I’ve been listening to this week’s Vicious Circle; I’m not all the way through it yet, but fairly early on, the gang was suggesting that Woodrow Wilson may have been America’s most intelligent president.
My reaction to that is: what about Herbert Hoover? If anyone thinks about Hoover today, it’s mostly as a figure of fun (“Hoobert Heever“, anyone?). But consider Hoover’s resume. He was a professional mining engineer, who graduated from Stanford with a geology degree. After marrying his wife, Lou, and having two kids, he moved the family to China and worked as a mining engineer there; in the process, Lou and Herbert learned Mandarin Chinese. (According to the Wikipedia entry on Hoover, Lou and Herbert spoke Chinese in the White House when they wanted to avoid eavesdropping.)
Later on, Herbert and Lou (as I understand it, Lou herself had an extensive classical background; I did not know she was a classmate of Herbert’s in the Stanford geology program when they met) did the first English translation of Georgius Agricola’s De re metallica. Agricola’s book was a massive tome about mining techniques in the 16th century: it was originally written in Latin, but contained a lot of obsolete technical mining terms of the time. The translation of Agricola’s book frustrated a lot of smart people, but Herbert and Lou pulled it off. (And you can still get Hoover’s translation
The Depression colors many people’s view of Hoover, perhaps unfairly. But compare Hoover to Wilson; Wilson had doctoral degrees in history and law, and earned those as part of his master plan to go into “public service”. Hoover didn’t earn a doctorate, as far as I can tell (he may have been awarded honorary doctorates later in life), but he did important and pioneering work in a somewhat esoteric technical field before making a career for himself in politics (and that, it seems, mostly by accident).
And while I’m not a big fan of Jimmy Carter, I have to give him credit; the man served on nuclear submarines under Admiral Rickover. From what I’ve heard, stupid people didn’t last long in Rickover’s Navy.
(This is similar to my argument about George W. Bush. I’m not a blind fan of the man, or of a lot of things his administration did, but when you want to talk about him being stupid…he flew F-102s with the National Guard. Stupid people generally don’t fly fighter jets very long; they usually end up evenly distributing themselves and the airframe over a small patch of land somewhere.)
Perhaps saying Woodrow Wilson with his PhD had the most formal education would be better. He was certainly smart, and unfortunately, very evil. He believed in eugenics thought the Constitution was outdated and wanted to replace it with a parliament. He gave us the Federal Reserve and the Income tax. He was a socialist.
Like a lot of smart people, he thought he knew best even about things he couldn’t possibly know, a common failing for “smart” people. They’re so smart they don’t know what they don’t know.
The point I was trying to make in VC is that smart presidents, ones who tell us how smart they are, have been poor presidents. If you think of all the presidents remembered for being “smart” they were all bad for the country.
No love for Thomas Jefferson?
In terms of knowledge, the Founding Fathers were educated to a degree pretty much unheard of today. Most of them were fluent not only in Latin, but also in ancient Greek. Also keep in mind that Theodore Roosevelt, though not strong in Greek and Latin, and misguided in many political particulars, was exceptionally well read, and wrote more than 30 books in his own lifetime.
We should criminalize the entry of former cheerleaders into politics.
I am tempted to respond that your proposal would eliminate Theodore Roosevelt, Earl, but I can’t find any evidence that he was actually a cheerleader.
A student-athlete, yes (he rowed and boxed), and he was in a frat and a prestigious social club, but I can’t find anything indicating he was a cheerleader.
However, given our face to face discussions and your expressed opinions in other threads here, I’m sure those three things would also disqualify him from politics in your ideal world.
“No love for Thomas Jefferson?”
I bow to no man in my love for Thomas Jefferson, Joe, but I had in mind what I’ll call “modern” presidents. Basically, I was thinking of 20th Century and later, not people like Jefferson and Adams.
In that vein, Lawrence has an excellent point about the relative educational levels of the founding fathers, and also brings up another very good point about Roosevelt. You can say a lot of things about TR, but the man was certainly not et up with the dumbass.