There are few media voices in New Zealand which espouse "right wing" opinions. There are no writers or broadcast commentators who consistently espouse classical liberal or consistently conservative ideological positions. Opposing viewpoints estranged from the prevailing group think are hard to find.
Of course, there are plenty of such slurs passing for considered opinion in the US media. But at least the US has outlets like Fox to take the other side. But the public down under are subjected to the old saw that if a slur or a lie is repeated often enough it morphs into an infallible, received truth. Incidentally, the corollary of the slur that Republicans are dumb is that liberal Democrats are so, so smart. Clever, educated, thoughtful, insightful, creative . . . the list goes on. Remember how the media drooled over candidate Obama, extolling him as the best and the brightest. Yet Obama has turned out to be remarkably deaf and obtuse and simplistic and one-dimensional. Virtually every wrong or mistake made by him has been attributed (by him) to be the fault of the dastardly Republicans. Every success he neatly attributes to himself.
One of the rare right-of-centre voices in New Zealand is Liam Hehir, a lawyer specialising in business and property law, who also moonlights as a freelance columnist for Fairfax Media. He wrote a piece recently focusing upon media leftwing groupthink, and made a prediction that once again we are about to be bombarded by repetitive pieces on how dumb the current crop of Republican candidates for the GOP nomination are. He went on to opine that in any event IQ does not necessarily make a good leader.
There's a presidential election in the United States next year and that means we can look forward to many editorials, columns and opinion pieces by New Zealand writers about what dummies the Republican contenders are.
It won't make any difference to point out that Senator Rand Paul and Ben Carson are highly trained surgeons. Senator Ted Cruz may have been regarded "off the charts brilliant" by liberal Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, but that won't help him. Never mind that Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company and was responsible for one of the biggest tech mergers in history.
This is because all of these contenders will take policy stances at odds with what is considered wise or prudent by New Zealand opinion-makers – who will therefore inevitably declare a received wisdom that the Republican field consists mostly of airheads, numbskulls and know-nothings.
Watch for this instinct to go into overdrive if Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wins the nomination. The big knock on him is that he is a university dropout. There has already been a lot of snarking in the American media on the subject – which is interesting given that none of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs completed their degrees either.
Of course, this kind of contempt reached its apotheosis during the last Bush presidency. It is extraordinary to consider how many otherwise informed people seem to truly believe that a twice-elected President of the United States could be a bona fide dunce. The grounds for belief in Bush imbecility largely flowed from the fact that he really was a poor speaker. When I was studying US politics, I remember one paper professor ending a lecture by reading a poem assembled out of his various verbal miscues. Everybody had a good, smug laugh.
But oratorical prowess and intellectual capacity is not the same thing. Anyone giving three speeches a day will rack up enough gaffes and misstatements to fill a book. Barack Obama has said more than his share of foolish things on the stump, but the American media – which any number of studies show is fiercely partisan – do not tend to make a big deal about them.
In the 2000 election, there was a persistent narrative around Bush being intellectually inferior to Democratic nominee Al Gore. You might be surprised to learn, therefore, that a comparison of their respective university transcripts shows Bush to have the superior record. In fact, despite somehow having acquired the cachet of scientific expertise, Gore seems to have fared particularly badly in science courses.
The record also shows Bush was a slightly better student than 2004 opponent John Kerry. According to military testing undertaken by both when they were in their twenties, Bush probably had the higher IQ. Again, however, the campaign press usually portrayed Kerry as the more cerebral of the two.
In case you are wondering, President Obama's academic record is not known because he has never authorized its release.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Bush was a better president than Gore or Kerry would have been. While people tend to fixate on intelligence, it is hardly the be all and end all of enlightened leadership. On the contrary, there are many other factors that go into making an effective leader, including humility, patience, decisiveness and human decency. And in the absence of countervailing influences, intelligence often leads to hubris. Nemesis is rarely far behind.
Few people would doubt that Robert Muldoon or Richard Nixon were highly intelligent men. Their cleverness, however, led them to overestimate their ability to control a complex system like a developed economy. Both were arrogant enough to centrally regulate prices and wages and the result in both cases was economic damage that took years to mend.
Herman Goring was highly intelligent (he had a measured IQ of 138). He also signed off on the final solution. Clearly his brainpower did not give him moral clarity enough to oppose the murder of millions of innocent men, women and children.
But despite all evidence to the contrary, it will always be easier to declare that those politicians with whom we disagree are simply stupid. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is self-flattery: if your opponent is dumb then by inference you must be smart – and you can signal that by making fun of him. Secondly, an assumption of stupidity relieves you of the need to understand their point of view, address their arguments and articulate why you disagree with what they say.
So if you're looking to feel better about yourself and what you believe, personal derision isn't a bad way to go. Just be aware that it might not be grounded in reality.
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