by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Advancing a Free Society<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe president isn\u2019t very bright,\u201d Bret Stephens writes in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, an assessment that raises an important question: Is \u201cintelligence\u201d necessary in a president?<\/p>\n That we raise the question at all is a testimony to how thoroughly progressive ideas about governing have permeated our political consciousness. This is obvious from the fact that Democrats are the ones who typically assert the superior intelligence of their candidate over the Republican. Indeed, every Republican candidate since Eisenhower has been characterized as a simplistic ideologue, if not an outright dunce, a tradition that continues with the scorn heaped on Sarah Palin\u2019s intellect and alma mater. Partly this reflects the unproven assumption that liberals are by definition more nuanced, complex, subtle thinkers than are conservatives. More important, however, is the underlying assumption of progressive ideology: that modern politics in a technologically advanced world needs technocratic managers with specialized knowledge and skills, what French political philosopher Chantal Delsol calls \u201ctechno-politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet this belief goes back even farther, to the philosophical debates of ancient Greece. When Plato in the Republic creates his ideal government, he imagines a ruling elite of philosopher \u201cguardians\u201d who are selected at an early age and educated for thirty years in philosophy and mathematics. In contrast, the democracy of Athens assumed that all citizens, by virtue of being citizens, were capable of participating in running the state. To Plato\u2019s credit, in theProtagoras<\/em>\u00a0he gives a fair version of the argument underlying democratic rule: for social order to exist at all, Protagoras argues, all people must have thepolitik\u00ea techn\u00ea<\/em>, the craft of politics, one innate to humans. Thus all are capable of managing the state.<\/p>\n Modern progressive ideology reflects the triumph of Plato\u2019s anti-democratic idea of techno-politics. Hence the belief that a president should have superior intelligence, its presence usually validated by the prestige of university training, the correctness of pronunciation, and the prowess at intellectual name-dropping. But as well as being necessarily undemocratic, this prizing of intelligence has problems. First, how can the mass of citizens truly know if a presidential candidate, armed with a legion of researchers and speechwriters, is really intelligent? We can\u2019t trust university degrees or transcripts, given the lowering of admission standards and rampant grade inflation. Nor are speeches necessarily an indication of smarts, given the aforementioned speechwriters. Correct pronunciation or syntactical smoothness sometimes is evoked as markers of brightness, but these could merely reflect a skill at reading the words of others. Most people called upon to speak\u00a0ex tempore<\/em>\u00a0will mangle a word or garble their syntax, as has every political candidate. Thus it becomes a matter of political prejudice to see George Bush\u2019s mispronunciation of \u201cnuclear\u201d as evidence of irredeemable stupidity, whereas Barack Obama\u2019s saying \u201ccorpse-man\u201d for \u201ccorpsman\u201d is shrugged away.<\/p>\n But do we really need a president to have technical intelligence learned in the university? Isn\u2019t what Aristotle called \u201cpractical wisdom\u201d more important, the knowledge of human life and action learned from experience? Who was the better president, the self-educated Abraham Lincoln, or the Princeton graduate Woodrow Wilson? Ronald Reagan, a graduate of obscure Eureka College, or Bill Clinton, holder of degrees from Georgetown and Yale? A life of manifold experience in the real world of challenge, risk, and accountability can create a \u201cpractical wisdom\u201d more important for political leadership than is the abstract technical knowledge garnered in the rarefied cloisters of the academy or think-tank, where utopian schemes are never held to the strict test of real-life accountability. And let\u2019s not forget that most of the horrors of 20th-century totalitarianism were wrought by those \u201ctechnicians of the soul\u201d drunk on abstract ideas and theories that seemed flawless in words but turned bloody in deeds when confronted with the stubborn, unpredictable complexity of human passion and free will.<\/p>\n Finally, more important than certain kinds of technical intelligence or knowledge are virtues like prudence, humility, and self-control, the premier qualities thought indispensable for leaders from antiquity to the American founding. Indeed, republicanism always assumes that virtue as well as wisdom is the\u00a0sine qua non<\/em>\u00a0of political freedom. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 57, \u201cThe aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.\u201d Throughout\u00a0The Federalist Papers<\/em>, wisdom and virtue are constantly linked as the necessary qualities for political leadership. Technical skill or knowledge may be necessary for governing, but without practical wisdom and virtue such knowledge and skills are mere mental machinery that can be turned to evil ends as well as good.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s drop all the discussion of whether this or that candidate or office-holder is \u201cintelligent\u201d or \u201csmart,\u201d something none of us ordinary citizens can know firsthand. Instead, let\u2019s see by their deeds and choices whether they are wise and virtuous.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society \u201cThe president isn\u2019t very bright,\u201d Bret Stephens writes in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal, an assessment that raises an important question: Is \u201cintelligence\u201d necessary in a president?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,11],"tags":[598,301,176,12,74,1066,689,302,688],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ds","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-unexamined-president-and-his-media-enablers\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":0},"title":"The Unexamined President and His Media Enablers","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society As usual, the mainstream media are getting wrong the significance of President Obama\u2019s release of his actual birth certificate. In the liberal-left narrative, the \u201cbirther\u201d issue was always evidence of the Republican Party\u2019s fringe kookiness: as the\u00a0Daily Kos\u2019s Markos Moulitsas crowed, \u201cWhat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2228,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-lefts-selective-outrage\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":1},"title":"The Left’s Selective Outrage","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it. Last week Friedman worked himself up into a paranoiac frenzy over the tone of some of the criticism Obama and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-potemkin-president-disintegrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":2},"title":"The Potemkin President Disintegrates","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine After nearly four years in office, the tinsel and cardboard persona of Barack Obama is starting to fall apart. The political unifier who claimed, \u201cThere is not a liberal America and a conservative America \u2014 there is the United States of America,\u201d has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5461,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-passions-of-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":3},"title":"The Passions of the Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"CIA's new revelations fans the flames of \"progressive\" myths of our past by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The publication of the CIA\u2019s \u201cfamily jewels\u201d \u2014 the record of its domestic spying, hare-brained plots against Castro, and mind-control experiments, among other oddities \u2014 is sure to add fuel to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-a-creature-of-the-corrupt-university\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":4},"title":"Obama a Creature of the Corrupt University","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The November presidential election was the favorite topic at the Freedom Center\u2019s West Coast Retreat last weekend. Amidst the prognostications and arguments about which Republican would or should get the nomination, or how pessimistic or optimistic conservatives should be about defeating the President, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":835,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/derbyshire-learns-what-we-cannot-talk-about\/","url_meta":{"origin":2446,"position":5},"title":"Derbyshire Learns What We Cannot Talk About","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Wittgenstein once wrote, \u201cWhat we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.\u201d Ex-National Review writer John Derbyshire has just learned the modern American version of this truth.\u00a0What we Americans cannot talk about is race (except, of course, in the anodyne terms established\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}