The trouble with Obama’s “summer reading”

Mickey Kaus Columnist
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Stuck in a narrow groove? My friend Jonathan Alter, who knows more about Barack Obama than I do (having helped foist him on a now-ungrateful nation), says the president is not “intellectually incurious”:

He reads very widely. But doesn’t consult enough

Well, OK. Reading “widely” is not quite the same thing as being open to the ideas you’re reading about–and Alter concedes Obama has a “creativity gap.” But Obama’s just-released “summer reading list” doesn’t offer a lot of evidence even for the “reads very widely” thesis. It’s heavy on the wrenching stories of migrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about.  … Maybe the release of this list is a bit of politicized PR BS designed to help the President out. If so, it’s sending the wrong message. Which leads me to suspect it might actually be real. …

Mickey Kaus