Based on this book, I think Lincoln, for all his intellectual shortcomings and blind spots, deserves a much better reputation as an intellectual than he has enjoyed up to now.
I know he loved Shakespeare and could recite big chunks of several plays from memory.
I’ve always thought Lincoln had a reputation that came very near Jefferson’s. I know that he went through a long backlash that has only recently eased up, but has his reputation really taken that kind of hit?
No worries. Good to mention it again for those who missed it. It’s one of my favorite trivia questions.
Not heard of the book, but it sounds great.
As for the questions of others regarding Lincoln’s intellectualism, I’d always thought of him as an intellectual, but I can’t tell you why. I know he was not an inventor or university president, but there’s something about how he pulled himself up from his backwoods beginnings that impressed itself that way in my mind. Maybe it was the Lincoln-Douglass debates. Dunno. But I never really heard of Lincoln not being consideerd an intellectual.
I’m a bit skeptical of George W.'s book collection. I’m sure he read a few of them, but no doubt the list was added to by his PR people.
Mark Halperin, Political Director of ABC news, offers the following advice to potential presidential candidates in his book “The Way to Win”
Come on - I disagree profoundly with the man’s judicial philosophy, but Clarence Thomas is not an intellectual lightweight. He’s extremely well-read, knowledgeable about American history and law, and a fine legal writer. Read his concurrence in Morse v. Frederick (the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case) - Thomas digs deeply in 19th and early 20th-century law to make a thoughtful, persuasive case that the Court should have seized that opportunity to overturn Tinker, and return us to a jurisprudence in which schoolchildren have no First Amendment rights at all. Now, that may strike you as a horrible idea, and I’d think so as well - but he does a damn fine job of laying out the argument.
I’m not enough of a historian to say, categorically, that there has never been an intellectually lackluster Supreme Court Justice - but I’d be quite comfortable stating that no such creature is on the bench now.
I don’t remember who said this (I feel like it was Thomas Friedman), but I felt it was a very simple but fitting description of GW’s shortcomings: He has a tragic lack of curiosity.
Lack of curiosity about the world, I feel, disqualifies one for a spot at the top of the intellectual totem.
This is not based on caricature of Bush from the media. I’ve read numerous insider books about the war on terror (State of Denial, One Percent Doctrine, Cobra II, etc.), and I am always left with the impression that George W. Bush, despite his good intentions (which I don’t doubt), is unable to process opposing views. He makes up his mind, and he moves, no matter what arises.
Watching him in Baijing for the Olympics, reminded me of myself the first time I went abroad. He seemed finally to be interested in the world, but it’s too late.
It will take a lot of convincing to make me believe GW deserves any place in the upper half of this list. I don’t buy that he’s an idiot, but he’s not an intellectual, in my book.
Since this has come up several times in this thread, let me say, I don’t consider the number of books one has read or, necessarily, written to be an indicator of intellect. I think an intellectual president is one who was always striving to learn, willing to be challenged mentally, and, more generally, curious. I know plenty of intellectuals who got bad grades, but it was usually because they didn’t care much about the numbers next to their name, they would leave class at the drop of a dime if it meant there was something to be learned elsewhere.
To be fair, this was pretty indicative of how Sheridan thought you should wage any given war, not just ones against non-whites. He was equally ruthless in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and as an observer in the Prussian army as they marched through France.