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....”prides himself on his intellectual accuracy”....

I am 51 years old....I know people that have Doctorates in extremely hard fields and i know people that barely made it through high school....The most intelligent and pure photographic memory people i know are not intellectuals....America does not run on intellectuals. In the Navy, i knew a country boy from east Texas that was pretty much the smartest person i ever met. I was in a very technical field and his reasoning and recall was nothing short of amazing. Levin is not in his league and many others.

I agree with you entirely about ‘intellectuals’. That word is incredibly overused, and what does it really mean? There are smart people everywhere, and lots of not so impressive people in positions of power. In our country, at this point in history, the biggest ticket to a political career is an academic pedigree, and that is decided by either 1) how focused, ambitious, and hard-working you were in high school (sometimes at the expense of normal emotional growth), 2) Being from a ‘connected’ family - usually on the basis of money or fame, or 3) Being part of an appropriate minority or desired group (this includes foreign students, because universities earn ‘diversity points’ for all of these things).

The US, unlike Japan and many other countries, has not traditionally determined the ‘fate’ of children on the basis of ‘academic’ criteria at an early age. We've always allowed for ‘late bloomers’, and this, IMHO, has been a great thing and of great advantage to our society. If all American children were told that their future would be determined by how well they did in elementary school and high school, their focus would be different and many of those who wound up valedictorians etc. would likely not have achieved that if everyone was a ambitious and focused. I don't advocate for that, because I think emotional intelligence is at least as important as academic achievement in determining who is going to be a productive member of society.

My two cents..