When Barack Obama ran for President, his followers went into fits of ecstasy about electing a Harvard intellectual to the office.   Finally, they argued, we’ll have a real thinker in charge — as opposed, apparently, to his Yale- and Harvard-educated predecessor.  We’ll get real solutions to heretofore intractable problems. Obama’s complex intellect would outshine anything that preceded him in the Oval Office, and the oceans would recede and the Earth would cool, etc etc etc.

So what kind of insight and keen problem-solving do we get after one of the worst environmental emergencies in the US since the Exxon Valdez?  What brilliant, complex, and original solution has The Great Intellect delivered unto us?

This:

President Barack Obama has privately expressed his frustration to senior government officials that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has not been stopped and has made clear his feelings about it.

“Plug the damn hole,” he has told them, according to aides.

Whoa.  Just imagine if we didn’t have Obama’s superior intellect to solve the big problems.  Who ever would have thought that the solution to a broken pipe pouring out thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be to plug it?

And just imagine —  his aides are so proud of it, they’re telling the press all about it five weeks after the blowout.  It’s the only answer Obama has supplied thus far, of course.  Thank goodness we have bona fide intellectuals running the show now.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!