…such a lousy rhetorician?

if Obama is following popular sentiment, he certainly isn’t leading it. And has he ever managed to do that? The New York Times’s incoherent mishmash of an editorial on the speech tries to damn him with faint praise: “At his best, the president can be hugely persuasive.” But even that praise is highly unpersuasive. True, Obama was persuasive enough to get elected president–but that was with a hapless opponent, a dour nepotist as his intraparty rival, a public fed up with the other party, and a media-driven cult of personality.

Part of that cult of personality is the myth that he is the World’s Greatest Orator, a myth the Times evokes with its hazy recollections of times when he was “highly persuasive.” When was he highly persuasive? When he sold the public on the so-called stimulus and ObamaCare? When he campaigned for Democrats in 2010? When he rallied public support for his last change in Afghan policy, an increase in the U.S. troop presence?

The truth is, there’s an Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to Obama’s supposed status as the World’s Greatest Orator. We’ve heard the myth of his eloquence over and over, yet he keeps “unexpectedly” making gaffes or tin-eared statements.

I’ve always thought his oratorical powers, like most if not all of his vaunted aspects, greatly overrated.

[Update early afternoon]

What’s up with all the presidential gaffes?

When you add up all the mistakes he’s made–not slips of the tongue, but real errors in statements and speeches he could read from the ubiquitous teleprompter–they make quite a number. So what? you may ask. The answer is that hundreds of people traditionally read the drafts of presidential speeches and statements. That happens for two good reasons. First, presidential utterances are instant policy. It’s hard to walk away from a public statement. Second, the myriad political appointees want their leader to look good, and they strain to ensure the accuracy of his statements. Or at least they did when I had first-hand knowledge of such things, now a few years back.

I don’t think that is happening in this administration. A friend said to me earlier today that he was really amazed at the discipline of Obama’s team, specifically in the small number of leaks compared with previous administrations–especially W’s years. It’s a good point, and that only happens when information flow is severely restricted; when only a handful of folks know what’s happening, chances to leak are reduced. (On the recent decision on force level reductions in Afghanistan, for example, most of the “inside the Beltway” rumors were dead wrong).

I suspect that drafts of presidential speeches and statements are treated the same way. I think they are only circulated among a very small number of people for comment, and those people are probably very busy, and don’t have the time to check things like the precise name and history of a Medal of Honor recipient.

That would explain today’s embarrassment (embarrassment to us, to the nation–he speaks for us, after all–since he doesn’t seem to suffer embarrassment very often), but it doesn’t explain things like the apology for his lack of fluency in “Austrian” or his lack of knowledge that we have a Marine Corps (pronounced “core”). That comes from lousy education, from lack of basic knowledge about the world. And if I’m right about the small number of administration officials who get to see his words before they’re delivered in public, it tells us that they, too, aren’t properly educated.

It tells us that the president and his trusted advisers are the products of the atrocious, politically correct educational system that’s wrecking the country in so many ways. And it’s very worrisome. It’s part of the Orwellian universe that envelops many of our leaders, a universe in which they feel free to simply invent “facts” so long as they fit the emotional and ideological pattern that really matters to the elite.

I think it also tells us that he himself is the ultimate poster child for affirmative action, and continues to be.