In French, this is called vulgarization, defined pretty much the same. My favorite example is Stephen Jay Gould, who in his essay collections was able to explain complex paleo/biological science in easily-understandable terms. Another example was Carl Sagan, whose popularity from this (largely due to Cosmic Connection and Cosmos) led to his being blackballed from at least one scientific academy.

Some on the left seem to think we need an intellectual giant as president and that will guarantee smart policy. That is a non-sequitor of dismaying proportions–as anyone who spent time around the smarty-pants set knows.

Or somebody whose IQ places them firmly in “the smarty-pants set”. I sure as hell wouldn’t want someone like me (IQ 160) running either the country I live in or the company I work for.

There’s some sort of a conservation of mental energy taking place; you pay for that Intellect (TM) with neuroses, alienation, and attitude, “Growing up Martian” until you’re like some sort of Other Being looking in at a species of humans who think much slower than you. (But are able to focus enough to get the job done, at which point envy and jealousy set in. Then the snobbery and nastiness follow.)

(One fictional allegory of this was in the novel Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, where the population of the world of Path are “crippled geniuses”, with uber-genius-level IQs accompanied by crippling obsessive-compulsive disorders.)

You can be both intelligent and sensible. You can be intelligent but not sensible. You can be sensible but not intelligent. And, of course, you can be neither.

The “report” is from one investigator, hasn’t been accepted or vetted by the committee and the most important thing buried in 263 pages of tortured obfuscations by a political hit-man is that Palin did nothing illegal. Period.

And most alarming in the report is that, regardless that trooper Wooten is a racist, a child abuser, and made murderous threats against the Palin family, the “investigator” says any “fear” by the Palin family was “not legitimate”.

if The One is so brilliant, where are his college transcripts? Where is one article he authored as a so-called Constitutional Professor or while he was the historic head of the Havard Law Review?

The One has a wonderful grasp of rhetoric and he plays as dirty as any Chicago pol that ever oozed from the Daley playground, but “brilliance” doesn’t guarantee good values or morality.

The Left is morally bankrupt and The One is one with them.

Yet you want someone totally disconnected from the real world of cause and effect to be put there. Yeah, that’s a good idea.

Simply a matter of public record.

Want proof? Read the recent ethics report about her “shocking incompetence”.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1849399,00.html

We have had enough ignorance in the White House to last generations.

First of all, the process by which they decree Bill Clinton or John Kerry or Al Gore or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to be “smart,” is a depressing exercise in anti-intellectualism itself. All the sins you can make against brain-smarts, are in that process. They think something because someone else told ‘em to think that; they’re bullying YOU around, trying to make you think this third-party (neither one of you have met) is smart, just because they’re bullying you; they’re confusing gift-o-gab with across-the-board smarts; the list goes on and on. These are all anti-intellectual things to do, and they’re doing them, toward the goal of defining who’s smart and who isn’t.

Second, of course, is that it’s confirmation bias writ large. The message unspoken is that democrats are just plain smart. Find a guy who thinks John Kerry is smart…who democrat does that guy think is average intellect or below? The answer, invariably, is nobody. It’s not about smarts. It’s about democrats. It’s just propaganda, a lot of folks know it, but nobody ever says it.

Third: The definition is sloppy. You quickly gather the impression, and you’re right, that the conversation/bullying-session isn’t really about *smarts*. These famous democrats aren’t presented as people functionally smart, above-average, IQ somewhere in the 125-135 range…if you’re working late and the deadline is tomorrow, would you want them working on it with you, or some big dummy. It’s not that kind of smarts. These are luminous beings. Barack Obama has wrinkles on his brain you don’t have. You should be squealing in delight to be breathing thet same oxygen as them.

If you pay attention to politics for any length of time, you understand this to be a political gimmick, nothing more — that’s even if you agree with what’s being attempted here, even if you’re a leftist. It only works because most people don’t pay that much attention. Most people hear this discourse about smartness, they think the ideas are all about smartness and nothing else. They couldn’t be more wrong.