of the blah-blah-blah-ness and get-nothing-done-ness and waste-of-time-ness of the event.

But this would venture outside my sphere of knowledge, for I am not in the Noonan/Chait/Podhoretz camp of folk who suffered through from moment to moment (and now bitterly regret it, I venture to say). I am in the more voluminous set of casual observers who caught a snippet here and there, and then read the re-caps afterward.

It is purely out of respect for the mere concept, not the practicality, that says one should confine one’s remarks to those things about which one knows — that I shall refrain from going out on a limb speculating on what a massive waste of oxygen this really was. Let the record state, however, that in my opinion this would not be going out on much of a limb at all. I’ve attended meetings.

And so I shall quote from persons who are known to me to be experts on their chosen subject matter.

First up, is me. Commenting on meetings in general, in the Architects and Medicators essay. Prescient as always.

Running a meeting is yet another good litmus test. Some meeting chairs do it right: Agenda item, question, answer, does anyone have any objections, next agenda item — boom, boom, boom. Others engage in this ludicrous and time-consuming practice of using the forum to adjust the emotional tenor of the participants, as if it’s a high school pep rally.

The architects, who see the world as a massive assembly of parts, each part further reducible into a plurality of parts and then into atomic parts that can be reduced no further…grind through an agenda. Or blast their way through. If, that is, things are left up to them. The medicators, who see the world as a mysterious orb that gives off emotional vibes, bask in the glow of the meeting and go through this time-consuming cycle of adjusting the emotional tenor, then feeding off of it. Then adjusting it again.

It doesn’t take too much professional experience before one can say one has sat through both types of meetings. Doesn’t take too much wisdom to start to notice the contrast.

The fact that this “summit” took seven and a half hours tells me all I need to know about what kind of meeting this was. And that tells me all I need to know about what sort of person was running the meeting. Let is say none of this comes to me as a huge surprise.

Next expert (who did not attend) to opine is James Taranto, in yesterday’s Best of the Web.

[Wall Street Journal Commentary’s John] Podhoretz…summed it up this way:

My sense of this summit is that President Obama is exactly as he always is — extremely intelligent, knowledgeable about policy details, so certain of the rightness of his views that he has no compunction about declaring the views of his antagonists to be merely politically convenient rather than substantive, startlingly condescending at moments, and even more startlingly long-winded when he gets going. As a result, he both looks good and bad in these settings — good because he’s serious and doesn’t appear to be a fanatic, and bad because of the condescension.

Which prompted this defense of condescension from [The New Republic’s Jonathan] Chait:

Podhoretz calls Obama “startlingly condescending at moments.” How can that be avoided when you’re trying to have a high-level discussion with people who reply either on debunked claims at best and talk radio-level slogans at worst?

Actually, describing that as a defense of condescension is too charitable, isn’t it? It’s an example of condescension. If we didn’t know better we’d think Chait was exaggerating in order to illustrate Podhoretz’s point. And it’s not the first time–not even the first time in a day–that Chait did this. Podhoretz’s post quoted an earlier one of Chait’s:

President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous. . . .

Most the time [sic], this is like watching Lebron James play basketball with a bunch of kids who got cut from the 7th grade basketball team. He’s treating them really nice, letting his teammates take shots and allowing the other team to try to score. Nice try on that layup, Timmy, you almost got it on. But after a couple minutes I want him to just grab the ball and dunk on these clowns already.

Podhoretz’s answer:

Here we have a sterling example of how ideological predilections, his and mine, might color our opinions here. Except for one thing: You can only think Obama is Lebron James playing 7th graders if you are already certain his opinions are right, because the best you can say about this summit so far for him is that it’s a draw, and it’s probably worse than that. And given that only 25 percent of the public wants ObamaCare, he needs to be Lebron James. And Pete Maravich. And Oscar Robertson. And Kareem. All at the same time.

Chait actually makes two distinct claims about Obama: that he has a superior intellect and that he is a superior “communicator.” The first claim could be true, although it is far from indisputable. But the second claim is so absurd as to be delusional.

Obama has spent the past year trying to sell Americans on ObamaCare. He has failed utterly, as Podhoretz notes. Now, maybe Chait is right that opposition to ObamaCare is a product of stupidity. Maybe ObamaCare would be popular if a majority of Americans were as brilliant as Jonathan Chait. But in a democratic republic, elections are not limited to the elect. Shockingly, half of all Americans have below-average IQs. They vote too.

By no imaginable standard can a politician be considered a great “communicator,” or even an adequate one, if he is unable to persuade voters of average-or-below intelligence to back his policies.

Further, is there any evidence that Obama is especially good at communicating with those on the far right of the bell curve? Chait is persuaded, and we’re willing to stipulate that Chait is brilliant. But Chait was persuaded before, and we know lots of brilliant people who oppose ObamaCare.

Obama is very good at making smart liberals feel superior. That is a communication ability, but not a terribly useful one for a politician in a democratic country.

This is a “D’Jever Notice” moment and a “Best Sentence” all rolled into one. The D’Jever notice moment is about conservatives and liberals — supposedly, in spite of their different outlooks on the world, they view each other in more or less exactly the same way. Dimbulbs, on the other side of the divide, who are just plain wrong. Two images opposite from each other. Alike in so many ways, just mirror-image-flipped.

It’s obviously not so. Conservatives — the ones I know — are pretty consistent in their curiosity about what makes sense to liberals and how it might make sense, even for a moment. In a “What in the F*ck Are They Thinking??”, bewildered sort of sense. They become disgusted with it, but only occasionally and only temporarily. They/we are constantly trying to come up with explanations.

