I Can Do Anything Better Than You

I just finished reading Charles Johnson's superb Why Coolidge Matters:  Leadership Lessons from America's Most Underrated President and a quote in the afterword caught my eye.  The quote comes from Thomas Gammack, a businessman, who in 1928 said the following about Herbert Hoover, who would soon take the presidential reigns from Coolidge:

Mr. Hoover is confident that he knows more about finance then financiers, more about industry than industrialists, and more about agriculture then agriculturalists. He is so sure of his judgement in these field that he wants to impress it on others. He is very seldom willing to take advice. Since he knows more than any advisers could, why should he?

I feel like I have heard something like this before:

I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director.

Oh right, that was Barack Obama in 2008.  Looks like Obama is in some good company then.