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skankhunt402 t1_iyahi8t wrote

Reply to comment by Lord_Erie in TIL that in 1979, a charity special episode of the academic student quiz show "It's Academic" was held between a team of three Democratic U.S. Senators, three Republican U.S. Senators, and three members of the press. The special was handily won by the press team. by FranklinDRoosevelt32

Yeah you'd think our leaders would be the cream of the crop not the dregs of high society

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jabbadarth t1_iyaqwdm wrote

Elected leaders are people with charisma who can win a popularity contest. Intelligence is not a pre requisite. You just need to appeal to a large group of people and in some areas intelligence is actually a negative.

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Bad_Mood_Larry t1_iybrf98 wrote

I mean that simply not the case for every politician there are plenty of politicians with a deficit in charisma and are skilled in managing interest groups and stakeholders to garner support. People overvalue charisma in politics. Though I will give you the more national the race the higher in importance it becomes.

Edit: For those who doubt why don't you attend your local politics meeting in my case this would be direct democracy townhall I can tell you our selectman would put you to sleep. If you want farther up go check to see your state rep I doubt they're a Casanova. If those are too hard go watch cspan which i do, most of these guys come off as glorified pencil pushing bureaucrats half the time which makes sense as half of them are lawyers truly a profession know for exclusively exciting action packed court cases and not sifting through hundreds of pages of legalises documents that use so much circle logic you don't know where a paragraph begins and ends.

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Bertbrekfust t1_iycgbon wrote

I don't get why this is downvoted. Obviously politicians and academics have different goals, but that doesn't mean that being a successful politician isn't a very complex job that requires a lot of intelligence.

I guarantee you that the prime ministers of developed countries, regardless of whether you agree with their political ideas, are quite intelligent people.

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Jonsj t1_iycf9h2 wrote

The overwhelming majority, 96%, of Members of the US Congress have a college education.

A degree from a top school or seeming to "academic" is sometimes seemed as negative in some political races. But it seems the american political elite are more highly educated and on average probaly higher than average intelligence.

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