Why Are We Still Saying Obama Is So Smart?

Readers may know that I read and highly value analysis by Walter Russell Mead.  Here is my conundrum though.  Interspersed among his very often scathing (justified, IMO) criticism of Obama's leadership and policies, he feels the need to include qualifiers like this.

President Obama is not a stupid man. After more than four years in the White House, he cannot be called a naive man or an inexperienced leader. He is not, despite the suspicions of some of his angrier critics, actively seeking to undermine the prestige and the power of the United States.

I have no doubt that WRM actually believes this but I'm wondering if perhaps this fundamental assumption ought to be revisited in light of what is now a substantial body of work.  (Readers know that I don't necessarily subscribe to the smart as a whip theory.)  WMR readily admits that Obama has terrible instincts.  So, why then does more often than not act on those instincts rather than deferring to advisers in the full knowledge that he has bad instincts?  Why also does he consistently violate certain basic premises of common sense, like the admonition that the more you speak the less value your words are afforded.   Surely Obama must know of the rank intellectual dishonesty that he has been guilty of through his political ascendency, no?  So, we have a leader who is arguably not self-aware, not possessed of common sense and indifferent to intellectual dishonesty.  While that is not synonymous with "stupid, it is isn't synonymous with smart either.

I do not deny that Obama is gifted in many aspects and I am not saying that he is a dolt.  What I am saying is that the blindly accepted notion that Obama possesses intelligence that is other than ordinary needs to be revisited analytically.  Here is a man who has walked into as politically advantageous an environment as can be imagined and ridden a wave of unthinking adulation, and what has he done?  Arguably his only accomplishment has been to pass a wildly unpopular law that appears to be mechanically impossible and thus structurally unstable.  He appears to have bungled foreign policy beyond the point of mere ineffectiveness but to the tangible detriment of US interests and prestige abroad.  He has led his party to a historic defeat in 2010 (don't forget the state houses!) with little discernible electoral optimism on the horizon.  He has allowed his administration to get bogged down in numerous thoroughly avoidable scandals, threatening his entire second term agenda.  He has consistently spent his political capital on non-priority issues for the American people, and consistently failed to achieve his aims.  I could go on, but this is the analysis from 30,000 feet.  So I ask again, is this the work product of an extraordinarily intelligent man?

I would say it is not.  Not of a stupid man, but of one who is merely average.  I think, objectively Obama is average.  Why am I pressing the point?  Because I want the fawners, acolytes, and partisans to admit that they were suckered. I want them to admit that they were wrong.  I want them to admit to what they are - fanboys.  Emotionally-driven, unthinking, hero-seeking.  And that they acted this way with something as serious as our countries leadership.  I want nothing less.