Why would you ask? (nor is it merely my opinion, if we're doing polls)

Intelligence but also: glibness - his contrary aspect. I don't pretend to know which light is on the brightest, at all times - but I infer from the clarity of (most of) his presentations, especially when compared with the general level of political babble:

That he understands what he is reading or speaking, and is capable of writing that which he delivers (no, I don't think he eschews other writers; that would be stupid anyway). He is capable of cohesive extemporaneous comments, replies to questions - as none others than maybe JFK - who was a Natural just like Bill C. (Bill may be 'smarter' than JFK - but that just illustrates our absurd ideas of measuring and calling it 'IQ' and believing that means something) Notice how rarely C. uses blab words like Freedom / The Murican People want / and the other BS phrases. W can't go 3 sentences without one or more of those.

As to what he really Really 'believes' deep-down (?) which is always our real wonderment: I am quite sure that we never get to know that about more than a handful; almost none of those in public vocations. Not about JFK, nor Bill - nor fershure about W. except by his Daddy's staff he hired and the comeuppance he really Wants to deliver. Next.

Anyway - specific examples we could talk to death (like the cruise missile to the camp which allegedly, bin-L had vacated only hours before). Net result: 0. Possible result? We won't know what the truth of that incident was.

And as [link|http://www.salon.com/people/lunch/1999/07/30/lapham/| Lewis Lapham] observed hours ago on NPR (World Affairs Council bdcst. with 2 other speakers) we won't know what This Admin is trumping-up right now, for maybe another 17 years. The lid on past Presidential papers and other secrecy now intensifying - guarantees that 'we' won't have access to the information needed to govern ourselves. Not while this Admin is in power.

So yes - intelligent he is, whatever his marks for strategic instincts or other talents - and he knew How to speak to/with other countries' leaders without insulting them, brandishing the arrogance of power and inanities like "Wars on Evil" and "You're With us or you're a Terrorist". Remember?


HTH,

Ashton

.. a poster boy for the self-absorbed, legalistic, all pollished flash and no substance, short sighted amateurs that fill not only the political ranks but the corporate CEO ranks as well.

How conveniently you elide his learning curve: having taken on the Puritan-Military anti-gay crowd, out of the box.. then tried to tackle the largest Profit-making scam in history: the entire broken AMA-style Medical/Insurance megaCorporation (both via tyro foolish head-on tactics!)

One could as easily say, not in justification of the above bad strategy, but as a realization of the inertia of the opposition / the actual small extent of 'Presidential power':

He just may have perceived then: the Fact of the Murican One Party with Two Right-Wings (or fill in your own). He may even have perceived that ~ the best he might do is confound the Congress, minimize its great propensity for passing even worse Corp-purchased legislation. (for just one what-if)

Of what use is intelligence and a good grasp of language - if the words are simply ignored by the 'parties' - as, precisely: in the debate play occurring right now: wherein [a Southern voice, missed name] set out starkly the exact Constitutional issues of the Congress ceding its warmaking powers in a blank check; moreover one with no Exit Clause. The reply went immediately into blab-words about "clear and present danger", ignoring Every Point *just made*.

It may be that there is indeed little place for intelligence in the figurehead office of the Pres. Expected of the Pres. by this consumer nation - seems to be little more than a duty for repeated self-congratulation of ourselves for building This Great Nation, and making sure that we may continue to regress to 1970s levels of oil/energy consumption: as if there were no tomorrow (for your 3 yo and a few million others).

Clinton wasn't clever enough to accomplish what LBJ did - employ his mastery of congressional manipulation (via incessant phone calls to the exact right people) - not smart? enough then to construct an end-run around the inertia, wherein his strategy and tactics complemented each other. Thus he was ineffective, evidently frustrated - for obviously possessing much better ideas than he could cause to be implemented.

Intelligent he always was and remains. His greatest service may have been to demonstrate the utter unworkability of our One-Party system, the poverty of Murican political babble in general - and just maybe help along the ever-slim chances for reform of the patently obvious Corp-purchase of Government in all significant sense.

(Nobody knows how to do That still - Congress would have to vote to become insecure and honest, in the National Interest - for reform to be possible) Hah.


