Let's not make hasty generalizations. These individuals are not "ordinary Americans", but Ivy-league college educated elite more concerned about abstract ideas than real life people,
McKinley may have been Ivy League, Wilson was. Powell was a Pointer. Nixon & Reagan went to little Illinois schools for college, though Nixon went to Duke for law school. Did Johnson go to college? Truman didn't. Jackson didn't. He probably never went to school at all. And of all these people, only Wilson could be described as having enough of a familiarity with an abstract idea to recognize one if he tripped over it. --jks