Brainy Candidates Need Not Apply: Is John Kerry too intelligent to be president of the U.S.?

The Los Angeles Times ^ | October 22, 2004 | Ariel Dorfman

[quidnunc]

It was what I felt instinctively the first and only time I met him, at a lunch at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 1998. He was subtle, full of cultural and historical references, elaborating each fine argument at length, with perception and nuance. I commented to one of his aides afterward that I regrettably thought his brains could turn out to be the biggest impediment to a man like him ever occupying the White House.

All these years later, with most polls still showing George W. Bush ahead of his opponent after three debates in which Kerry proved himself more articulate and thoughtful and flexible and able to understand an increasingly dangerous world, I am afraid I may have been right. Yet it still seems inconceivable to me that someone as incompetent, incoherent and obtuse as Bush could possibly command almost half the votes of his fellow countrymen.

Is it that Americans actually like Bush's know-nothing effect? Or is it that Kerry strikes Americans as too highbrow? As pretentious? Do they see his complexity as excessive effeminate suppleness?

This anti-intellectualism has, unfortunately, a long history in the United States.

-snip-

[Twinkie]

*sniff* hoity-toity, hoi-polloi

[luvie]

I think it is BECAUSE of his legislative career--he has been perfecting the art of BLOVIATING for 20 years! He's all talk and no action (at least action that is helpful to the people of America)

[mafree]

Forget his brains ;) just look into his guts!

In the case of sKerry, what guts?

[lemura]

Imagine this scenario:

Kerry goes to VN, does his normal tour of duty, is liked and admired by other vets like O'Neil, doesn't slander his fellow vets during the Senate testimony, and doesn't get involved with the VVAW.

Result - even as the most liberal member of the Senate: Kerry: 400 EV
Bush: 0 EV

It's character, not brains.

[Chaguito]

Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean still living in the "glory days" of Allende, wishing he were Che Guevara. He is a hyperintellectual, proud of his debates with Sartre and García Marquez. Most of my Chilean revolutionary friends grew out of it and are upstanding if mildly leftwing. This guy is just 'way too full of himself. He's just so Europe.

[Sockdologer]

Good call! Lose your guts in 30 days! Vote Democrat.

[Libloather]

Brainy Candidates Need Not Apply: Is John Kerry too intelligent to be president of the U.S.?

The candidacy of the smartest woman in the Milky Way could be doomed before it even begins - eh?

[rmlew]

Good grief, this was written by a Dalton hippy.
Dalton is a wealthy school into progressive education. All of the stupid ideas that have hobbles American aducations followed the same route.
Whether thought up by John Dewey or his successors at Columbia School of Education, these theories were tried out at Dalton, with a virtually unlimited budget. The failures were covered up as the kids got help from tutors. These pedagogical nightmares were then foisted on America.

The kids at Dalton are bright, rich, flower children.

[Mudboy Slim]

"The candidacy of the smartest woman in the Milky Way could be doomed before it even begins - eh?"

Let's hope so, but I fear the HildaBeasat will now bow out easily...we will be called on to PUSH her off her pedestal in the upcoming years.

FReegards...MUD

[hoosierham]

Kerry ONLY scored 1190 ?

I was a poor farmboy and mine was 1310; and you know what ? That score never helped me in any non-school life endeavor. And the school "mentors" saw to it the sons and daughters of the "important" people got the scholarships ,despite their scores being significantly lower.

It STILL is more important WHO than WHAT you know; just look around at who has the money. The not-so-smart business people hire experts in various fields .But just who owns the mansions and companies ?

I grew too soon old and too late wiser.

[Advil]

Also, people keep forgetting that intelligence and WISDOM are not the same thing.

[GSlob]

This Ariel Dorfman should know that there are intellectuals and then there are antillectuals. To learn it he would do well by pondering the mental stature contrast (in both the magnitude and direction) between intellectual giants like Jefferson or Madison and antillectual dwarves and pigmies like kerry or kennedy... A mountain is named after Jefferson; what would be named after kerry? "Gigolo Drive"?

[x]

"Anti-intellectualism" is a tricky, ambiguous word. It can mean being against intellect, or intellectuals or intellectualism or intellectual-ism -- that's to say against brains, or a specific social class or group, or the attitudes associated with that class, or the exaltation of that particular group above others. I doubt anybody's against brains and hope nobody's opposed to scholarliness in its proper place, but intellectuals aren't always suited for positions of political authority, and they have often created real trouble when they have attained authority. And in a democracy, those elected will rarely be intellectuals.

But is Kerry himself any sort of intellectual? He doesn't seem to have any extraordinary brainpower. He comes out of a certain class where some ideas are discussed, but he hasn't been any great thinker or problem solver. Kerry's problem, like Stevenson's, is that he hasn't convinced people that he has what it takes to make the tough decisions (one senses that Stevenson might have been better intellectual company -- if only because politics weren't as professionalized or quite as ego-driven in his day).

Politicians of one sort have to pass an effectiveness or toughness test, that includes figures like Stevenson, Kennedy, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bush Sr. and Kerry. I don't know whether any of them were real intellectuals, but they all had to take the test, and only JFK really passed it. Politicians of another stripe -- Goldwater, Reagan, Dole, Robertson, Buchanan, Bush Jr. -- have to pass another sort of test. You can call it a "nuance" or "irony" test or something else. I don't think complaining about Stevenson's or Kerry's troubles with one test is any more valid than anger over Goldwater's or Bush's problem with the other test.

Dorfman doesn't convince me that Kerry's politics or his appeal to his supporters are really a matter of thought (nor were Stevenson's for that matter). If you're looking for someone who really engages with ideas and carefully thinks his way to positions on the issues of the day, that person isn't running for President. Just as a leader has to be a lion as well as a fox, he has to be as much a "Redskin" (tough, competent, courageous) as a "Paleface" (nuanced, subtle, intellectually acute). And given what humanity is and has long been, a good leader has to have more of the cowboy or frontiersman in him than the Eastern scholar or courtier.

His quote from Emerson is nice, though, but has as much to say against Kerry as against Bush:

"Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it."

Superficial intellectuals have been well-known in history down to the present day. And just who the "boaster and buffoon" in this year's election is has been widely and bitterly disputed. Finally, "perceivers of the terror of life" aren't usually welcome in American practical politics, and that's probably a good thing, given what they did to Europe. Emerson, with his strictures against "mere" intellectuals who don't rise to the full dignity of "man thinking," probably isn't a good figurehead for Dorfman's argument or today's crusade of the intellectual classes.

[sully777]

Dukakis retread article.

[Petronski]

Based on the premise of his piece, we would expect this idiot to be elected American King for Life.

[GatorGirl]

You're right. They're excuse-making already!!!

[VOA]

Brainy Candidates Need Not Apply: Is John Kerry too intelligent to be president of the U.S.?

"Paralysis by analysis" is NOT "Brainy".

It's the sort of stupidity that gets people with high IQs KILLED by dumber
folks who act.

But it also works this way: smart-enough (and more) folks in the US military
keep "geniuses" like Kerry safe and sound.
Round the clock, no matter the cost.

Of course, this would never occur to a writer (ha!) at The Los Angeles Times.

[vigilo]

"John Kerry, besides being a despicable phony, is just plain lazy."

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's good to see that being said out loud. I've been saying that too. Kerry is just plain lazy.

[maro]

So much a Girlie Man that the Breck Girl has to defend his honor.

[lainde]

Thanks for the Coulter excerpts!