The impeachment WAS about sex and Puritan hypocrisy (chaired by today's same Henry Hyde - another adulterer) in an effort to nullify the Murican (remaining actual voters) electorate. Sex remains the first and for most (?) sufficient reason to despise Clinton. Now we know about 'us' - what about Clinton?


Ashton

then you and I have different ideas about what intelligence means (never mind "IQ" - that's an outright hoax). Reagan was an *actor* (as all of us are of course, on the daily stage) -- but that's All he ever was; he never was a thinker and: it showed, quite long before the official Alzheimers diagnosis. Like Billy too, his 'innovation' was handed to him by others - on purely emotional judgments as always. IMhO.

Happened to hear a NPR rebroadcast tonight, Clinton's speech at [link|http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/EPA/EngNews/02S/EN3S/clinton.html| UCB] ~2/02. This is the one in which (post-remarks) a questioner asked, "Why does the Right Wing hate you so much?" Clinton hesitated about 1 second: "Because I won." Obv. the audience [Roared] liked him a lot, but then, these are just academics and we all know how easily led They are ;-)

He expanded: referred to the Repub. long-term (successful) strategy of characterizing Democrats, Libertarians -anyone not Them- as "cardboard cutouts"; example named was Dukakis and the 'reverse plastic surgery' done on him. "They thought they owned the White House, that they should own it; no Democrat would ever be President again. I learned about this Big-Lie technique by watching my Rt-Wing Yahoo Gramma at work, fucking with language.. at an early age.

Pity that this link hasn't the full text of the speech and the Q&A -- and the extemporaneous wit, detail in actual English. You seem already to have forgotten his original 'policy wonk' sobriquet: he carried around in his head more relevant facts about US History, government orgs and their roles and policies -- and how these factoids often fit together -- than: *any* President, hell maybe any other *single* person ever with such power.

As to the frequent innuendo that he didn't Really.. give a shit about the very many world issues about rich/poor and the effects upon the US of our policies towards these; the paucity of our expenditures in 'foreign aid' VS those of other civilized countries - that calumny would have to be backed with more than random cynical slogans from folks just like my wacko Gramma.

Sorry Dan, but I think your filters missed the rest of the man. Hearing this speech and contrasting it with Dubya/Cheney and the Hawks and low-life lower echelons surrounding them (listed in more detail in a post above IIRC?) -- was a stark reminder of just How insouciant is our current Exec. branch, and how inarticulate / impoverished of original thought.

(BTW - in another aside he explained the nasty DC environment! Gave a balanced and sympathetic description of the demands on congresscritters: expected to read all the bills, give parties to attract people to quiz re those, fly home on weekends, and raise impossible amounts of $$ [natch it was about campaign finance reform NOW] -- said they are all sleep deprived.) I think he's spot-on. The patent nastiness cannot be missed, in any case.

Anyway, enough of this. Yes the system is broken horrifyingly: we are seeing just Now where that might lead next. It is, like the fav academic phrase about a submitted paper, so screwed up it's not even wrong.

I don't think 'we' have the interest, the brains-generally or the guts to repair it. Sorry you're young enough to have to put up with what I foresee. I put a mini-review (in Reviews, natch) of a book publ. in Paris early '39 = before Poland, by an ex-Nazi satrap from Danzig, Hermann Rauschning:

The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West

Found this in a friend's bookcase a few weeks ago - a revelation (for me). It filled in lots of blanks. I feel that I now -finally- comprehend (!) what Hitler and the Nazis were about (at and Only at: just that inner circle - the rest were fed regular and abrupt 'changes of focus' as part of an actual program; the street was fed pure BS for an equally sinister but clear purpose, etc.)

Reread Sinclair Lewis's It can't Happen Here and the above, if you have the time - and you'll see why I deem the present Admin and its massive Corporate agenda to be a prelude to the permanent? / long-term de-Constitution of America. This unless a lot more spirit manifests strongly and soon. There are some utterly vicious ones in this mix. You don't have to literally goose-step, you know.

I think it not improbable that I shall be heading towards Canada in the foreseeable, if a few checkpoints are next passed. I'd like to be mistaken, but I believe dumbth IS rampant here. Ah.. if the Web had existed in 1933 ... ... Sorry for you and yours, though I hear Simon Fraser U. uses IT folk too :-) No, it's just coincidence and logic - that that was also the haven in the S. Lewis book..


Luck to all,
Ashton