Is Sarah Palin smarter than Barack Obama?

Sophistication is generally of the East Coast, but it is most vividly an Ivy League code, one that can be mastered by any quasi-intellectual capable of parroting the obligatory shibboleths and reciting them in the proper context and order, and doing so with the arrogance of surety. Being of the moment is essential to the cult of sophistication, and to deviate from whatever the latest latest might be is to be stigmatized as "so yesterday!" Not even the sophisticates of past years could qualify; how cool were Edith Wharton and Henry James, and what did they know about global hip?

Mastering the code is so easy because it requires little actual thinking; rather, it is essentially an emotional salve, communication at the feely-touchy level. Wild-eyed liberals are the most emotional creatures on earth, and part of their ardency is expressed in their conviction that they are "intellectual." For example, a recent polite-sneer job about Glenn Beck in The New Yorker was nothing but a sustained exercise in sophomoric rhetoric, without the least nod toward substance. Of course Beck can be irritating, and he's often a clown; nevertheless, a clown can sometimes be the smartest loony in the bin (e.g., the Fool in "King Lear").

As for Obama: it is astonishing to witness the mindless worship of his mind. Everyone speaks of his intelligence, precisely as they either pity poor Sarah Palin's lack thereof or pretend that her being one of the folks - a "populist" - excuses her from the need to rely upon anything in the way of complex problem solving. Not only that, she's beautiful, therefore an air head, right? (And why has no one mentioned the sexist bias of the attacks on her?)

But exactly how intelligent is Obama? Must not intelligence be manifest at some level, and in some way, in action? Obviously; if it weren't, it would be no more than a verbal ghost. And upon close examination, much of Obama's intelligence dwindles into various poses of sophistication. He talks like a Harvard graduate and he seems to think like one, which isn't very impressive, when you... well, think about it. Years ago, in a Dick Cavett interview, Anthony Burgess (the author of "A Clockwork Orange" and a real by-God intellectual) understood this, saying that any worthwhile literature coming out of the U.S. would come from the hinterland, not the Ivy Leagues.

As for Obama's actions, most simply will not pass disinterested scrutiny. His shoveling such great sums of money into the automobile industry, for example, was risky because neither he nor any of his advisers paused to ask themselves who was going to buy all of those cars being goosed into production. Here, of course, Obama was simply reflecting the liberal/leftist assumption that the primary goal of industry is to provide jobs for workers rather than produce consumer goods.

Then not too long after the automobile bail-out, Obama began to talk about mass-transit systems; but luckily for his reputation, he hasn't dwelt much upon that, conceivably because some spoil-sport in his administration was bright enough to understand what a negative effect a mass-transit system would have upon the auto industry.

One could go on and on, citing the gaudy mistakes of this administration in, for example, a foreign policy pretty much confined to Bushwhacking and confessions of our collective U.S. guilt in creating all of the world's grief. And then there are the grotesque specimens he's chosen for his cabinet, such as Eric Holder as attorney general, who wasted a lot of time trying to indict the CIA water-boarders, accusing them of subjecting the hoodlum terrorists to a torture that many of the CIA members themselves had voluntarily undergone.

So given all of this, how did Obama get elected as president? Essentially, he got elected because of his mastery of the rhetorical short-jab, which is to say, his skill in segregating his speech into units of five to 15 words, each unit bound by a dramatic drop in his voice, suggestive of conclusiveness, conviction and a mastery of the subject. This rhetorical flair is the essence of his celebrated gift for being articulate.

Does all of this add up to an indictment of Obama's intelligence? Does it turn out that he is, after all, actually stupid? Of course not. Much of the stupidity in his decisions derives from the essentially emotional bias of liberals, which enables them to utilize logic sufficiently to maneuver through some of the treacherous channels of their political premises, but hardly achieve a lucidity and breadth compatible with profundity or wisdom. Of course Obama is intelligent; successfully running the campaign gauntlet is undeniably some measure of intelligence. Nevertheless, his intelligence is imprisoned within the confines of the gothic infatuations of a doctrinaire liberalism. There's a point beyond which it just doesn't help to be sophisticated.

As for Sarah Palin - it turns out that her "common sense" is not all that common, after all. Indeed, it's a shame it's not available to help domesticate some of the giddier infatuations of the Obama administration.

Editor's note: Jack Matthews of rural Athens is a distinguished professor emeritus of English at Ohio University. He is the author of "Memoirs of a Bookman" and other books about book collecting, as well as novels. The Etruscan Press has scheduled his next novel, "The Gambler's Nephew" for May, 2011.