Matthew Yglesias has an article in The American Prospect about why George Bush’s intellect ought to be a serious political issue. The punchline:
“That the country should be secured against terrorist attacks, that deadly weapons should be kept out of the hands of our enemies, or that it would be good for a wide slice of the world to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy are hardly controversial propositions. But these things are easier said than done. Even a person of goodwill is by no means guaranteed to succeed. Yet succeed we must. And if we are to do so, the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” — some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia — but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.
The price to be paid for such errors is a high one — it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again.”
I think that Yglesias is right, not just in his basic point but in the examples he cites — e.g., US policy towards North Korea, trade policy, and the like. However, I have two minor quibbles. First, I am not sure that Bush’s problem is that he’s not intelligent. I don’t really know what to make of him in this regard; my best guess is that a lifetime of intellectual disengagement will produce the functional equivalent of stupidity, just as a lifetime of being a couch potato will produce the functional equivalent of a lack of athletic ability; and since Bush has led such a life, it may be impossible to tell how smart he is underneath it all. But the problem Yglesias is getting at is an apparently complete lack of intellectual curiosity, of interest in actually thinking through the implications of various policies, assessing their pros and cons, and deciding accordingly. Given some level of intellectual engagement, intelligence is of course an asset; but in its absence, intelligence in itself will get you nowhere. (To be fair, Yglesias sometimes describes the problem he’s getting at as a lack of intellectual curiosity and/or engagement; my point is that the lack of these things is distinct from a lack of intelligence, and that it, rather than a low IQ, is Bush’s problem.)
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