It Takes Brains

One good thing about the shambles of these past eight years is that it just might make the American people are a little more open to voting for leaders with some intelligence. At least we can hope.

It takes some brains to run a successful business. Not just anybody opens a restaurant or hair salon and makes a go of it. To stay in business these days a farmer has to be acutely attuned to markets and highly scientific about production. No Fortune 500 company would dream of bringing a new CEO on board who wasn't smart as a whip.

So, what kind of brains would it take to run an operation with 1.8 million civilian employees, a budget of $2.7 trillion and some additional responsibilities like maintaining peaceful relations with 200 foreign countries and commanding a military of 1.4 million and a reserve force of 1.5 million while trying to foster an economy sufficient to provide for 300 million people?

That's right. It would take a genius, wouldn't it?

Average Americans know better than to leave their retirement planning to their half-wit brother-in-law, yet when it comes to managing the most complicated job in the history of the planet they not infrequently put their minds in netural and hand it off to a seeming "regular guy," the kind of fellow "you'd like to have a beer with" who talks in disconnected monosyllables, boasts that he "never reads a newspaper" and makes decisions based on "listening to my gut."

No wonder gas is $4, the economy has lost 462,000 jobs this year, the government is another $450 billion in debt, 2 million homeowners face forclosure, 47 million more are without health care, food prices are going through the roof, real estate, the stock market and the dollar are all tanking, we invaded the wrong country, and Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose.

There has always been an anti-intellectual bent in American society, no doubt a carry-over from the original revolutionary antipathy to aristocratic privilege combined with a populist perception of the well-educated not necessarily understanding the lives of everyday folks. That's why political parties that have no new ideas and see their old ones failing start throwing around the "elitist" label.

The reality is that you have to be brilliant to have even half a chance to govern this country well. Brains are a prerequisite. You need heart, too, and nobody should be considered who isn't endowed with a good deal of human empathy. But stupidity is neither cute nor a virtue in high office, as recent events make dreadfully clear. Let's hope the American people take permanent note.