There is an old saying: never let anyone see how smart you are, they will cut you off at the knees. Certainly President Obama never heeded this little aphorism. He has shown us how smart he was time and again and he is paying a price. Smart people have to be careful. You do not want to show up your boss, your colleagues, your teachers, even your family members with your keen insight or trenchant diatribes on politics, religion, or even the price of mayonnaise. Some people are just not comfortable with the sneaking suspicion someone is faster on the draw, better educated, or more knowledgeable. We would like to think we want the best man or woman for the job of President, but our history says otherwise.
Take Woodrow Wilson. President of Princeton, the ultimate educated WASP with glasses pinched to his nose, he was truly our heavy duty scholar in chief. World War I breaks out and Wilson is on the spot, crafting The League of Nations to make World War I the war to end all wars. The League was Wilson’s cerebral answer to the silly squabbling between nation states. The problem was the American public did not share Wilson’s Utopian view and congress never ratified The League. Wilson lost touch and was defeated. Criticisms of too cold, too aloof, too intellectual. Cut to Jimmy Carter. A well read man with lust in his heart who couldn’t inspire the country to save his life and was replaced with an actor. Ronald Reagan was not a smart man, but he was a great communicator. People loved Reagan. Fast forward to Billy Clinton. Smart. Everyone knows this. Voluminous knowledge, but able to break it down to folksy populist sentiment. He had the great advantage of being smart, but sounding like a guy who could work on your car. Too bad he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.
Slip up to the disaster of John Kerry–the talking head. East Coast intellectualism takes one on the chin from a guy from Texas who can barely put a sentence together. But he sounds like the guy next door you could have a barbecue with. George Bush the rambler knocks out Captain Ozone in the next election with the same old folksy I’m just like you (funny vote counting) and aint all that global warming stuff weird? Al Gore goes down. Then something happens that no one counted on. A Harvard Law Professor hits the jackpot with populist rage for change. He can deliver a hell of a speech and he is black.
Barack Obama is elected on the tails of a bestseller and starts to work. But he begins to lose the populace. There is something about his speeches that is at times undecipherable. He thinks about his decisions. The media loves him because they recognize his wit, his play on words, and he can write memoirs that have literary merit. Unemployment blasts past ten percent and public distrust starts to seep in like a gas. He makes a case for saving the banks, but at times people don’t quite understand what he is doing. He is accused of being a socialist. There are comparisons to Woodrow Wilson and his reliance on cold intellectualism to solve the issues of the day.
American history is built on a distrust of anyone who is too privileged or anyone who is too educated. This is rooted in our history of rugged individualism and a fierce distrust of centralized power. The frontier was not settled by a bunch of college graduates. It was settled by men who could work with their hands and improvise. They used homespun logic that any man could understand. The real American is a self taught, self starter, and can speak in the plain language of a carpenter. Eggheads are decidedly unAmerican.
Now we are at the present. A woman emerges from a frozen state and is thrown onto the national stage. She speaks of hockey moms, and gives shoutouts to sixpack Joe’s and likes to hunt. She speaks in colloquialisms and has no real grasp of Washington politics. She is great looking and has a raft of kids and blows it every time she has interview. She can see Russia from her back door and warns against death panels. She is not educated. In fact she cares little for real facts. She is riding a wave of populist discontent like a surfer on a perfect wave and she releases a book that attacks the media and the Republican idiots who blew the last election. She is a rogue and might be the Republican front runner in the next election.
So we are back to square one with the question: do Americans really want a smart President? I guess we will find out, but one thing is for sure, you really don’t want to show people how smart you are…especially if you are running for President.
William Hazelgrove writes in Ernest Hemingway’s attic. His latest book is Rocket Man.
Maybe Americans Don't Want a Smart President
There is an old saying: never let anyone see how smart you are, they will cut you off at the knees. Certainly President Obama never heeded this little aphorism. He has shown us how smart he was time and again and he is paying a price. Smart people have to be careful. You do not want to show up your boss, your colleagues, your teachers, even your family members with your keen insight or trenchant diatribes on politics, religion, or even the price of mayonnaise. Some people are just not comfortable with the sneaking suspicion someone is faster on the draw, better educated, or more knowledgeable. We would like to think we want the best man or woman for the job of President, but our history says otherwise.
Take Woodrow Wilson. President of Princeton, the ultimate educated WASP with glasses pinched to his nose, he was truly our heavy duty scholar in chief. World War I breaks out and Wilson is on the spot, crafting The League of Nations to make World War I the war to end all wars. The League was Wilson’s cerebral answer to the silly squabbling between nation states. The problem was the American public did not share Wilson’s Utopian view and congress never ratified The League. Wilson lost touch and was defeated. Criticisms of too cold, too aloof, too intellectual. Cut to Jimmy Carter. A well read man with lust in his heart who couldn’t inspire the country to save his life and was replaced with an actor. Ronald Reagan was not a smart man, but he was a great communicator. People loved Reagan. Fast forward to Billy Clinton. Smart. Everyone knows this. Voluminous knowledge, but able to break it down to folksy populist sentiment. He had the great advantage of being smart, but sounding like a guy who could work on your car. Too bad he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.
Slip up to the disaster of John Kerry–the talking head. East Coast intellectualism takes one on the chin from a guy from Texas who can barely put a sentence together. But he sounds like the guy next door you could have a barbecue with. George Bush the rambler knocks out Captain Ozone in the next election with the same old folksy I’m just like you (funny vote counting) and aint all that global warming stuff weird? Al Gore goes down. Then something happens that no one counted on. A Harvard Law Professor hits the jackpot with populist rage for change. He can deliver a hell of a speech and he is black.
Barack Obama is elected on the tails of a bestseller and starts to work. But he begins to lose the populace. There is something about his speeches that is at times undecipherable. He thinks about his decisions. The media loves him because they recognize his wit, his play on words, and he can write memoirs that have literary merit. Unemployment blasts past ten percent and public distrust starts to seep in like a gas. He makes a case for saving the banks, but at times people don’t quite understand what he is doing. He is accused of being a socialist. There are comparisons to Woodrow Wilson and his reliance on cold intellectualism to solve the issues of the day.
American history is built on a distrust of anyone who is too privileged or anyone who is too educated. This is rooted in our history of rugged individualism and a fierce distrust of centralized power. The frontier was not settled by a bunch of college graduates. It was settled by men who could work with their hands and improvise. They used homespun logic that any man could understand. The real American is a self taught, self starter, and can speak in the plain language of a carpenter. Eggheads are decidedly unAmerican.
Now we are at the present. A woman emerges from a frozen state and is thrown onto the national stage. She speaks of hockey moms, and gives shoutouts to sixpack Joe’s and likes to hunt. She speaks in colloquialisms and has no real grasp of Washington politics. She is great looking and has a raft of kids and blows it every time she has interview. She can see Russia from her back door and warns against death panels. She is not educated. In fact she cares little for real facts. She is riding a wave of populist discontent like a surfer on a perfect wave and she releases a book that attacks the media and the Republican idiots who blew the last election. She is a rogue and might be the Republican front runner in the next election.
So we are back to square one with the question: do Americans really want a smart President? I guess we will find out, but one thing is for sure, you really don’t want to show people how smart you are…especially if you are running for President.
William Hazelgrove writes in Ernest Hemingway’s attic. His latest book is Rocket Man.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com
First Chapter of Rocket Man
http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf