Who was perceived as the most intelligent candidate in 1912?

Surely T.R. was the most likable that year.

Presumably Wilson could not have won in a 2-man race against either Taft or T.R.

Roosevelt was certainly smarter than Wilson - both as a reader and as a writer.

I think that in the 1912 race, Wilson won the intelligence contest by a far margin. He was, I believe, our only college president to reach the top spot (Clinton was a professor and LBJ a teacher; can't think of any other academics who gained the post) whereas Teddy had the "rugged outdoorsman" image and Taft had been the butt of jokes at the hands of TR himself (when a rattly chandelier was installed in the Oval Office Rossevelt had it taken down, supposedly saying "Put this in the Vice President's office' it'll keep him awake.") Oddly, Wilson's intelligence was not played up in the campaign, and his 1916 slogan, "He kept us out of war", could be said of anyone irrespective of intelligence. (I'd also question that Wilson was less intelligent than the 1916 Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, or that Taft was less intelligent than the 1908 Democrat, Champ Clark, but I don't know much about those individuals. Any help in that regard?)

I'd also contest the 1976 race; I'm not aware of anyone who thought Ford was smarter than Carter. Granted, few people think Carter was any great shakes, but you're comparing him to GERALD FORD - I think you can argue that Carter had brains but did little with them. Actually, there's a lot of people who fit that desription...

Wilson was not our only president to have been an university president. Ike was president of Columbia University after the war, which proves something about something.

Another Precinct heard from:

In a phone conversation with Mr. Bush last Tuesday, Mr. Chirac delivered a clear message that the draft resolution in the Security Council transferring sovereignty to the Iraqis was a good start - but needed substantial revisions. But they also mentioned how much they wanted to see each other and sent warm wishes to each other's wives. . .

Mr. Schröder said last week that in dealing with the Iraq crisis, he wants "to help in every way," but then finished the sentence with the words, "short of a military commitment."

Officials in both countries say that their leaders have come to conclude that Senator John Kerry's campaign to defeat Mr. Bush has not caught fire and that they may have to coexist with Mr. Bush for another four years.

T.R. was--he'd already won a Nobel and was a widely respected historian--he lost.

David, thanks for the heads-up on Eisenhower; I didn't know what he did after the Presidency. And it was an Ivy League school too, as it was for Wilson (Princeton).

TR won a Nobel Peace Prize, a shiny bauble that comes with a nice check, but such an award says nothing whatsoever of the recipient's intelligence, or suitability to be recognized for "promoting" peace, as shown by the motley assortment of rascals who've been awarded such.

cache is all in terms of public perception, but he also was our smartest president

Woodrow Wilson, the American version of Vervoeld,
was elected due to the McCain like egotism of
TR, who proceeded to resegregate the district, promote his friend DW Griffith's agitprop film.
Prohibition soon followed suit, along with the
Haitian invasion, that kickstarted the career of
that other Roosevelt

Wilson was also the most white-supremacist President of the 20th Century:

* Gave under-the-table Presidential endorsement to the Ku Klux Klan through promotion of Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, aka "They's after our white women!" Note this was the Second Klan, the most widespread and influential of its four incarnations. (I'm posting this from the former "Klanaheim, Kalifornia", and if you're from Indiana, the only reason your Governor and Legislature don't dress in white sheets is because a certain gubernatorial candidate in the Roaring Twenties (aka the Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK) went down in a sex scandal days before an election that up until then was a sure-thing Klan takeover...)

* Made the entire Federal Government whites-only by Executive Order. Understand that since Reconstruction, Federal Civil Service (especially the Post Office) was one of the few non-brute-labor careers open to a black man; Civil Service hired through written exams, and was relatively color-blind for the time. Until Wilson.

* Read up on the WW1-era American Patriotic League sometime.

I wasn't asking who was the most intelligent candidate in 1912, but who was perceived as most intelligent.

I suspect Wilson, because college presidents were more admired in those days than now.

In the light of history, neither Wilson's nor TR's supposed intellectual product holds up.

Orrin's ideas about who Americans elect look good on the surface but may not be very general. Few presidents have had an easier waltz into the White House than Coolidge, who was "weaned on a pickle."

It helps to run against divided opposition.

TR was a respected and well-read scholar. His naval history of the War of 1812 impressed Mahan and his book on the opening of the West was seminal.

Coolidge was running for re-election, not election. Harding who was only likable and handsome topped the ticket--the competent Coolidge below him--proving the rule.

John Barrett:
"David, thanks for the heads-up on Eisenhower; I didn't know what he did after the Presidency. And it was an Ivy League school too, as it was for Wilson (Princeton)."

Ike was president of Columbia before becoming president of the US, not after.

Eisenhower succeeded Nicholas Murray Butler as president of Columbia [in 1945], but did not take up the duties until nearly three years after Butler had resigned. He served as the University's thirteenth president from May 1948 until January 1953. "The principal purpose of education," he said the year he became the University's president, "is to prepare the student for effective personal and social life in a free society. From the school at the crossroads to a university as great as Columbia, general education for citizenship must be the common and first purpose of them all."

:

On another front, he prevented legendary football coach Lou Little from leaving for Yale, and regularly attended the Lions' contests at Baker Field. Never the most engaged of presidents, in December 1950 he took a leave of absence from Columbia to become the first supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He retired from active duty in 1952, but not from the Columbia presidency, to campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Once in the White House, his dealings with Columbia were infrequent.-- link

Thanks for the correction, Bill, and sorry for the misunderstanding, David.

Bill:

Ike had -played for Army--back when you played both sides of the ball too.

I've read "Naval History of the War of 1812." Like I say, it is regarded with disdain as history these days.

His book on civil service holds up better, but you won't catch conservatives citing that one.

Yes, but historians are held in disdain today. TR, like a Gibbon, Bancroft, Parkman, wrote great literature.

Ken:

"Sex scandal" is putting it mildly...

He pulled a Marv Albert on a working girl, and inadvertently caused her death when she died from an infection caused by the deep bites on her bosom.

Not a working girl in the version I read. I romantic girl of the upper middle classes.

Either way, it hit the media a few days before the election, and "The Great Klan State of Indiana" went down in flames. Two weeks later you couldn't find anybody who'd admit to ever having been Klan.

The Grand Dragon was brought to trial for the girl's rape and death; he threatened to release the secret Klan records (about just who was on the KKK's payroll and for how much) if convicted. Well, he was and he did. The fallout ended up with the Mayor of Indianapolis in prison and about half the state legislature on the street and under investigation.

They're still around up there in the North, though. The Second Klan (1915-1940) was the most widespread of all the KKK's incarnations, usually led by doctors, lawyers, officials, local businessmen, and other Pillars of the Community. It was organized by a guy who was heavily into secret societies and had its own ritual handbook ("The Kloran"), its own secret language ("Klonversation"), and its own secret recognition signals (usually misspellings of words beginning with "K", three in a row if possible).

A contact of mine in rural Michigan had to deal with remnants of the Klan still hanging on in the 1990s. I figured it was leftover Second Klan when he said most of the guys around the burning cross were doctors, lawyers, political bosses, big employers, and their kids -- the Pillars of the Community targeted by Second Klan recruiting.