Barack Obama... We're Just Too Boring for His Brilliance

"He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”   That's what Valerie Jarrett, longtime advisor to Barack Obama says about her boss, as quoted in an article in today's Politico entitled, "The ego factor: Can Obama change?"

The comment is very revealing.  It's a mantra every middle-school principal has heard hundreds of times by parents of supposedly "brilliant" children who just can't seem to get their work done or get it done neatly or get it done on time.   "He's just so bored."   Then, when the same child does poorly in high school, or college, or in their first jobs, it's always the same.   "It's just not challenging enough for someone like him," their parents will say, excusing their failures.  

Barack Obama has been told -- largely by the women in his life -- that he was brilliant, probably since he was a child.  So when things got hard, instead of doing the difficult work necessary for real achievement, he became "bored," and moved on.   Writing a law review article too difficult?  "Bored" Obama becomes the first Harvard Law Review editor not to write and publish.   Actual legal practice too difficult?  "Bored" Obama becomes a community organizer and part-time lecturer at a law school.  Writing and publishing legal research as a professor too difficult?   "Bored" Obama manages to be probably the only professor in the history of the University of Chicago law school to maintain his position without doing any serious legal scholarship.   Taking positions on difficult political issues as a state legislator?  "Bored" Obama votes "present."

It explains a lot, methinks.