JFK was the most avid at this. I recall he had a particularly high-wattage assembly of cultural dignitaries at the White House once and delivered a line that someone had written for him about the gathering being the most impressive show of talent there since Thomas Jefferson had dined at the White House alone. The line is kind of spoiled, though, when you think that Mr. American Renaissance Man wouldn't have been dining alone, exactly, but surrounded, as always, by slaves.
BTW, the most intellectual prexies would have to be Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt -- a sad comment indeed on the powers of the human intellect.
Carl