Matt Schiavenza From the Dragon to the Apple- A Sinophile in New York

The Virtue of Brains

James Fallows on Rick Perry's embarrassing brain fart:

Running for national office is different from any other live public-performance feat. The range of issues on which you have to say something -- and can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing -- is astonishingly large. You're going to be asked, in the course of a day, about Syria, and No Child Left Behind, and nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, and North Korean and Iranian nukes, and ethanol, and flat-tax plans plus capital-gains schemes, and Afghanistan counterinsurgency strategies, and the European Central Bank, and what have you. I spend my life learning about public issues, but half of the items a presidential candidate is asked about I could barely formulate an answer on. And for a real candidate, a foot placed even slightly amiss on any of these issues can cause lots of headaches.

This is why it's typically a good idea that the president possesses an extraordinary level of intelligence. While there are certainly very intelligent people who do not speak well (and a few silver-tongued mediocrities), there tends to be a correlation between knowing what you're talking about and saying it well. Bill Clinton is an example. Say what you will about the man's performance in office or in (ahem) his personal life, but he possesses the extraordinary gift of articulating coherent positions on a wide range of complex issues. President Obama, too, has that gift.  President Bush, to say the least, did not.

The only two among the Republican field who possess that gift in any capacity are the two Mormons, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. The latter has no chance. The former is likely nominee, but in the current GOP climate he is succeeding in spite of his oratorical smoothness, not because of it. The raison d'etre of the Perry, Bachmann, and Cain campaigns is that they strike more conservatives as authentic than the wooden, blue blood Romney. And part of that authenticity, frankly, is a lack of brains.

That being said, Perry's gaffe was so bad that I don't see how he can survive it.  Watching his performance, I was struck by its similarity to old Saturday Night Live satire and scenes from the film Bulworth. President Bush might not have been a good speaker, but he at least gave an impression that he was taking his candidacy seriously. With Perry you wonder whether someone slipped him a Quaalude before the debate and slapped him on the back.

How lucky is Romney, by the way? His opponents in this competition include a complete, unmitigated dunce (Perry), a serial pervert transparently orienting his campaign around a book tour (Cain), a man with about as much charisma as a beige shower curtain (Gingrich), a man who infamously waxed lyrically about bestiality (Santorum), a woman who is as crazy as a box of spiders (Bachmann), a cranky old coot raving about fiat money (Paul), and a seemingly decent man who disqualified himself simply by choosing to work for the Great Satan Obama (Huntsman).

Romney is doubtlessly intelligent enough to handle the job, but if he wins, he'll be beholden to a political party that views stupidity as a virtue.  Perhaps when he debates Obama next year, he'll take a page from the Perry playbook and start flubbing his lines.