From: rhs@world.std.com (Richard H Schwartz)
Subject: politics & intelligence
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 22:45:57 GMT

A few weeks ago I posted a response in the thread that dealt with
the question of why intelligence isn't socially acceptable.  I 
drew a parallel to politics, and mentioned an essay by Garry Wills,
in which he concludes that intelligence is not a desirable trait in
a politician because people feel threatened by it.

David Hunt asked me to dig up the reference, and with much searching
I have found it.  It was published in Harper's Magazine, September
1975.  It is too long for me to type in here, but here are some of the 
better excerpts.

From "Hurrah for Politicians" by Garry Wills:
=============================================

  Politicians have many virtues that ignorant people take for vices.  
The principal ones are: (1) compromise of principle; (2) egotism; (3) 
mediocrity.  In other men, these may be vices; but for a politician they 
are needed skills -- so much so that, if a politician is not born with 
them, he must learn them; and if he does not learn them, he will either 
fail himself or do harm to others, as Eugene McCarthy did.

...

  McCarthy, though not a great poet, is not a terribly bad poet, which
tempted him to decline the honor of mediocrity...  There is in Baltimore
a city comptroller, Hyman Pressman, who has made a long and useful
political career of his terribly bad poetry.  He could never be suspected
of excellence, while McCarthy constantly raised just those suspicions.  
The suspicions were never confirmed, but their very presence was enough
to doom him.  People do not like to be ruled by their superiors.  They
will settle for their equals, but they prefer their inferiors.  They 
like to feel they are too smart to be deceived by a politician; so, just
to be safe, they choose politicians too dumb to deceive them.

...

  All politicians say as little as they can.  Only the very greatest can
get away with saying nothing.  Abraham Lincoln in his 1860 campaign did
not make a single speech, and refused to answer any questions about his
views.  He simply said that he would stand on his record, though his 
backers had sold him to the Chicago convention on the ground that -- 
compared to Seward, Chase, or Bates -- he had no embarassing record of
achievement one way or the other.

...

  So the critics of the lawyer background shared by so many of our 
politicians are dead wrong.  No better training could be found for them.
They, too, must struggle with each other yet be friends the next day;
make maximum claims as bargaining points but aim at a compromise settle-
ment; satisfy most people somewhat, rather than a few people fully;
represent diversity by muting hostility; deal in increments and margins
only, but deal constantly; always adjusting, hedging, giving in a little,
gaining a little; creeping toward one's goals, not heroically striding
there.  Always leaving oneself an out, a loophole, a proviso -- what
Willmoore Kendall used to call "a verbal parachute" -- so that no
alliance is irrevocable, no opposition adamant.

...

  In 1953 (LBJ) told a journalist friend that Vice-President Nixon was
"just chicken shit".  The next week, Nixon returned from South America a
mistreated national hero, and the first to hug him at the airport was
Senator Johnson.  The journalist asked him about his earlier opinion of
Nixon.  "Son," Johnson replied, "in politics you've got to learn that
overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad."

...

  Politics demands a great capacity for self-deception, which rescues
the politician from hypocrisy.  He can normally manage to believe what
he is saying for the time it takes him to say it...  Onlookers have
noticed that no politician thinks he is going to lose an election...
A true master of politics, such as Franklin Roosevelt, will in time 
persuade himself not only that he can not be voted out of office but that
he will never die.  The politician is even more suggestible than the 
actor who disappears into the role, since the politician's performance
never ends.  The curtain rises in the morning and falls at night even
as his eyelids open and close.  So it is unfair to call politicians liars.
Most of them cannot tell, any longer, what the truth is - and therefore
they cannot lie.

...

  The old saying was that anybody could grow up to be President in America.
That was a lie for msot of the populace -- women, blacks, Indians Jews, 
Catholics, the uneducated, the poor.  It is also an insult -- most 
Americans are too bright, or quirky, or interesting to be politicians. 

...

  We have also said that a politician must compromise.  This militates
against rigidity of opinion.  On the other hand, the politician is 
expected to speak often and on all kinds of subjects; to show his wares,
as it were, so people can decide whether he represents them, or can
bargain with them or will yield enough to them.  He must have a wide, if
shallow, stock of knowledge and oratory.  He must convince people just
enough without committing himself too much.  A shallow mind is necessary
for this, even if it has to be developed by men with the gifts to be 
profound.

...

  We have said that the politician must indulge a constructive egotism.
This drives him to seek flattering company, which means light company,
even when he is not obliged to by political duties...  Politicians are
bound to collect a penumbra of toadying listeners, an uncritical 
audience that soon becomes necessary to them.  There is nothing more
conducive to mediocrity than such a crew.

...

  The old lament is familiar: Quantula sapientia mundus regitur.  How
ignorant are we ruled.  That misses the point.  There is no other way we
could be ruled representatively.  Virtue and brilliance are uncommon,
volatile, distrusted.  We need men we can trust.

============= end of excerpts ===============

-rich

-- 
             Richard H. Schwartz, Scheduling Systems Inc.,
            1000 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA  02138
                  (617) 864 8330; FAX (617) 864 8377
                          rhs@world.std.com
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