Define brilliant.
If what were seeing from Obama's collective in DC is brilliance, by any measure, I'd hate to see what cluelessness looks like.
Brilliance should be a package deal. Brilliant should not just be the ability to make brilliant toast & marmalade and not just playing the violin like a maestro at age 5, ideally it should include enough mental and historical knowledge and observation skills to keep oneself from blindly becoming one of the types of 'brilliant' useful idiots that helped create the Soviet Union, Red China or North Korea.
It's really hard to be brilliant while playing the role of useful idiot.
IMHO.
;-)