Must a President Be Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

If a man earned poor grades in college, is he fit to be the next president of the United States?

The recent attacks on the intelligence of Texas Governor Rick Perry included the charge that he was dumb and, more bitingly, was like George W. Bush only without the brains. The release of his college transcripts seemed to confirm these accusations. In fact, Frank James, writing on NPR.org, warned, “if you ever enter politics, you may one day think about running for president. And if you do decide to run, your college grades could become an issue, especially if they’re mediocre.”

But do poor college grades demonstrate a lack of intelligence? Or does being “smart” qualify someone to be president? And can you have an excellent academic pedigree and not be a good leader? History has some fascinating lessons to teach us.

There is little doubt that Ronald Reagan was the greatest of our last nine presidents (from Kennedy to Bush), and he is often ranked high among the top presidents of the 20th century. Yet Reagan graduated from the world renowned (sarcasm intended) Eureka College. Try that one out the next time you play trivia. He did not attend grad school and he was often ridiculed as being nothing more than a B-movie actor, yet he won the Cold War and helped revive the American economy.

Harry S. Truman is also viewed in a positive light by historians, yet he was only one of two presidents since 1869 who had no college degree.

Of our first seven presidents, George Washington was also only one of two without a college degree. Did this disqualify him from being one of our greatest leaders, commonly ranked first or second among all presidents? And the man who often takes the top spot on the list ahead of Washington had the least formal education of any of our presidents.

I’m speaking, of course, of Abraham Lincoln, who had roughly one year of formal learning, being otherwise self-taught and working his way through William Blackstone’s famous text in order to become a lawyer. So, our finest president had the least schoolroom education.

Of course, we have had excellent presidents who were also brilliant academically, like the polymath Theodore Roosevelt. (Roosevelt historian Edmund Morris concurs with the statement of H. G. Wells that Roosevelt had “the most vigorous brain in a conspicuously responsible position in the world.” Wells further stated that, “He seems to be echoing with all the thoughts of the time, he has receptivity to the pitch of genius.”) And there was Woodrow Wilson, who earned a Ph.D. in history and political science from John Hopkins.

On the flip side, the recent president most ridiculed for his alleged lack of brains (think “nucular”) was George W. Bush, yet he is the only president who earned an M.B.A., and from Harvard Business School no less, having done his undergraduate studies at Yale. His critics, then, would surely say that a top flight education doesn’t make you “smart,” and yet Bush was smart enough to become the co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, the governor of Texas, and a two-term president of the United States.

But there’s more. You can have a solid education and be brilliant and still have serious ethical and moral flaws, which are certainly major weaknesses for a leader. Richard Nixon earned his law degree from Duke University, yet that didn’t stop him from falling headlong into Watergate. (In the words of James MacGregor Burns, “How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?”) And does the name William Jefferson Clinton ring a bell? Being an Oxford Rhodes Scholar and graduating with a law degree from Yale simply meant that his academics outpaced his morals.

As for our current leader, Barack Obama, often praised for his intellect (his reference to 57 states notwithstanding), his plummeting approval rates point to the real possibility of him being a one-term president, suggesting that you can be well-educated and “smart” and yet not be a good president.

And, outside the world of politics, let’s not forget the corporate geniuses who dropped out of college, like Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Dell (Dell), and Larry Ellison (Oracle), or men like Richard Branson (Virgin), who dropped out of high school, or philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who dropped out of elementary school.

In sum: 1) You can be well-educated and not “smart”; 2) You can be “smart” and not well educated; 3) You can be lacking in formal education and still be a great leader; 4) You can be well-educated and “smart” but that doesn’t guarantee strong ethics or morality; 5) You can be well-educated and “smart” and not be a good leader.

So, the question we should ask is not, “Is this candidate smart (or dumb)?”, but rather, “Would he (or she) make a good president?” In fact, ask yourself this question: “What are the top five qualities I most value in a president?”

No, as long the only requirement needed to vote is to know to read.

Quote:

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

Prager Zeitung, April 28, 2010

I’ve been giving this subject some thought and I have to say I came to a conclusion that, at first, surprised me.

I actually now think that it is far more important for a president to have those real political “people” skills than a super high IQ or even some particular kind of experience (business, military, time in office, take your pick).

Because isn’t the President’s actual job managing people? A president will have some plans or goals of his (or her) own; he’ll have to deal with events and circumstances that no one would have been able to predict; he’ll have to deal with foreign leaders whether he (or we) like them or not (and vice versa). He doesn’t actually pass laws, or arrest bad guys, or determine military movements, he manages those who do.

So, isn’t the ability to work well with people, to persuade them to follow your lead, to hold them accountable for how well they do the job you, the president, have given them, isn’t that the REAL job of the president. And also, of course, to retain the trust and confidence of the voters?

This is why I now think that being a super good pol is probably the single critical ability a person needs to be an effective president.

And I also think, I have thought for a long time, that that attribute is a God-given gift. It is not a skill that can be learned.

To answer the writer's question as to qualifications for the American presidency at this critical juncture in America's history, we might consult an excerpted portion of the 1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson for guidance on the seriousness of the undertaking:

(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

Now, the question is: which 2012 candidate possesses the intellectual qualifications to lead us to "retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety"? That is the task before us if we wish posterity to honor our contributions to their liberty!

Names, anyone? Caution: must provide curriculum vitae, as for most employers!

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