It would be best if we just stopped using any reference to the smartness or dumbness, etc of political leaders.
Charles
Jim Farmelant
Carrol Cox writes:
> I've been complaining for years on this e-list about the tendency to
>
> identify intelligence with correct results. Michael is still
> actually
> assuming this, because "instincts" is just another euphemism for
> intellect. There is no such thing as a wrong or a right instinct.
I think there are several points to be made:
1) The policies that US presidents choose to pursue are
seldom, if ever, cooked up, by the presidents themselves.
Instead, they are usually developed by their advisers, with
the assistance of university academics, people from thinktanks,
people from special interest groups, etc. Most of these people
are certainly at least as bright and well educated as anyone
on this list
2) Concerning G.W. Bush, while I wouldn't consider him to be
by far the brightest of US presidents, he is not necessarily
a dummy either. His SAT scores were reportedly only
slightly lower than Al Gore's (and some people here may
remember that Gore basically flunked out of grad school.
3) In the GOP there seems to have been long a tradition of
producing presidents who played dumb in order to appeal
to their base. Dwight Eisenhower was one such example.
He was famous for giving press conferences in which he
would give confused and garbled answers to questions
submitted to him by reporters. As a consequence he was
often openly derided by liberal intellectuals, who liked to
compare him unfavorably to Adlai Stevenson, who the
intellectuals seemed to think was more qualified to be
president. In fact Einsenhower had been the successful
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WW II.
After the war, he even served as short stint as president
of Columbia University. Such a man was not likely to
be a dummy. And we now know from the diaries that
kept as POTUS that when he often gave those confused
and garbled answers at press conferences, he was doing so
quite deliberately, either because he did not wish to answer
the questions being asked of him or because he wanted to
throw his adversaries off their guard.
3) Ronald Reagan, likewise, had a reputation for being a "dummy",
for being an "amiable dunce", as Tip O'Neill was reportedly
quoted as describing him. On the face of things, there seems
little evidence that he actually was a dummy. Regardless of
what we might think of his policies, the man had too many
political successes to be casually dismissed, as many liberals
were apt to do with him when he was president. I think
that somewhere along the line, he learned that it could be
quite expedient to play the role of "amiable dunce."
Throughout his political careeer, his adversaries consistently
underestimated him to their own peril. And like earlier
Republican presidents like Ike, I think that Reagan realized
that whenever he was attacked by liberals as being
unintelligent, uninformed, or downright ignorant, such
attacks only enhanced his appeal within his own base.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math