This is not true of the liberals. They are dismissive of those who disagree with them. They work at achieving a superlative of this dismissiveness, and they work very hard at it. As if they’re competing with each other, which they probably are.

They are not curious. They are like Jonathan Chait. Just dunk these clowns already!

And the best sentence has to be this zinger at the end about “Obama makes smart liberals feel superior.”

Under what circumstances, as a flawed human mortal being, could my need to feel superior to others trump my curiosity about how lesser human beings think? The only answer I can produce is that something might have happened to make me feel inferior, and I’m trying to compensate for it. But that, again, would venture outside of my sphere of knowledge…and so these skewed priorities of “smart liberals” like Chait, and many others, shall remain a mystery to me.

They must be realizing inwardly, right about now, that it isn’t going to work because it labors under an irreconcilable internal contradiction. The process of deciding what is to be done, is to be an all-inclusive “summit” from which no one will be deprived of the opportunity to participate. This will ensure that the conclusion at the end will be perfect, in some way, having been produced democratically. But! In the process of producing this decision we shall make it a glorious goal of ours to neutralize, to ineffectualize, to practically geld any & all who do not share our correct opinions.

These are mutually-exclusive, oppositional goals.

Barack Obama tried to achieve them both on Thursday, and that is why He wasted so much time and got nothing done.

That’s my take on it, just from what little I know, since I did not attend. I await the words of those who disagree with me and are in a position to so disagree, since they attended and I did not. Should any of them come along, I bow before their superior knowledge.

But I don’t need to dive into the sun to know it’s hot.

I expanded this thought on my blog, but here is the short of it:

If a great communicator lays out a program, and no one is buying, does that mean they suck? or the program sucks? Conversely, if a moron lays out a program and everyone buys, is the guy in reality a great communicator or is it just the program is so great?

I personally don’t think Obama is a great communicator – or even a good one. And the fact that his programs are terrible doesn’t help to mitigate that impression.
- tracycoyle | 02/27/2010 @ 13:04
Seen this?
- bpenni | 02/27/2010 @ 13:48
Nope. And I’m doubtful that the Little Emperor called the “summit” together to become educated in such frank terms.

Anyway, if He won’t listen, I certainly will. That’s two new subscriptions on my Yootoobs, so thanks for that.
- mkfreeberg | 02/27/2010 @ 14:07
Podhoretz calls Obama “startlingly condescending at moments.” How can that be avoided when you’re trying to have a high-level discussion with people who reply either on debunked claims at best and talk radio-level slogans at worst?

Word has apparently gone out from Obama, that the supporters of his health care proposals are to start calling-in to various talk-radio shows around the country, and a list has been provided. Talking points have also been issues, complete with bogus statistics. Rush Limbaugh’s program was apparently a late addition to that list.

He was discussing this on Friday’s show. He said that at first, his show was noticeably absent from the list, and after considering several possible explanations, he eventually settled on “they’re afraid to call here, because they know” that they’ll be run over, defeated, embarrassed, destroyed, whatever it was. He believed that they would be able to stand up to his rhetoric.

During the broadcast, one of Rush’s staff informed him that his show had been added to the list, so Rush then invited these Obama “acolytes” to call his show and debate with him. I was disappointed that none did during the ensuing two-odd hours. Maybe on Monday one will stop by.

Rush proceeded to mock Obama’s performance at the health care summit, and ran several sound clips from Republicans who oppose the plans before Congress. And rightfully so on both counts.
- cylarz | 02/28/2010 @ 03:27
If a great communicator lays out a program, and no one is buying, does that mean they suck? or the program sucks? Conversely, if a moron lays out a program and everyone buys, is the guy in reality a great communicator or is it just the program is so great?

Well, remember what Morgan said awhile back. He stated that good ideas don’t need selling, or if they do, they move just as well with a marginal salesman as with a great one. It’s the bad ideas that need great salesmen to get them sold.

If nobody is buying the product, the salesman may be bad or merely average…but it almost certainly means that the product sucks.

Did I get that right, Morgan?
- cylarz | 02/28/2010 @ 03:30
Yes, you would be referring to Thing I Know #271. Sales, in general, is a field in which you need to resign yourself to just doing what the next guy could do just as well, nothing more and nothing less. There are no benefits to possessing superior abilities in this craft — unless you’re trying to rip people off.

Someone please enlighten me on this hero worship for people who are good at selling things. An excellent salesman is useless in selling an adequate product; an adequate salesman will move it just as quick. You only need an excellent salesman to sell a crappy, substandard product, or excessive quantities of a product, that people don’t need. Fact is, if you’re in sales, you want to do a superior job, you want to realize the benefits of being better than the rest, but you also want to deal honestly with people, you’re in the wrong line of work.

Me, I’d never be able to survive it. I’d just stick with the Golden Rule, and sell stuff I’d want to have sold to me. Then I imagine I’d get my ass kicked by the Obama types selling their crap…my cynicism against human gullibility would increase logarithmically, which in my case would probably mean my existence would result in a singularity and I’d turn into a black hole that would engulf the earth and send it into another universe.

I really, really, really do not trust “excellent” salesmen, in politics or out of it. And I’m completely lost as to why anybody else does.
- mkfreeberg | 02/28/2010 @ 05:49
[…] Blogger friend Buck dropped this into the comments, and it needs to see light, get around, be seen. Especially by the Medicators mentioned […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/28/2010 @ 08:45

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On the “Health Care Summit”Saturday, February 27th, 2010

On the “Health Care Summit”
Saturday, February 27th, 2010