Who is smarter? Who has the better team?

The United States already faces a series of huge challenges. I saw two distinguished economists yesterday saying that the economy is facing its biggest challenges since the Great Depression of the 30's, although they clarified that they did not predict a depression. It looks like we will transfer trillions of dollars of capital to the oil exporting countries in the next decade, and those nations are governed by people with whom we have huge differences. After wasting eight years before doing something about global climate change, we must make a start in the next president's administration. Two wars are continuing, and we must figure out an exit strategy that does not destabilize the Middle East. Most Americans can expect their children to be poorer than they are themselves unless the current trends are reversed. China, India and Russia, with their large populations, are growing rapidly, and are competing for resources and influence in international affairs. I suggest that the world is going soon to face food and water shortages that will require major changes in the way we live. Moreover, as history demonstrates again and again, presidents face challenges in their time in office that no one predicted in advance. Which candidate is smart enough to face the challenges of the office?

Barack Obama after college sought graduate education in Harvard Law School, and was elected to be the president of the Harvard Law Review, essentially the most prestigious student post in the most prestigious law school in the United States. He taught law for 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. He first came to national attention when he published the first of the two books he wrote.

John McCain graduated from the Naval Academy ranking 890th in a class of 896, in spite of the fact that his grandfather was a four star admiral and his father was on the way to his four star rank in the Navy. (One assumes that faculty at the Academy would if anything favor the son and grandson of such senior officer). The two books to which his name is attached were written by a staffer.

It is pretty clear, if it was not already from watching them perform, which of these two is the smarter.

The team

When I worked in the White House, that agency had about 1,000 employees. The president's team includes not only the White House staff, but cadres of political appointees in every agency of the government. That staff is needed to analyze the issues, impose the president's policies on the executive branch of the government with its millions of employees, and deal with the other branches of government. If the president can not get his program through the Congress, he is sunk, and that alone involves dealing with hundred of legislators and thousands of Congressional staffers.

While the president is important, the intellectual challenges faced by the presidency require the combined smarts, knowledge, skills and understanding of a very large team. The question should be asked as to which party and candidate is prepared to field the stronger team. We would not want a dumb president, but I suggest that the smartest men have not always had the best presidencies (Hoover comes to mind), and the most effective presidencies may have been more marked by the capacity of the executive team than the smarts of the president himself (Reagan comes to mind; Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously quipped after meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt: “a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament”).

Barack Obama clearly has the support of the Democratic Party, and can draw on the resources of the party including those who worked in Clinton's successful administration.

McCain is running as a Republican for change. Where then is he going to recruit the team he will need to run the government. Either he will

• retain and reshuffle the team working for President Bush, or
• he will recruit from lobbyists and and others who study but don't work in government, or
  
• he will have to go to outsider Republicans.
  

I am pretty sure that I don't like any of those alternatives. Since is campaign staff includes an estimated 135 lobbyists, it seems possible that he would bring us a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists. On the other hand, how could the people who brought you the Bush administration, which is seen by 80 of our people as unsuccessful, bring a fresh approach and make the needed changes. Or, how could the a team drawn from state and local governments and academia understand the complexities of the federal government well enough to hit the ground running and make the needed changes. (I worked in the Carter White House, and have observed the difficulties of outsiders bringing change, even under the guidance of so smart and well motivated a man as Jimmy Carter.)

The first choice by each candidate for his team, the Vice President, is suggestive. Biden's academic career was not outstanding, but he is a lawyer, and he has decades of experience in the Senate foreign relations and judiciary committees. Sarah Palin, while obviously bright, has only an undergraduate degree, and has admitted lack of knowledge about key policy issues. Biden has great understanding of how to get things done in Washington, Palin is a complete outsider.