Is Intelligence the Measure of Politicians?

I've seen and heard a lot of comments about how brainy our president is and the relative intelligence of quite a numbers of Pols. Mrs. Clinton used to be referred to as "the smartest woman in the world." Guess that moniker has fallen to Michelle Obama now. And there are internet sites that say VP Joe Biden's IQ is 125. Those same sites say Nancy Pelagrosi's IQ is 139. Well, though I disbelieve those figures, I'll not quibble over them. Still, such numbers are not nearly as reassuring as it might seem.

As you might recall, the policies of FDR's brilliant "brains trust" advisers are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s just as those of BO's policy Czars are prolonging this downturn, while claiming credit for ending it just as are BO's. Factually, the 30's Great Depression did not end until the Second World War put an end to many of the socialistic New Deal policies. And all those people were considered really smart, too.

It was FDR himself who said that "Dr. New Deal" had been replaced by "Dr. Win-the-War." Now-a-days it's the "really smart" Dem Czar's who are for big spending and like to credit wartime caused big spending for bringing the Great Depression to an end, quite a turn-around for progressives. The question that is never asked nor answered is why previous depressions had always ended on their own (and lots quicker than the one under FDR) and without government intervention or massive government spending. Heck, stupid people everywhere are asking that question and would really like an answer to it.

Back in my college years (in the last century), my Economics teacher explained that the Great Depression ended because war caused the nation to turn on the faucets of production. Yup, we built factories, manufactured prodigious amounts of goods, invented all sorts of new stuff, greatly expanded technology, and that left us with a huge, new amount of wealth. Wait a minute, wasn't it Government that bought all that stuff? Nope. The US Government certainly did buy, use, destroy, and distribute an awful lot of weaponry and war materials but it was that huge increase of business and production within the country that turned away the Great Depression Wolves. That is a fact.

The Lyndon Johnson administration had Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant "whiz kids" which micro-managed the Vietnam war into disastrous results. We also had the willing assistance of brilliant commentators within our Media such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, both considered very intelligent, and both wrong headed as to what was actually happening in Viet Nam and as to the possible results of our departure. Both of those very intelligent people were sure democracy and peace would fall upon SE Asia just as soon as we were gone. The only peace that descended there was that of death brought to millions by the pathological Communists who took over.

Stupid, dull, unintelligent, normal people can only do limited amounts of damage because they just don't have the capacity to conceive of worse methodologies. To create truly monumental disasters, you need people with really high IQs capable of conceiving them.

Really highly intelligent people stand out from their fellows and are told all their lives just how brilliant they really are. Eventually, they get to feeling they aren't just smarter but need to be in control of all those lesser normal folks. They begin to not only over-estimate their own brilliance but, more fundamentally, they tend to over-estimate just how important brilliance itself is when dealing with real world problems.

Just about every crucial thing a person learns in life is learned from experience rather than from clever thoughts or words. Fact is, most people learn not to stick their hands into the fire by getting themselves burned sometime or another. As Dr. Sowell puts it, "a gift for the clever phrasing so much admired by the media can be a fatal talent, especially for someone chosen to lead a government." That is particularly so when the sycophantic media praises your every utterance proclaiming them, "Brilliant", whether they actually make any sense or not. Remember the old story about the Emperors' Clothes?

As you might recall, the very brilliant Adolf Hitler started from a position of Germany's exceptional weakness of the early 1930s, brought on by treaties from the 1^st World War which did not allow her to rebuild any military might. He not only built up Germany's military might, he managed to keep his potential victims from noticing and matching his military build-up with their own. Whatever soothing words were wanted to be heard, he uttered so that all would spare themselves the costs of military deterrence and the pain of contemplating other wars. "Peace in our time" was mantra of the West.

Hitler fooled some of the most highly educated and intelligent people of his time—not just political leaders but also members of the media and academe. Our very own Charles Lindbergh, a capable aviator and writer, came back from Germany proclaiming Hitler made "the trains run on time" and "the state of the nation (Germany) was wonderful."  

The editors of the London Times filtered out reports of their own foreign correspondents in Germany about the evils and dangers of the Nazis. In the United States, W.E.B. Du Bois—with a Ph.D. from Harvard—said that dictatorship in Germany was "absolutely necessary to get the state in order." Our schools have long taught there is no better government than a benevolent dictatorship.

Here is another fact. Hitler led Germany into a Hell which left much of the world in ruins. His evil is widely recognized today (except by the Muslim world) but then wasn't.

Politically brilliant, charismatic leaders, promoting reckless government spending—Argentina's Juan Peron was prominent—managed to create economic disasters in countries with abundance of natural resources that were spared the stresses inflicted on other nations in the 20^th century wars. Today, it is Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Dr. Sowell has observed the resemblance of Barack Obama's style and strategies to those of Latin American charismatic despots—the takeover of industries by demagogues who've never run a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of a leader promoted by their media. Do we want to become the world's largest banana republic? I think not. What say you?

PL Booth, www.blueeyeview.blogspot.com 10/1/09 779-4676