What’s the Problem with Brilliant Presidents?

At first impression, one would think America would be better off the smarter our President is.  After all, intellectual ability should translate into better performance, right?

Evidently not.

Consider the twentieth century presidents who are widely acclaimed –at least in retrospect :  Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.  All accomplished and effective but none considered an intellectual heavy-weight.

How about some other presidents from the last century considered decidedly less successful:  Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter.  Brilliant all, and largely failures in the White House.

Why?

The job of the president is to make decisions; he has a staff to come up with ideas and present options.  Of course, a certain level of intelligence is a prerequisite to making wise decisions since one must have sufficient brain power to understand the choices presented and critically evaluate them.  But surely, common sense and experience have important roles to play as well.

 

Ironically, if our roll of successful chief executives is illustrative, it seems that high intelligence results in an inverse relationship with the presence of common sense and a willingness to profit from experience. 

Ironic, yes, but not really surprising.  Brilliant people are relatively rare so they seldom encounter their intellectual equals, much less their superiors.  The temptations of arrogance are strong indeed.  We’ve all met individuals in our lives who strike us as “know-it-alls”.  Most, as they mature, lose at least some of that conceit as life’s experiences humble them.  But there are exceptions, particularly if a person becomes president of the United States.    A highly intelligent person who is president can, on a personal level, be forgiven for believing that he is special indeed.  In fact, he is.  But this individual is likely to think, still, that he more than anyone else, knows what is best.  For if he didn’t, why is he sitting “on top of the world”?  Isn’t the arrogance he feels entirely justified?

So, the arrogant president  doesn’t need to listen to others or pay attention to the lessons of experience.  He knows what to do and acts accordingly.  With that attitude, disaster looms.  Think of Woodrow Wilson and post World War I or Barack Obama in the Middle East.

Please note that these observations are not meant to be partisan.  There are troubling reports that freshman Senator Ted Cruz, a prominent conservative and recently declared GOP presidential candidate, suffers from such arrogance.   Interestingly, like Obama, Cruz is a Harvard Law School graduate widely praised for his brilliance while also criticized for his aversion to advice.

 

Maturity and judgment are not matters of ideology.