The brains behind the operation
Dec 17, 2007 Americana, Politics and Poker, Scientificus
Pamela Meister explodes the myth of intellectualism as a (much less the) sine qua non of qualification for the job of President of the United States.
After Reagan — who was far wiser, and smarter than given credit for, but still not strictly speaking a heavy hitter in any sort of academic sense — how can we even still ask this question? One reason is that the elites in this country still consider Reagan not only an idiot, but a failure as a President; so, too, George W. Bush, despite all the facts.
One thing’s for sure: The number one brain in this campaign must be Barack Obama, the “one who got away” — one of the few people on the planet with a path opened to him to for a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship who simply walked away from it. I don’t know if that’s really “smart,” though it seems to have “worked out” for him; still in terms of being a testament to recognition for unusual intellectual gifts, the way he was regarded at that stage of his career is extraordinary.
Of course, he should not be President.
I’m glad Meister wrote the article and is wrestling with this issue, because it’s sure to come up again once the nominations are in and the Republican is automatically painted — regardless of who it is — as the dim bulb in the race. The idea that qualification for leadership correlates meaningfully with linearly-measured intellectual achievement is a preposterous position to take, and is a favorite of people, ironically, who are not nearly as smart as they think they are.
As for me, well, for a guy who’s always showing off his brains, I’ve been pretty humbled as time goes on about what pigskins on the wall can and can’t accomplish, and the humanity and wisdom a person with no academic credentials at all can teach, and then some.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Jimmy Carter was probably the greatest President from an intellectual perspective in my lifetime. Enough said.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
The author lost me on the first sentence:
“There’s been a lot of talk within the past, oh three election cycles, about how the “smartest” or most “intellectual” candidate would make the best president.”
Really. Who said that?
If anything I remember the exact opposite. We, as a people, are apparently obsessed with electing someone who is fun to have a beer with.
Seriously, what color is the sky in Pamela Meister world?
December 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Leading Men
All one has to do is ask himself two simple questions: “Who do you consider the greatest intellectual of whom you are aware?”
Then having answered, ask yourself, “Is that person prepared to lead anyone anywhere worth going?”
The Great Leader is the Wise Leader, the Great Intellect is the Great Question.
And like most any great question, not very likely to yield any answer worth pursuing in any way whatsoever other than in theory and speech.
Theory alone is a wonderful way to speculate on life, but it is a bloody horrible way to live, and a most unwise way to lead.
Leaders lead with courage, they do not speculate on what constitutes courage. They possess it, they do not wonder about it and marvel after it as if it were an unrequited love, or a poetic conceit.
Wise leaders are courageous in wise ways, and the intellect is not the seat of courage, it is the seat of speculation.
You can admire the intelligence of the intellectual, if one is so inclined towards such admirations, but if that is all the intellectual has, that is small recommendation indeed of the man. A man is far more than the breadth and depth of his knowledge, yet for all his education this is the one fact most intellectuals will forever fail to comprehend. An education in information is not a degree of manhood.
A man is born of action, a scholar is born of scripts.
If you need a scribe or an idea-monger then choose a scholar, if you actually need something done in this world, a trail blazed, or a problem solved, choose a man instead.
He’s far better prepared to actually be one.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Jeez, Jack.
It’s like you know me or something….
December 19th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
All the same, one can be an intellectual and have the most pathetic political views. Well, a better way to state that is: You can be good at thinking and bad at politics. Look at some of our presidents– and some of our senators, and mayors and any other political office you can think of. The requirements for political office have become A) A “people person” or a good showman B) Really, really, rich C) Being outspoken about some key issue (Iraq, socialized medicine,
Guilianiabortion…In fact, it’s not so much intellectualism that counts in the end. Even though it gets talked about beforehand… both Bush and Reagan were re-elected, you know. And how intellectual is John Kerry? He was the one who got the nomination though, and nearly half the nation’s votes. Go figure.
(P.S. Same with Al Gore. Internet, global warming, etc. all lead to more attention and more money for Al. Not such a bright spark though.)
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
[...] use, a nonetheless compelling antidote to the largely unexamined conception — to some extent uncritically passed along by me — that Barack Obama has serious intellectual achievements of which he can rightly [...]