Presidential Poll

Reader's Digest has an interesting article in the November issue. RD did a poll to find out what characteristics people think are important in a president. Some aspects are very telling. It appears that a person's liberal/conservative leanings determine which factors are most important. There are some ironies in that though. Conservatives prefer someone who served in the military, yet Bush is not generally thought of in that light. Liberals prefer someone who is "genuinely intellectual" (which usually means highly educated) and "has traveled the world extensively." Yet few people of either leaning thought that independent wealth was important. Ummm...how does someone travel the world extensively if they are wealthy? Oh yeah, become a politician and travel in the name of the "common people." The magazine article, though, states some very interesting observations about what people expect vs. which presidents are considered to have been successful. It appears that few of the most loved presidents met the most important criteria that people have for a president. The author points to "Presidential intelligence" as a blend of knowledge, judgment, temperament and faith in the future (taken from the late Everett Carll Ladd). When you think about the "favorite" Presidents, they tended to be defined by specific circumstances that they had to react to. They reacted well to those circumstances. Pure intelligence is not a good determining factor. As it says, "if the Presidency were about IQ, the country would be full of statues of Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson--or Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon." Won't be seeing many of those in the future!