How Smart Should a President Be?

After a pair of faltering appearances in debates in New Hampshire and Arizona, some Republicans who have bestowed money and endorsements on Texas Gov. George W. Bush are beginning to fear that he will end up not as the party’s nominee but as a footnote like fellow Texan John Connally, whose lavishly financed primary campaign in 1980 netted him a single delegate.

The unimpressive performances have fueled speculation that Bush, never a candidate for a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, may even be an over-privileged dullard and that George the second is less closely related in terms of ability to his father, George the first, than he is to King George III. But even if Gov. Bush is shown to lack intellectual curiosity and struggles to derive meaning from Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s biography, does that put him outside the charmed circle of those qualified to be president?

The intellectual standard of those who have occupied the Oval Office is not uniformly high, but if all that can be said of Bush is that he is abler than Warren Harding, who is generally consigned by historians to the bottom of the presidential heap, he would still be found wanting. Harding’s qualities were the subject of a conversation between a friend of the president’s and a New York banker. “Warren is the best fellow in the world,” the friend said. “He has wonderful tact. He knows how to make men work with him and how to get the best out of them. He is politically adroit. He is conscientious. He has a keen sense of responsibility. He has unusual common sense.” The banker inquired, “What is his defect?” “Oh,” the friend replied, “the only trouble with Warren is that he lacks mentality.” Clearly, Harding’s limited brain power should not be the threshold qualification for presidential aptitude.

It is, however, as unrealistic to apply the reverse criterion and demand that the candidate meet the lofty standard set by Abraham Lincoln, because the majority of occupants of the office have fallen somewhere in the vast range of intellectual ability between Lincoln and Harding. And some presidents who we now mention almost in the same breath as Lincoln were, as politicians on the rise, not seen as especially promising material.

We know little about George Washington’s education other than it was a combination of private tutoring and practical experience. He dabbled in poetry as an adolescent--none of it memorable--but as an adult preferred the activities of an 18th century country squire to poring over the classics. According to one account, he spent 49 days a year fox hunting and the rest of the time visiting, attending balls and plays and enjoying cockfights and puppet shows. He was an avid card player. He loved gardening and entertaining. He was even something of a fop. And if he were alive today, he might be more apt to be the subject of a profile in Gentleman’s Quarterly or Martha Stewart Living than in the New Republic or the National Review. It was his service as the nation’s first military leader, however, that established him as the obvious choice to be president.

Another facet of Gov. Bush’s performances in the debates is an apparent sluggishness of wit and lack of facility with repartee and one-liners. The recent standard for being fast on one’s feet was set by John F. Kennedy, but this did not come naturally to him. His early speeches were leaden and not noted for their breadth of vision. It was Ted Sorensen who transformed the young Massachusetts senator, serving, in Kennedy’s own words, “as my intellectual bloodbank.” The poise that we associate with Kennedy was most conspicuous after he became president.

The ability to banter and fire off one-liners may get you an invitation to the Jay Leno show but does not prove much about your ability to be president, if that is all you offer. The presidency can itself, of course, confer on an American of ordinary intelligence an aura of authority and with it an ability to play the wit and delight audiences with comments that, if uttered by an ordinary mortal, would seem humdrum.

Being written off as a lightweight can prove fatal, as in the case of Vice President Dan Quayle. But even so imposing a figure as Franklin D. Roosevelt, recently proclaimed by President Clinton as the greatest American of the 20th century, was dismissed airily by his own distant cousin, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, as nothing more than “an animated feather-duster.”

Roosevelt’s tenure as asst. secretary of the Navy in World War I gave him military coloration, and his place on the 1920 Democratic ticket as the running mate for the forlorn campaign of James M. Cox beefed up his resume, but even as president some thought he lacked intellectual heft. He received the ultimate mixed verdict from 92-year-old retired Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who commented as Roosevelt left a meeting: “A second-class intellect,” but quickly added, “but a first-class temperament.”