'Dumb' leaders should be treasuredNick Land / text
P. 1
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20151009012722/http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn:80/star/2003/1009/vo2…
'Dumb' leaders should be treasured
Shanghai Star. 2003-10-09
By Nick Land
To cite one recent "feminist" response to the final-stage smear campaign
against Arnold Schwarzenegger: "The difference is that Clinton was so
brilliant ... If Arnold was a brilliant pol[itician] and had this thing about
inappropriate behaviour, we'd figure a way of getting around it."
Leaving aside every question about cynicism, hypocrisy, double-standards
and straight-forward dishonesty, what makes these words interesting is the
light they shed on current Democrat attitudes in the US today, widely echoed
around the world.
They are made especially relevant by their resonance with typical leftist and
overseas judgments of President George W. Bush, which in turn eerily recall
the disparagement of President Ronald Reagan for his supposed intellectual
deficiencies.
A solid defence can and has been made of the practical intelligence of all
three slandered Republicans mentioned here. Their achievements - if highly
controversial - do not seem to be obviously overshadowed by those of their
"pointy-headed" rivals. But let us instead accept that such leaders are indeed
"dumb", what follows from it?
For their critics, it is an unspoken assumption that lack of intellectual gifts
disqualifies someone for high political office. Yet what truly sends such
commentators into paroxysms of infuriation is the fact that the US electorate
seems nowhere close to agreeing with this principle.
Worse still, perhaps a broad majority of US citizens positively dislike
highbrow politicians.
Such dislike actually makes a lot of sense.
It is no coincidence that the (big government) Democrat Party is the source of
such sneering in the US. Democrat supporters positively exult in the thought
of politicians making as many decisions as possible on their behalf and
therefore seek leaders who are cognitively equipped to do so.
Republican supporters, who are typically happier managing a larger
proportion of their own lives, have no such reason to trust smart - or more
precisely, self-consciously smart - politicians. They wisely predict that "smart"
leaders will be more inclined to spend their money on their behalf, wrap them
in red-tape and manipulate social institutions (such as the legal system) in
order to realize elite objectives without broad popular support.
For most US voters, being ruled by leaders who think they know best,
especially when it comes to spending other people's wages or
micromanaging society, is not a price worth paying for extra presidential
brain-cells.
In the US context, tax-cutting and intellectually modest leadership have
become deeply fused in popular opinion across the entire political spectrum,
to such an extent that a BQ or "bossiness quotient" could now safely simplify
the matter by encompassing both factors. Low BQ politicians might make
more grammatical errors and be more likely to mispronounce the name of a
foreign dignitary, but they are also less likely to interfere with your life, destroy