Smarts

by digby

David Broder feels that it’s a really good time to have a super smart president. For years he thought that being smart wasn’t very important in a president but now he does because the problems are so severe. He gives no indication that he understands there might be a correlation between having a really stupid president and the problems which we now need a really smart president to fix.

He also names Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as primary examples of why you don’t want a smart president — they don’t achieve anything worth achieving. The dumb ones do. Of course, they all happen to be Republicans. One wonders if the Dean is aware that the achievements he cares about might be associated with a certain ideology rather than the personal characteristics of the president?

He is certainly relieved that a smart person has been elected to clean up the mess made by the frat boy and his neo-con posse, as are we all. But this pattern isn’t very healthy. Perhaps Broder and the rest of the villagers could stop deciding which presidents we are allowed to have based upon their own prejudices (which they attribute to some mythical white working man in small town America) and some shallow psychoanalysis picked up while loitering in the self-help section at Barnes and Noble and just examine their agenda and whether they are qualified. This Oprahization of presidential politics hasn’t gotten us anywhere.