When Sarah Palin looked nice they went on how much she must have spent on cloths on make-up.

It is religious. And I think it is scary and dangerous.

Hmm, so are you know admitting that Bush was very smart? I don't understand this whole double standard. Bush was stupid yet somehow he was briliant enough to win the elections twice?

Touche.  Actually, to the left Bush was simultaneously the dumbest chimp of a chump President in history and the most evil genius of a backroom schemer in history.  I'm much more impressed with someone who can be brilliant while looking stupid than someone who can be a dunce while looking brilliant.  The media's infatuation with BO is a little too reminiscent of Chauncey Gardiner for me.

Clearly we have very different views of brilliance. I've never thought it has to be tied to selflessness (eg you can have a brilliant lawyer, or accountant, or high school student who's never volunteered a day in their life) but if you do that's your right as a native English speaker. But I'm not going to participate further in this discussion when the goal posts are so unusual and unpredictable.

It's not admitting. I think he has the common sense of a beetle, and is hideously blinded by ideology, but he hired good people (Rove) who could compensate for his weaknesses, That's pretty smart.

Perhaps.

But in this case I think it more likely that you are assuming a context-free environment. It is not. I thought it was clear that I was talking about Obama's brilliance with regard to leading or serving a country.

I still don't consider selflessness to be particularly important in leading or serving a country. Brilliant leaders rarely show much selflessness save through the intensity of their work. Charity workers, for example, aren't more likely to be brilliant leaders than Rhodes scholars, who are handpicked for intelligence, leadership and sporting ability.

It's still not relevant.

I am looking for examples of Obama's brilliance, not explanations for why examples of his charity work wouldn't qualify.

  That is because liberals want you to think they are so smart, and conservatives are so dumb!  So of course it works for the feeble minded.  But guess what?  If you let your opponent define you, you have lost.  SO YOU think that, and the rest of us with the ability of critical thinking will KNOW differently.

I keep clicking on here to see if there's some brilliant thing Obama said or did that I'm not aware of.  I mean certainly with all the millions who voted for him.  There must be something?

You guys are really letting me down.

Nothing? 

You've said that for him to be considered brilliant in the context of a leader, he must first be doing his unique, clever thing for entirely selfless, altruistic reasons. Which means charity work is the only thing that might be in with a chance of qualifying, and even then that may be dubious depending on where you stand on human psychology.

What you seem to have done is create extremely difficult criteria seemingly for the sole purpose of making it impossible to refute your argument that he's not brilliant.

Now that's what I call brilliant.

1. I didn't say he wasn't brilliant.

2. There are many, many people who have actually managed to do something brilliant that it actually useful to other people, in both politics and other areas.

3. We are on page 2 of this discussion now and STILL nobody managed to point out anything brilliant Obama has said or done, but we did get criticism of the question, a few personal attacks, and arguing over semantics.

It seems like there is simply not much substance in this Obama phenomenon. And apart from his allegiance to a racist preacher I cannot find anything truly remarkable about Mr Obama (as opposed to something remarkable about the media spectacle he has become), and, apparently, neither can you or anybody else.

Of course you haven't had any examples (apart from the ones I gave in my first post) because you've made the definition so unusually specific.

Interesting you say that - I've never seen much point in differentiating the two. If the original actually cared about their media appearance, they would change it. But if they don't, then that's acceptance.

I think it's quite remarkable how easily he's become a symbol and not simply an individual. Americans rarely go for demigods in the political arena, but that's what they have with Obama. It takes one of several kinds of people to pull it off. Whether he's passive, submissive, devious or simply has a good understanding of the psychology of the group is something we're only going to see with time. Assuming he's not assassinated, of course.

Whoever put the caption there is clearly a fool - if you were engaged in a circle jerk, why would your hands form a circle? Clearly it's saying "my dick is shaped like a coke bottle". On a complete sidetrack, I'm digging the Russian-inspired art that Obama seems to be depicted in. Everything looks like a revolutionary propaganda poster drawn with blood and crayons by some unfortunate 1920s gulag attendee. It's very now.

Actually, there's something else remarkable - he's inspiring the revival of an old and pretty cool school of art.

just checking in and I can see..........nope..........nothing yet. 

I don't find the "definition" so unusually specific.

I know many a politician who has done or said something brilliant, something that would justify celebrating him, something that make him a good leader. It's only when Obama is the object of the question that it becomes "unusually specific"; it's like questioning him is a big taboo, as if the question creates a paradox that must be fought, must not be thought about.

Even you yourself, in that first comment you refer to, said that it is "too early to know" what he will do or say to justify the celebrations.