Earlier today I got into a discussion with several people who seem convinced that Palin is unintelligent. The basis of this argument relied mostly on the fact that Palin did a poor job answering several questions posed to her by some biased reporters. Apparently, according to this argument, unintelligent is defined as an inability to articulate well.

Given the definition of intelligence being used to characterize Palin, one would be forced to conclude that Obama is unintelligent as well.

Some might be tempted to revise their definition of unintelligence to get around the problem of a momentary poor articulation. They might argue that Palin has proven herself to be unintelligent because she is unable to answer a question.

We see here Obama falling all over himself attempting to answer a simple question. Defining intelligence as an inability to answer questions clearly would force you to conclude that Obama lacks intelligence in the same way that Palin does.

Some have argued that Palin is unintelligent because she was using rhetoric to criticize earmarks that went towards experiments using fruit flys. She was ignorant in how this kind of research can lead to discoveries that might help alleviate or eliminate down syndrome. Lacking the knowledge of how this supposed basic science operates, so the argument goes, indicates she is unintelligent.

I would argue that more fundamental then knowing the role of fruit fly research to clinical research, is knowing how many states are in the Union. Here we clearly see that such basic knowledge is elusive for Obama. If the argument goes that not knowing basic facts makes you unintelligent then Obama is even less intelligent than Palin.

By the way Biden is unintelligent like Palin and Obama.

This clip of Obama is just painful. About halfway through things fall apart and he really struggles to articulate something coherent. Its nice because it shows how even Obama struggles with responding to someone that is antagonistic towards him in the way Couric and Gibson were towards Palin.

This clip is also nice because it shows just how important editing can be for making a candidate look articulate. Among the stuttering and poor sentence formulation Obama gave some smart answers particularly on the back end. An editor could easily excise most of the stuttering and that would give the viewer the impression that Obama gave a much more articulate response then he actually did. Alternatively, an editor from the Daily Show could easily excise the articulate portions making Obama look like a bumbling idiot. This is why selective editing, made popular by Michael Moore, is utterly useless in providing actual information about a candidate. Its also why I criticize using anything from the show as being useful for actual information.

Do I think Obama is unintelligent? Taking into consideration the clips in this post and embracing the ways in which many of readers have argued shows Palin to be unintelligent, I would be forced to concede that Obama is just as unintelligent as Palin. However, I think only a fool would seriously feel comfortable judging Obama’s intelligence based solely on a few clips in which he speaks inarticulate. The only question I have is why are so many of my readers foolishly judging Palin’s intelligence on a couple of clips?

One more thing I want to mention. This silly nit picking, where one politician made this gaffe and another politician made another gaffe is thoroughly uninteresting to me. Putting this post together was literally work. I’m not stupid, I realize that human beings sometimes say things poorly, god knows I do it every day. Perfection is not an attribute any human can claim. And yet partisans love to point to these slips as if they indicate something important. The fact of the matter is they don’t. Bush, McCain, Palin, Biden, Obama are all intelligent enough to run as the chief executive of the country, even if their detractors are successful in framing their gaffes as something more meaningful then they actually are.

Now that is has been established that all candidates, by my readers definition, are unintelligent lets have talk about policy. You know the part of politics that’s interesting.

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