Like Falstaff in reverse, part 2

Marc Ambinder reports that both Andrew Sullivan and Ambinder himself have been told that President Obama reads Sullivan’s blog, and that Obama has been influenced by Sullivan’s writing on torture. Ambinder cites Obama’s (erroneous) reference to Churchill in his press conference last week as proof. Ambinder adds that a senior administration official confirms that Obama was citing Sullivan.

In “Obama veers into the Daily Ditch,” I show that Sullivan’s post on Churchill’s purported proscription of torture in interrogating German spies is a howler of an error. Instead of crowing over their influence over Obama, Ambinder and Sullivan should sober up and correct the record. As I said yesterday, like Falstaff in reverse, Sullivan is not only stupid, he is the cause of stupidity in others.

Obama’s reliance on Sullivan for the erroneous proposition asserted in Obama’s press conference provides further proof that, when it comes to the basic history of the twentieth century, Obama doesn’t have a clue. See, for example, Obama’s use of the Kennedy-Khrushchev conference as an example of the utility of American presidents meeting with America’s enemies. He is poorly educated to an astonishing degree.

If Obama weren’t president of the United States, it would be laughable. To expose a man of Obama’s historical ignorance to a diet of Andrew Sullivan is like helping a victim of dehydration with water from, well, the Atlantic.

Via Mark Hemingway at NRO’s Corner.

UPDATE: I hope the White House minders who are feeding Sullivan’s deep thoughts to Obama don’t hold back Sullivan’s latest reveries on the Trig Palin conspiracy — you know, the conspiracy to make out that Sarah Palin is Trig’s mother. Sullivan’s latest reveries on Trig are truly representative of Sullivan’s illumination of the issues of the day. Unbelievable.

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