Kevin Drum begins to doubt his cult leader

I used to read, and frequently argue here with, longtime liberal blogger Kevin Drum, but I haven't done much of either lately. This morning, however, Instapundit sent me to Brian Doherty at Reason.com, who quoted this passage from Drum's recent post at Mother Jones:

So what should I think about this [i.e., the first six paragraphs of his post, in which Drum had listed Obama decisions that have surprised or disappointed Drum and his fellow lefties]? If it had been my call, I wouldn't have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do.

Doherty titled his mocking post "The Loyalty of the Clerks,"^* but I think that's a bit harsh to Drum. He's not a clerk. He's just a charter member of, and deeply invested in, the Cult of Obama.

I'm not even going to bother looking through Drum's past oeuvre (to use a 50¢ word I'd just as soon no one ever apply to my collected blogging) for snarky references to the book and movie called "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" to throw back at him. I'll just say this:

The problem isn't that Drum isn't as smart as Obama. I'm sure Obama, for one, shares that view of Drum. Indeed, Obama shares that view about just about everyone else too. And that's a real problem, but it's not the biggest problem.

No, the biggest problem is that Obama thinks he and, perhaps, a very small cadre of like-minded elites (an astonishing number of them either law professors or political hacks) are smart enough to know everything important. But as Ronald Reagan said: "[T]he trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." And a lot of what Obama and the lefties think they've got all figured out, and hence that they can competently manipulate at will, is actually stuff that no one is yet even capable of knowing.

So when, for example, Obama thinks he knows better than the free market how to allocate or price scarce resources, he's deluding himself and anyone who believes him. When Obama thinks he's going to use his intellect and his wit and his charisma to persuade China or Russia or Iran into doing something which their autocratic leaders don't think in their own best interests, he might as well have fallen off the turnip truck at dawn this morning.

Thus we have the free market bringing us increasingly fuel efficient cars, including hybrids and electric cars from Toyota and Nissan and Honda and even Ford that look quite promising — while Barack Obama and Government Motors are bringing us the Chevy Dolt Volt at half again (or more) the price but only half the performance. (Reliable sources inform me that the next big General Motors idea will be the introduction of two new product lines, the Lada and its upscale cousin, the Zil.)