(Brain) Size Matters

I’ve been waiting to read this article for three long years. Bravo Yglesias.

This emperor has no clothes thing has been the single most frustrating thing about the Bush presidency. He is not smart enough for the job of president and he has been incompetent because of it, over and over again. The man isn’t up to the task intellectually and doesn’t have the temperament to privately trust someone else (like his father perhaps) to be the arbiter of disagreements among his advisors when he doesn’t understand the issues. Neither did he have the experience or instinct to effectively manage people to create consensus on their own.

You could argue that the family values that Yglesias says are not necessary in a president are actually emblematic of other desirable character traits like loyalty or honesty. (I wouldn’t.) But, what you cannot do is say that intelligence is not an issue and you cannot say that it isn’t an issue of primary importance. Obviously, the job of leader of the free world is complicated and one of the requirements is that you be able to understand it.

When Republicans tell me that it doesn’t matter if Junior is intelligent I ask them if they think it matters if a doctor is intelligent or a judge or a general and if they think the job of president requires any less of a brain than those jobs do. Then picture George W. Bush doing any of them.