<p>Ronald Reagan is an interesting case. Elizabeth Drew, who would never be accused of liking him, always maintained that he was far more intelligent than he appeared, and much more controlling of what happened in his administration. Basically, she described him as intelligent and evil, not – the popular left image – stupid, doddering, and manipulated by evil advisors.</p>
<p>There was a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit based around that view once, in which Reagan dressed down incompetent subordinates and went through complicated regressions, but became slow-witted and avuncular when a boy scout troop turned up to see the Oval Office.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t place him in the same category as Jefferson and Lincoln, but William Howard Taft must have been a pretty smart fellow. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, finishing #2 in his class, and after earning a law degree, practicing, and serving as a judge in Ohio was appointed Solicitor General of the United States at the age of 32, the youngest ever to hold that position. He then became a judge on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals at the age of 34, Governor-General of the Philippines, Secretary of War and Acting Secretary of State in Teddy Roosevelt’s administration before being elected President. After the presidency he taught law at Yale Law School and later became Chief Justice of the United States. Pretty amazing career for someone who is practically unknown to us today.</p>
<p>You know what I think? I think this country has been served by some truly remarkable (and interesting) men. Aren’t we all fortunate in their gifts?</p>
<p>Taft is practically unknown to us today, unless you go to Yale, where every other thing seems to have his name on it, or you live in Ohio, where his descendants still constitute practically their own political party. But, yes, he had an amazing career. The only person who comes close is the fictional character in Vicar of Christ who goes from Supreme Court Justice to Pope.</p>
<p>Re Reagan: I remembered this about my view at the time – Most Presidents age considerably during their first years in office. That was certainly true of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, even Ford. Reagan was an exception – he started out relatively old, but four years later he didn’t look as much as four years older. James Baker, however, his Chief of Staff, looked like he had aged 20 years during that first term.</p>
<p>lol - it’s true about Reagan. I remember thinking that more than the Teflon President, he was the Dorian Gray president. Many years later I do look back on the years he was in office and even though I wasn’t part of his groundswell of support, I miss the country being more united. So I guess I’m the type who is never really happy with a sitting president. I’m fond of all of them once they leave office. Maybe not Carter so much. He’s just too much of a scold.</p>
<p>But agree with zoosermom - we seem to elect exceptional people to the presidency.</p>
Agreed … he’d give a speech and I’d find myself nodding in agreement … and then it would take about 2 days to figure out why I actually disagreed with him. He was amazingly positive in his vision and did not tear down his (US) opponents but focused on his positive vision. I not sure I’m on board about how (book) smart he was but he certainly was an excellent speaker and a master politician which are two types of intelligence.</p>
<p>Yes, Reagan was probably smarter than people give him credit for, although I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he was ever able to understand views that disagreed with his, either intellectually or on any other level. But there’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind – based on what I’ve been told by a good friend who was highly prominent in Republican politics both at the time and later on, in both elective and appointive office, and met Reagan many times – that when Reagan was President, particularly in his second term, he was already suffering from what was eventually diagnosed as Alzheimers.</p>
<p>This same friend did not have a high opinion of the intelligence of either President Bush.</p>
<p>Interesting that nobody’s mentioned how smart Richard Nixon was. Whether you like him or not, which I didn’t. </p>
<p>I don’t think FDR was ever thought of by his contemporaries as being brilliant intellectually. (My father knew someone who wrote speeches for FDR and, I think, Al Smith, who confirmed this to be true.)</p>
<p>Even more so than the presidents, I am impressed with the quality of the Founding Fathers. I’m not one of these who reveres everything they said and did with quasi-religious ferver. They made mistakes. But think of it - was there ever another nation founded by a comparable collection of brilliant statesmen, scholars, and leaders as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Jame Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, etc? I mean Jefferson and Hamilton were both genuine geniuses. </p>
