There are many reasons, but over at Gene Expression I assert that Mitt Romney simply comes off as too wonky and brainy to do well in the Republican primaries in 2012. You don’t need to be dull to be nominated. Both John McCain and George W. Bush had IQs which were well above average based on standardized test scores, though both also underperformed their measured aptitudes in their higher educational careers (McCain more than Bush). But I think it is fair to say that since Richard Nixon all the Republican nominees for president have been intellectually modest in their presentation to the public (this does not mean that they were actually intellectually modest in their endowments. For example, I think that George H. W. Bush had both aptitude and realized academic achievement in his youth). The Democrats have struck a different profile. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were smart (Carter has a degree in physics in engineering from the Naval Academy, class rank 59 out of 820, and was a nuclear engineer in the navy*), but balanced out their academic orientation with a folksy Southern charm (in Clinton’s case his personal morals seem to have been crassly base, making him “earthier”). Michael Dukakis was a nerd, with no balancing qualities. Barack Obama mixed the “wine-track” with the black segment of the Democratic primary.
In many ways I think Mitt Romney is like Michael Dukakis. Both governors of Massachusetts, and nerds. Romney is physically robust and handsome, but for some reason he seems to come off as a nerd on testosterone to many people. I think this is why he was so detested in the 2008 primaries by his rivals. He’s smart, rich and handsome. These should be traits which make him an object of admiration and envy, but instead he is perceived as a striving overachiever, and elicits resentment from his peers. And I think that’s partly because he can’t mask his management consultant affect (I now suspect his flip-flopping and Mormonism come into higher profile because people want to give him a wedgie).
Note: To be clear, I am positively predisposed toward Romney. But the more I think about it the more pessimistic I get about his prospects in the primaries. Once in the general I think Republicans put-off by his nerd sensibility would vote for anyone but the Democrat, just as they did for McCain despite previous antipathy. And Romney’s wonkish competence would probably start to draw in upwardly mobile professionals, former nerds themselves quite often, who aren’t part of the Republican primary voter base.
* Some readers were skeptical of Carter’s educational credentials. It looks like he has exaggerated his background in physics, he took an uncredited graduate level course at Union College. His undergraduate degree at the Naval Academy was engineering, the most common degree given in the service academies. His son does have a degree in nuclear physics from Georgia Tech.
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“dougx · March 2, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Ertdfg – sounds like from your post that Romney will get the Libertarian vote which has gotten a lot stronger in recent years.”
Really? So Libertarians are looking to nationalize 1/6th of the economy, restrict ownership of guns, and grow the size of Government? Or libertarians won’t look at his years of actions in these and other areas and will believe him when he says he’s totally different now?
I think you mean “liberals” not “libertarians”.
In response to absolutely no requests, I now offer my thoughts on the overall intellectual affect of Democratic presidents sonce 1900.
1. Woodrow Wilson: The Democrats start out strong. A serious scholar (Princeton BA and Johns Hopkins PHD in History), Wilson’s only true rival amongst 20th Century presidents is Teddy Roosevelt.
2. FDR: The triumph of affect over substance. Although not stupid, no one who knew FDR was impressed by his intellect, with one wag stating that FDR was not a “first class intellect but rather a first class temperment.”Still, as a Groton and Harvard man, Roosevelt knew how to project sophistication. WAs the last president to speak with an old style patrician accent (JFK’s bizarre accent does not count).
3. Harry Truman: The common man in the White House? As with Lincoln, people like to point to Truman as a sign that elite educational credentials are meaningless. Only 20th century Pres to lack a university degree. Actual intellect hard to gauge. Certainly above average in I.Q., and would almost certainly have been a university man had he been born after WW2.Overall affect, however, was very lower middle class, as signified by his first name (first pres to be legally known by a diminutive).
4. JFK: Perhaps the most intellectually overrated POTUS of all time. WHY ENGLAND SLEPT was extensively “polished” by others;PROFILES IN COURAGE was ghost-written. However, as a product of Choate and Harvard, JFK knew how to produce an aura of sophistication. More importantly, JFK thought that the President should promote what was best in the nation’s culture. Probably the last president who wanted to be identified with elite culture.
5. LBJ: Cunning but crude. Graduate of Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College. Overall affect is one of Backcountry lower middle class.
