Is it coincidence that our three most intellectual presidents — John Adams, James Madison, and John Quincy Adams — were neither successful nor happy in in office, found it the least happy period of their long and productive careers?

Michael Dukakis, called a great brain because he took a book on Swedish land use policies to read on vacation, was never able to explain why it was prudent to give murderers unsupervised furloughs, an idea that elites found humane and progressive, and voters found mad. Similarly, Obama is in trouble because he could not get his brain around two base rules of politics so commonsense and self-evident as to need no explanation whatever: big and transformative laws cannot survive without deep, broad support from the public; the absence of power invites aggression, and withdrawing the carrots and sticks of American power from tense situations asks unbridled hell to step in.

Children should know this, which is why it eludes the more snotty among us — who should never be heard from again.