<p>Most nations are founded by military strong men and local chieftans who made good and conquered their neighbors. We were incredibly fortunate that this group of Americans all lived and worked together in that critical time.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree. As someone who was at Harvard Law School not <em>that</em> many years before President Obama, I’ve always found the idea that it’s possible to graduate magna cum laude from that institution without being amazingly smart, and working amazingly hard, to be amusing (especially when such skepticism emanates from ridiculous buffoons like Donald Trump, whose academic career – never mind his business acumen! – wasn’t nearly as distinguished as he pretends). It cannot be done. Do you have to be Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln? No, I very much doubt that. I had classmates who graduated magna cum laude – the rumor was that only a small handful of people, including Professor Tribe if I recall correctly, had graduated summa – and they were clearly impressive intellectually, but I didn’t feel I had to bow down to their staggering genius, or anything remotely like that. And I’m no Jefferson or Lincoln.</p>
<p>And, yes, it’s possible to skate by without doing significant amounts of work and without flunking out. I hated almost every minute of law school, found almost every aspect of it excruciatingly boring, and probably shouldn’t have gone right after college anyway, given that my mother had died suddenly two months before my first year of law school started, after we were in a car accident. I can realize in retrospect how distracted and traumatized I was for most of my time there. I’m afraid I was quite notorious among my classmates, particularly in my first year when our entire “section” of the class took all its courses together, for not going to class about 90% of the time, not keeping up with the work, sleeping all day, and cramming for every exam at the last minute. In my second and third years, there were several courses I took that I never actually went to even once. And then in my third year I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, was hospitalized twice, and missed more than a month in total as a result. </p>
<p>And yet I somehow managed to skate by and graduate somewhere around the middle of the class, with a B+ average and a healthy sprinkling of A’s and A-minuses along the way. So it can, in fact, be done. But I wouldn’t recommend my way of going about it to anyone!</p>
<p>Going back to post #40, I’ll say Clinton. I found it interesting that in his biography Alan Greenspan (who has described himself as libertarian/republican) thought Clinton was the brightest president he ever worked with. Here’s a Greenspan quote from a recent interview: </p>
<p>“Say what you will about his politics, say what you will about his
personality, but Bill Clinton is the smartest man I have ever come across
in all of my 82 years. When he first came on in 1992, I would give him
tutorial sessions and by the end of his presidency, he knew my job better
than I did. I can tell you with 100% certainty that we would not be in our
current economic situation if he were in office. Clinton was, at first, a
student of economics and insisted upon knowing every minute detail of data
and its impact .”</p>
I agree with you. I am always amazed to think of the courage and (pardon the expression) audacity of creating a nation. It’s something on a much grander scale than most people can think or plan.</p>
<p>I have an older cousin who was at Duke Law when Nixon returned to campus, before Nixon became vice president. They happened to be at the same restaurant late at night. My cousin says he and his friends were shocked when Nixon and his friend got drunk and became so obnoxious that the restaurant kicked them out. I was equally shocked when he told me that - I have to admit that was a different side of Nixon that I sure never expected.</p>
<p>Yes, Clinton is sort of haunting. What might have been? If not for Monica? And I feel he came along at the wrong time. There could have been better moments for him to be president. He was perhaps a bit young and we were perhaps not quite ready for him.</p>
<p>DH and I heard him speak in person a couple of times. It’s left an indelible mark. Obama is a more theatrical and eloquent speaker. Clinton just dazzled with his incredible grasp of information and fluency. He could “meld” well.</p>
<p>Just one PS: I don’t think anyone would have guessed that out of all the people in our law school class, the one who would end up making about a gazillion times as much money as anyone else would be Lloyd Blankfein. A nice guy back then, and smart, but he certainly didn’t stand out in that way.</p>
<p>I feel the same way about Clinton. Not so much the Monica thing, though that was obviously a huge and unnecessary distraction. I’ve just always had this feeling, "Geez, this guy is REALLY smart. If only he’d just apply himself . . . " And I still feel that way about him, even after he’s served 8 years as POTUS and left office with generally quite high approval ratings. I just don’t know that history will judge him one of our more important or effective or substantial presidents. But boy, did he have potential!</p>