David Brooks’ column today is crushingly stupid:
* Great presidents “tend to be emotionally secure”
– no David, Lincoln was clinically depressed.
* A great president is likely to have been raised “in an aristocratic family”
– except greats such as Eisenhower, Lincoln, and Reagan.
* Great presidents tend to have “experienced crushing personal setbacks”
– except for, say, Reagan, who wasn’t “great” but really a rather mediocre president and whose worst setback was a character he played in a movie had his legs amputated.
* Great presidents are usually “experienced political insiders”
– except for Eisenhower, who’d never previously held office.
* “[G]reat presidents tend to have superb political judgment”
– which is another way of saying that people who are good at being politicians … are good at being politicians.
