Skills and Intellect of President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama is a name known around the world thanks to his political triumphs and historical presidency. He has an extensive educational background and has a strong political resume to match. In the book Reading Obama by James Kloppenberg, Kloppenberg not only applauded President Obama’s educational journey as a means to developing the necessary skills to be a leader, but also viewed Obama as an intellectual and philosophical president which he believes are unique characteristics only present in a minority of American historians. Kloppenberg uses Obama’s own publications, such as his published books as well as issues of the Harvard Law Review, as an analytical tool to develop what he believes is Obama’s political philosophy. While other presidents, such as Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, where viewed as extremely intelligent, Kloppenberg viewed Obama as a rare breed, an intellectual. Furthermore, Kloppenberg argues that given Obama’s ethical and academic merits, generated through his vast educational endeavors, Obama developed the essential skills and intellectual aptitude to lead our country as President of the United States.

In the course of President Obama’s educational accomplishments, as a student at Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School in addition to being a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Obama developed a sense of intellectual virtues. Kloppenberg explains that Obama was a student during a time of intellectual pandemonium. Issues such as race, religion, sexuality, feminism, and the constitutionality of these issues were at the forefront and a hot topic amid college campuses. While moving further away from liberalism, these influential universities where producing a ...

... middle of paper ...

...ing to others then speaking in order to gather imperative information about an issue. He forms a rational opinion, as an intellectual, and uses this trait in his political career. He is able to merge the roles of intellectual and politician through his political philosophy of pragmatism and practice of deliberative democracy. He is centered around solving problems and using the reality of situations, oppose to opportunism or natural law, to come to a rational conclusion. Through the use of his academic past and intellectual thinking, Obama has developed a distinctive presidential method. To understand how President Obama has reconciled his role as an intellectual and as a politician, one must not purely observe the ideals that motivate pragmatism and deliberative democracy, but should consider also the academic and political history that lead to Obama’s presidency.