When I first went to Britain to live, it was during the dark days of the miners’ strike and the three-day week and the two elections of 1974. It pretty swiftly became apparent to me that the Labour government headed by Harold Wilson and, later, by Jim Callaghan, was making a royal mess of things. Inflation was soaring, the unions were out of control and the country was becoming almost ungovernable. It was essentially the disaster for which Margaret Thatcher was eventually to be the remedy. Yet again and again I heard from my friends at one of the ancient British universities that the Labour front bench were far more impressive than the Tories because they had all got firsts in economics or PPE from Oxford! Such people seemed to trust to academically certified brain-power above all things, and in spite of the evidence of their own eyes that it wasn’t working.

I’m reminded of that superstition today by the absurd overvaluation of intelligence and educational credentials of the Democrats. Of course, as Heather MacDonald points out it’s always possible to go too far in the other direction, but I’m inclined to agree with Charles Murray that sheer intelligence is not only not a qualification for the highest office in the land, it may be a positive disqualification. Just look at Jimmy Carter! Yet having failed to undermine the candidacy of Sarah Palin on moral grounds, the Obamaniacs and their allies in the media are now going after her on intellectual grounds — in particular her incomprehensible answers to the even more incomprehensible questions of Katie Couric. Now Fareed Zakaria thinks it clever to pretend that he wants someone to "please put Sarah Palin out of her agony."

You’d think these people could remember that they’ve tried this before. On the same page on which Howard Kurtz tells his readers of what a mess Governor Palin made of the Couric interview, he notes with disapproval that Paul Begala was unrepentant about having described the current president as a "high-functioning moron." Now President Bush isn’t running for anything this year. Such absurdly hyperbolical insults have become a mere tic, a habit that they can’t break for those on the left — which is why, as Mr Begala told Mr Kurtz, "You cannot imagine the positive feedback I've gotten." Oh yes I can! He acts as though the rest of us haven’t been reading the bumper stickers for the last eight years. He wouldn’t have said it if he wasn’t getting a lot of positive feedback.

But that’s just the trouble: the Begalas of the world have cried wolf too often and too frivolously. The force of the complaint, even if it were true, has been dulled by sheer repetition. It’s the same with their promiscuous and bogus charges of "lying" against the President. Now that they’re trying out the same accusations against Senator McCain, they’re finding it harder and harder to get any traction out of it. People may or may not believe that either President Bush or Senator McCain have in fact lied about something, but they are most unlikely to connect that belief, one way or another, with such charges from their political opponents. They’ve heard them too often before. So with Sarah Palin’s intelligence. She may be as thick as two short planks, as Princess Diana once said of herself, but no one not already disposed to believe so is likely to be persuaded of the fact by people for whom it is second nature to cast aspersions on the intelligence of Republicans.

Doubtless such people really do believe in their own superior intelligence, and that of the politicians who think as they do, but it’s pretty hard to point to any time in the past when Americans — as opposed to Britons — have been impressed by that argument, even if they thought it were true.

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