Does academic achievement predict how good a president will be?

American University historian Allan Lichtman told The Daily Caller that he believes so.

“If you look at some of the least successful presidents,” he said, “they’re not exactly known for their [intellectual] prowess … Whereas the most brilliant of the presidents are all either very successful or at least reasonably successful.”…

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Smith explained that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is regularly ranked among America’s greatest presidents by historians, had an “undistinguished” academic career but had a type of intelligence that was more important than book smarts.

“FDR had an incredible emotional intelligence. FDR read people, not books,” Smith said. “His career in college was undistinguished, but then, frankly, you know, there were lots of ‘Gentleman’s C’s’ at Harvard in those days.”

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