God Save us from Another Cerebral President

A liberal at Politico has taken the original step of questioning the intellectual capacity of a GOP candidate for president

Funny, no one on the left ever questions the intelligence of laff-a-minute good-for-nothing-but-government Maxine Waters or gaff-master good-for-nothing-but-government Joe Biden. Dim bulbs flicker across the liberal landscape, but progressives persist in smearing successful conservatives (George Bush got higher grades than Al Gore, remember?). Here’s the latest poop throwing monkey attack:

Another Texas governor who drops his “g’s” and scorns elites is running for president and the whispers are the same: lightweight, incurious, instinctual.

Strip away the euphemisms and Rick Perry is confronting an unavoidable question: Is he dumb — or just “misunderestimated?” (Politico - Is Rick Perry Dumb?)

Cerebral presidencies are rarely successful

Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama. All supposedly highly-intelligent, all dismal failures.  A president doesn’t need to be a genius, he just needs to be an effective manager and a bold leader, traits not normally found in ivory tower eggheads.

There are different kinds of smarts. There’s book smarts, street smarts, and an ability to think on ones feet, evaluate information and make good decisions using a combination of logical thinking and gut instinct nurtured by experience. Those of us with working class dads who never saw the inside of a college classroom can tell you how we marveled at the man’s ability to smell a rat and avoid making stupid mistakes. 

Leadership takes that special kind of smarts, and intellectuals usually don’t fit the bill. The best leaders, be they sergeants or generals are smart, but not the brainy Newt Gingrich intellectual type. They are interested in ideas only for their practical use, not as an academic pursuit.  Good leaders can ingest information, often conflicting, presented to them by experts. They can evaluate that information against experience and empirical evidence and pull the trigger without the dithering and the drama.

The two most important qualities to look for in a president are Philosophy and Judgment

Philosophy tells us where the candidate wants to lead the nation, and judgment tells us if he can take us there or not. Our best leaders picked good people and trusted them, encouraging open debate and then synthesizing the information to craft policy. Putting philosophy aside, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush were all very good at this. Barack Obama is not, and he's ill-served by an inept staff to boot.

Rick Perry has demonstrated these successful leadership qualities in his 10 plus years as Texas Governor:

“If he doesn’t know the answer, he’s going to find someone who does,” the lobbyist said. “He recognizes good help and brings ’em on for advice. He’s not going to know every foreign leader — but he has the good sense and instincts to pick good people who help him make good decisions.”

“Pilots execute flight plans,” Miller said. “They have a plan, they fly a certain pattern and that’s the way he’s always operated — he has a flight plan for what he’s trying to do and he executes.”

Mike Baselice, Perry’s longtime pollster, said his client is of the Ronald Reagan school of management: “Trust people and manage well.” (Politico - Is Rick Perry Dumb?)

Indeed, it’s the presidents who get too far in the weeds who get into trouble

Think Lyndon Johnson with maps of Vietnam on his desk planning bombing raids or Jimmy Carter making unilateral and ill-considered moralistic decisions on foreign policy that redounded greatly to our nation’s detriment. I’ve seen sergeants and colonels make the same mistakes during my military career.

A president can’t do it all anyway; the galaxy of subject matter is too vast for any one brain to comprehend.  I had the great fortune to study colonels and generals up close during my last few years in the Air Force. Like presidents, people who are in charge of vast enterprises are not the technocrats figuring out every problem. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were not writing code while running their respective companies as CEO. They are leading a team and managing its efforts.

The best leaders take the long and broad view, set the tone and transmit the game plan, leaving their experts to solve the Rubic's Cube.  David Harsanyi explains…

That doesn't make them "dumb." What makes a person dumb is repeating mistakes when all the evidence tells him to stop for his own good. We will witness this human shortcoming when the president rolls out his new "stimulus" package.

Some ideas, goes Orwell's saying, are so dumb only intellectuals can believe them.

On the other hand, reflexive anti-intellectualism (a misguided belief on the right that was spurred by having to share the word "intellectual" with Cornel West) is also destructive. If you're going to propose more than hope in 2012—say, some policy—you have to be prepared with scholarly backup. (Harsanyi – You Don’t Have to be Smart, Just Right)