Some Thoughts About Presidents
It amazes me that most people don’t think that it would be helpful if the president was highly intelligent. I understand that many of the president’s duties include things where other attributes besides great intelligence are required. And I also realize that most of the super brilliant people have concentrated on one field of expertise, usually math, science, finance or games, to the point that they are not well rounded enough to make a good president.
The thing is though that there is a lot of room between Richard Nixon and Stephen Hawking. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are very very smart without being obviously geeky. Warren Buffet for instance. Do you doubt that in his younger days he would have made a better president, if he set his mind to it, than almost all our politicians?
When I talk about being “very smart” I do not necessarily mean that the person has to have expertise in difficult subjects. Rather I mean he should have the talent to learn them. A president should be capable of learning differential equations, beating the options market, becoming a life master at bridge, attaining a 2000 chess rating and doing well at Jeapardy. And I think a few of our past presidents were in fact this intelligent. I admit that it is possible that someone can become a great president without this much mental ability, and that having this ability does not guarantee a good president. But if you stay away from the absent minded professor types there is little doubt that the smarter guy has the edge.
Some might claim that high intelligence isn’t neccesary because the president has experts to give him advice about technical questions. But if he isn’t smart he won’t know whether to take the advice. It can be especially tricky when an expert is giving his narrow view but the president must take things into account that the expert isn’t. He must be able to look at the big picture. Sort of like a spreadsheet where when you change one parameter you change everything. Doing that well takes high intelligence. Period.
To be blunt, the reason why so many people think it is “elitist” and wrong to choose a president who is very intelligent and very highly educated is because to think otherwise forces average people to lower their opinion about themselves. They reluctantly admit that the brightest people should be building our weapons and developing our antibiotics because to think otherwise is ridiculous. But once the endeavor requires multiple talents they are quick to dismiss how much of a role high, non geeky intelligence plays. Interestingly the economic crisis we are having is finally making more people reluctantly come over to my point of view as it becomes more and more obvious that the candidates seem inept. A silver lining as far as I am concerned.