Ugh. You don’t get. You can be a genius and never do anything with your life. To specifically be an intellectual, to understand and traffic in ideas, you have to be cultured. You have to devote an awful lot of time to “the best that has been thought and said.” Reagan had time to read and think and write, but not for that.
If he wad a genius, it was in practical politics and public relations. Not in higher culture. In transmitting the thoughts of others to the masses, not in thinking them up himself. If you don’t believe me try reading his stuff then reading something by a man of culture along similar lines, like “The Road to Serfdom.” It’s like going from preschool to law school.
Good luck with your crusade, but in time history will place Reagan among all of history’s greats, Reagan’s mind created that, his mind literally shaped a world, he was not the simple tool being sent upstairs with an atta boy when the smart people finished with him.
Or as you said it “”he deserved at most an “attar boy, now go upstairs while the big boys talk.”””