I'd like you to expand on that...it's an interesting concept.

Being good with words is one thing, Ronald Reagan was a trained actor and TV spokesman, and his public communications showed that. But although the presentation was there, there was no substance. It was all fetish and cliché. I too, was professionally trained as a public speaker, and used those arts to persuade and convince. Consequently, I am suspicious of the ability to speak effectively to an audience, particularly from a prepared script. I know all the tricks.

Dealing in real time in debate and free-form conversation (like a press conference) is, I believe. a better way to judge intelligence. It may not be foolproof, but unless we have long and intimate personal knowledge of another person, or an acquaintance with their written work, it really is the only way we can judge someone else's intellect. Intelligence may not be everything, especially the kind of intelligence revealed by clever use of the language. But it usually is all we have available to us to aid our judgement.

I once heard Ayn Rand speak in a lecture (it was on the radio and I didn't know who it was until after she had finished). I was very impressed with her logic and analysis (the topic was abortion, not politics). Others who have greatly impressed me are Patrick Moynihan, JFK, George Will, WF Buckley, Bill Clinton, and Barbara Ehrenreich. Obviously, from this list, it should be pretty clear (regardless of your politics) that you can be very smart and still be very wrong.

But getting back to your comment, the ability to move an audience and feed off them is indeed an ancient political skill, one formally studied by the Greeks and Romans, but used today more in commerce and propaganda than in politics. But I don't know how much I trust it. Hitler was good with crowds, too.

And do you really think my involvement with public affairs is purely abstract and academic? My own vanity prompts me to ask, am I one of those "intellects, vast, cool and unsympathetic" that HG Wells warned us about?