>> Was JFK smart? Nixon? <<
Sure. JFK was smart enough. Still, he wasn’t the supreme world-class genius that his Harvard puppet-masters would have us believe.
(But I’ll admit that they had me fooled!)
On the other hand, many people who knew Nixon up close will tell you that he may have had the highest raw IQ of anybody they ever met.
Nixon was, however, not the least bit “glamorous” or “debonair” — and I think it was probably JFK’s having this latter quality that gave Dems the edge in the 1960 election, plus a little vote-counting help from Mayor Daley’s machine in Chicago and the LBJ-owned local officials in south Texas.
In other words, in this case as in most of life, pure IQ usually ain’t sufficient — taken alone — to get the job done.
Nixon was, however, not the least bit “glamorous†or “debonair†— and I think it was probably JFK’s having this latter quality that gave Dems the edge in the 1960 election, plus a little vote-counting help from Mayor Daley’s machine in Chicago and the LBJ-owned local officials in south Texas.
The liberals consistently choose “style” over “substance.”
Although I wasn’t born yet, I understand Nixon didn’t fare well under studio lights in front of a camera. He sweated and looked like he needed a shave. That was the first Presidential election with heavy use of television and Nixon suffered for it.