It may not be possible to know in advance if a candidate is smart enough to be president. But we can sure as hell tell when he or she isn’t.
Charlie Pierce discusses “A Very Stable Genius” in his newsletter and makes all the tart observations one would expect from him. But he adds something that I think is important. He notes that Trump has gone a long way to demystifying the presidency and that should make all of us more conscious of the demands of the job.
I think that’s true. Many people assumed that Trump would “learn on the job” or that he would hire great people who would really run things or that that least here is some unnamed group of grey emminences who would ensure that he didn’t make any truly rash decisions. ( “Deep state” anyone?) None of that is correct.
Pierce writes:
God knows, there was no office in any democracy anywhere that needs demystifying more than the American presidency, and that this is a project that should be ongoing forever. For example, believe it or not, unless you’re in the military, the president is not your “commander-in-chief.” In fact, if you are not in the military—or, if you are, and you’re acting in your capacity as a citizen—the president is merely your temporary employee. We need more of this attitude in our politics, and not less.
One of the drawbacks of a demystified presidency, however, is the notion that the job can be done by almost anyone. This can work out well or, as we are seeing today, it can work out very poorly. And, because to job of demystification is never really done, the presidency is still very well-armed for the task of making sure the foibles and shortcomings, dangerous and otherwise, are shielded from the president’s employers. So if, as it seems we have done, the country elects a dangerous incompetent to be president*, there always will be a desire in certain quarters to believe that this person can “grow into the job.” Call this the Harry Truman Fantasy. And, as Old Lodge Skins says in Little Big Man, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
He goes on to describe the little flap-let in 1999 when George W. Bush was quizzed about some world leaders and made a fool of himself. His spokesperson, Karen Hughes, said it didn’t matter if he knew the names of world leaders because he had a grand strategic vision for the world. (As opposed to his dad’s admitted problem with “the vision thing” presumably.)
The DC press corps jumped into action and defended what they called Bush’s “incurious” intellect and as Charlie notes went back immediately to bashing Al Gore for being a pathological liar. (Seriously, they did that. And he wasn’t a liar.)
Pierce also notes that they defended Reagan to the hilt for his obvious intellectual shortcomings even before he was beset by Alzheimers. And we can go back to Eisenhower and Truman for earlier examples (although Truman was derided in his own time and only later was seen as some kind of master strategist.)
He writes:
[T]he notion that a president doesn’t need to know a lot stayed in our politics like a chain of time-bombs. It went off disastrously in 2000. And now, it has detonated again, this time with nearly limitless megatonnage
He concludes with this:
Here, in one dangerous man, the demystification of the presidency and the ever-present chorus for an amateur in that office combine to increase the peril presented by both phenomena. You can’t hire just anybody for any job, and you can’t make a quasi-mystical political figure out of just anyone, either. Sooner or later, the blind commissioner falls off the tightrope.
Personally, I think an awful lot of Americans daftly think they themselves could be president. That’s the old “I want a president I could have a beer with” nonsense. On the other hand, many of them looked at Trump and saw that he was rich and famous and that was all they needed to see. Sure he sounds like a damned idiot but you can’t get all that fame and fortune without being super-smart, right? The fact that he inherited his money and is a cheap fame whore with four bankruptcies behind him didn’t register.
Anyway, Pierce is right. I don’t think we can necessarily know if a president has the requisite combination of skills to be president or even if he’s smart enough in the right way. But we sure as hell can see when a candidate is not. It wasn’t hard to see that Bush Jr was an idiot with a lot of daddy issues who would be easily manipulated by the Razputin cabal around him. And Donald Trump’s blazing ignorance and personality disorder was on display for all to see. It’s not that hard to weed out the truly dumb ones.