Le Guardian's Howell Raines poses a rhetorical question: "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush?" It's an ancient liberal tradition to expose conservatives as dummies who've hardly made it through the grade school. As with character attacks, the best defense is to prove your opponent wrong with your actions, and at this point in the presidential campaign, Bush the Dummy seems infinitely smarter than Kerry the Veteran who's disintegrating so quickly that we will witness a one-man race soon.

I could stop here because all that matters is that George W. Bush gets re-elected. But then, why have a blog and not dive deeper? I've promised Laura a blogbattle over one issue I am particularly sensitive about: intellectuals. Let's get started.

The article's headline says it all: "It's the IQ, stupid!" Actually it's stupid to think that IQ alone the necessary prerequsite for a future president. Few doubt that Bill Clinton was one of the most intelligent politicians of his era. Yet his presidency was mired by his wavering, nuancing, and above all, character. Nigel Hamilton's book I blogged about yesterday reveals the character traits that ultimately led to his impeachment, namely his unability to admit he made a mistake, the way he disposed of his best friends when he no longer needed them, his lying and cheating, et cetera. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was anything but an intellectual, and yet his rule brought an end to the Soviet emptire and freedom for the forgotten half of Europe - the one beyond the Iron Curtain. His character and decisiveness played an important role. It's not the IQ, stupid. The preliminary finding: the ability to govern is inversely proportional to the ability to interpret James Joyce's Odysseus.

The problem with intellectuals is that they are obsessed with words. They love the process of thinking, and instead of concentrating on the goal, they acknowledge that there is no goal. Howell Raines wasted 2180 words to find out what Bush's brain is about. In the end, he admitted he doesn't know. His disdain for simple answers prevented him from knowing. Yes, President Bush is no intellectual, and neither was Reagan. They're happy being just smart.

The difference between being intelligent and being an intellectual is like that between talking about sex and doing it. Intellectuals hate decisions, are afraid of action, because as soon as you act, you can't take it back, you can't come up with a different opinion. And you have to face the consequences of your choice. If Iraq fails, Bush will go down with it, and he knew it well when he planned the attack. And guess what, he didn't care. It's the conservative tradition to accept responsibility, to cherish it, even.

Liberals and intellectuals (redundancy warning) know no responsibility; indeed, it disappeared from their post-modern, post-causal dictionary. Their ability to embrace doublethink is simply stunning. How could John Kerry decide to campaign on his Vietnam record while he was, for most of his life anyway, a war protester? How could he expect support from the very same people he'd testified against in 1971? Perhaps, as James Lileks put it, he feels it's simply his turn to be president, because he's John Kerry, and it's John Kerry who's supposed to be president now.

Perhaps the liberal game of playing the smartest boy in the classroom is nothing but pretense. After all, George W. Bush's academic record is better than that of both John Kerry and Al Gore. His genius is in making his enemies believe he's an idiot, and ambushing them when they're thinking they have won already. Le Guardian and other European liberal papers still can't see it.