[p. henry]

I was talking about the election with a friend of mine who is quite liberal. He questioned the President's intelligence. I raised the Harvard MBA and the fighter pilot qualification and asked him what evidence he had of a lack of intelligence on the part of W. He said that flying a fighter was more a matter of eye/hand coordination than intelligence and that W is simply too inarticulate to be smart.

Freepers, there is some real bias here. My friend is without question a very smart man, too smart to hold his expressed opinions if he were not blinded by bias against conservative positions, especially those expressed with a Texas accent.

[RedWhiteBlue]

I was talking about the election with a friend of mine who is quite liberal. He questioned the President's intelligence. I raised the Harvard MBA and the fighter pilot qualification and asked him what evidence he had of a lack of intelligence on the part of W. He said that flying a fighter was more a matter of eye/hand coordination than intelligence and that W is simply too inarticulate to be smart.

Did anyone catch the statements on TV over the last week or so by Edward Prescott, who received the Nobel Prize for Economics on October 11? He obviously has some sort of speech impediment, and can hardly express himself without a lot of effort. Regardless, Prescott is obviously brilliant. Inarticulation is not indicative of a speaker's level of intelligence. And I bet that any of us can recall meeting or knowing very articulate people that were liars, fools, or con men.

People are easily flim-flammed and impressed by smooth talkers, and don't listen to what they say. I worked with a guy once that was a very polished and very well spoken, great qualities in the business world. Many were impressed with him, but I wasn't. He spoke up often in meetings, sounding great, but his words were empty. It is as if he is saying, underneath it all, "if you take 2, and add 3 to it, the result will be 5." He was only stating the obvious, and bringing up very basic matters -- never an original thought -- things that everyone already knew, but he said these things in such a way that many people were impressed. When I mentioned this to a couple of co-workers, they were surprised, so I just told them to really listen to this guy -- he sounds great, but he doesn't really add anything of value to the discussion. Then they started really listening to the guy, and they agreed with me. Someone like this is great for a sales position .... they can articulate that company line all day long and sound great doing it. But they are not leadership material if, underneath it all, they never come up with anything but a parroting -- no matter how beautifully stated -- of what we already know.