6. Jimmy Carter: A mixed bag. A fairly bright man (as indicated by his US Naval Academy ranking), his early reputation was rather technocratic in character. On the other hand, he was “born again,” and his presidency marks the overt intrusion of faith into presidential politics (JFK’s Catholicism was a different issue). Also note the proletarian “Jimmy.”
7. Bill Clinton: Personally very bright (Georgetown BA, Rhodes Scholar, Yale law degree). Might be smartest POTUS since Nixon. Coupled this, however, with personal crudeness. As with Carter, note the proletarian “Bill.” Note also the strong linkage to Black American culture and mores. A curious mix of high and low, again, rather like Nixon.
8. Barack Obama: REally, just read Steve Sailer’s brilliant exegesis of Obama’s DREAMS OF MY FATHER; he says all that anyone needs to know. Having said that, a look at his educational background is revealling: Punahou Prep (most elite prep in HA), Occidental College (2 years),(transfer student) Columbia BA, Harvard law degree. The fact that he was a transfer to Columbia seems odd. One would think that a top tier “Black” student would have made it into the Ivy League first time out. Became first “Black” editor of Harvard LAw REview, but does not seem to have set the Charles on fire with his intellect. Doubtless well above average, but I think that Clinton was probably smarter. In affect, a curious mix of Black street cred and Harvard polish.
9. Summing up: As with the Republicans, there has been a definite loss of overall sophistication over time. However, the Democrats have maintained a somewhat higher intellectual affect than have the Republicans. Joe Biden’s inflation of his rather modest intellectual attainments is ,in itself, a sign that the Dems place a higher value on elite affect than do the Republicans.
I don’t know about Dems and liberals today being that intelligent . Obama is even poorer in knowledge of basic history than George Bush. Bush had the neo-con historan Victor Hansen having him quote Thuycicdes. Like most modern black liberals Obama knows very little American history or European history. He thought he was born during the Selma march. Obama was born before the Selma March. And Obama thought the Moslems were the caused of achievements during the middle ages. The moslems borrowed heavy from the Perisians and Byzantines who they conquered. But Obama didn’t even know who the emperor Justinian was when he visited Turkey viewing the Hagia Sophia. And Black Evangelicals and Hispanic Evangelicals and Catholic Hispanicsthat vote heavily for the Democratics make White Evangelicals look smart.
The argument wasn’t I believe that Democrats are smarter, it was that they place more value in it in their political candidates.
I agree with that to some extent but there are qualifications. Most of us would only get to see the upper levels of Democratic support, the lawyers, doctors, journalists, school teachers, professors, civil servants and of course college students. It is hardly surprising that in those circles intellectual achievement is hailed as maybe the most important aspect of a person, Republicans from those quarters are probably more interested in that than other Republicans as well. Of course there is a stronger degree of this amongst Democrats as the cultural establishment culture in itself is outspokenly liberal so Republicans will be somewhat repulsed by it, Democrats drawn to it.
On the other hand there is zero evidence that lower-class Democrats have any real interest in intellectualism. One just has to look at the kind of Democratic candidates that regularly advance to Congress from urban districts. The days of the noble patrician liberal representing the urban masses are all but over, they seem to value “authenticity” over qualification today. Interestingly enough the elite liberals who often reside in those districts as well – in wealthy enclaves or “hip” gentrified areas – seem to rarely make much of an effort to change the ethnically driven local Democratic politics. So whilst they might rage about Bush’s idiocy they probably happily give their votes to party machine mediocrities at lower levels who got there because they have the right skin color or are in the right union.
And I think that’s quite telling, what unites liberal elitists and the underclass is hatred of the white middle. Curiously enough, when liberals think of loathsome, uncultured idiots they do not think of high school dropouts in Compton or the Bronx, they think of their lower middle-class relatives from the suburbs or even worse some small town, people who read the Bible and for whom culture consists of watching Navy CIS. Similarly lower-class urban Democrats direct anger mostly against the suburbs, Coleman Young and other black populists made their careers on the back of that anger. The white liberals who provide financial and cultural support, and who often are actually richer than the hated Republicans in the burbs, however are embraced at least to the extent of forming political coalitions with them.
In other words, liberals don’t so much value culture and intellect as much as they think support of their political positions automatically implies culture and intellect, hence their desperate attempts to find superior value in even the most derelict parts of the Democratic “family”. There’s a reason movies and books push the mythical contrast of noble ghetto-dweller vs. the morally corrupt and hypocritical suburban office-dweller, which of course flies in the face of all evidence.