My bringing up Reagan was based on the assumption that people here at least would immediately perceive his superiority to Romney. Which is to say of course politicians aren’t intellectuals. We don’t expect them to be. Reagan certainly wasn’t.
As for your ecomium, show a little restraint, please. I’m not comparing him to Joe Biden. Reagan is a politician. There have been smarter and dumber, lazier and more dedicated. But come on; he was just a politician. We don’t expect them to be philosophers, because they can’t be. That takes genius, but beyond that time and almost fanatical devotion. It is exceptionally rare among politicians, and that goes double for politicians in democratic times.
Pretty much the only president who rise to that level are Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. Wilson was an actual political scientist/historian/whatever, and actually was influential way back when. That’s about it. Because, and this is my main point: we don’t expect that from politicians.
You just don’t know Reagan.
You seem to lack the depth to see where he stands in history, and in winning the disastrously unfinished WWII which was heading to our eventual defeat, and which would eventually end in our final suicidal spasm of resistance called WWIII, he is our greatest war time president, and he barely fired a shot, the man was a genius, far superior to the lesser minds that you think superior to his.
Before Reagan we knew the world was doomed, that communism was eating the world, and that at some unknown point, total global, thermonuclear war would end what we knew was a forever stalemate, that could only end in Communism’s victory, or in mutual destruction, a total reset of the human race.
Reagan knew better, he knew that he could undo the Gordian knot, if only he could make himself the most powerful man on earth. Thankfully Reagan knew how to out smart and defeat everyone who ever stood in his path.