The significance of IQ is controversial, but how a person exercises his intelligence is an important guide to what kind of leader he will make. Opponents of Dwight Eisenhower painted him as a popular dunce who spoke in simple and sometimes mangled language, but voters chose him twice over Adlai Stevenson, "the egghead" whose language was sophisticated, intellectual and bookish. The public decided, probably correctly, that he would have been a wishy-washy leader.
John Kerry, like Jimmy Carter, gathers an abundance of detail and weighs facts with great intellectual deliberation, which his advocates say explains his willingness to change his mind. The Bush campaign characterizes Kerry's brooding methodical style as responsible for his flip-flops, split-hairs, straddles, waffles and doublespeak. He's squarely in the tradition of Hamlet, a man who can't make up his mind.
No one wants a hesitant leader who can't stand strong when the going gets tough and it's time for the tough to get going. No matter how many convoluted explanations John Kerry offers to defend why he voted for the war in Iraq and then voted against funding the troops, it sounds more like nonsense than nuance. When he felt the heat from Howard Dean in the primaries, he wilted.
"If you disagree with the senator on most any issue," President Bush famously needled him, "you may just have caught him on the wrong day." Leadership requires consistent direction and clarity of vision.
Democrats gleefully mocked George W. for taking the controls of the plane taking him to the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been toppled, but the war was not over. Nevertheless, the troops were cheered by the recognition of the commander in chief when he told them: "In this battle we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world."
If John Kerry were president now, Saddam Hussein might still be presiding over his torture chambers and his acres and acres of mass graves; if he could not take the heat from Howard Dean, it's difficult to imagine him standing up to the quitters who want to cut and run from Iraq. The silence in the dovecote in Boston was merely tactical.