Smart people don't always make the best presidents. By my calculation, the five brightest men to inhabit the Oval Office during the 20th century were Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson and William Taft. Two of these men left office in disgrace (one resigning and the other getting the rap--unfairly--for the Great Depression). Two more left office adored by their fans (much of the country) and hated by their enemies (also much of the country). And Taft (a Republican) managed to blow up a long run of G.O.P. hegemony in the White House--though he did prove later to be a more-than-able Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Similarly, relatively dumb presidents aren't necessarily all that bad. The five least intellectual presidents of the last century were, most likely: Warren Harding, Harry S Truman (there is no period after the S; Truman had no middle name, just the initial), Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. With the exception of Harding, who apparently never met a bribe he wouldn't take or a bustle he wouldn't rustle, all of these men were more than capable stewards of the country.

And so we come to George Herbert Walker Bush, who is at once the most brilliant and dumbest president of the 21st century. This is a fluke of timing, of course. My guess is that he'll be ranked toward the bottom of the brainpower list as time goes by.

This isn't to say he's stupid. Okay, so I've called him a moron from time to time. Let's chalk that up to hyperbole. No president, even Harding or the celebrated Millard Fillmore, has been a complete dunce. At the very least, they all showed aptitude in the political arena, which must count for something. A lot of folks have made jokes at the expense of former vice-president Dan Quayle, who has never been accused of being the brightest apple in the barrel. But his political instincts are quite impressive. Like it or not, he is the guy who got the whole "family values" train rolling. And he was smart enough to avoid joining the 2000 presidential race. He may not be able to differentiate Thucidydes from Thanatopsis (or even know that one was a person and the other is a poem), but hell, neither can the average person.

The problem with less-than-stellar scholars in the White House is that they often get single-minded about things. Take Johnson and Vietnam. Here's a man who, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, decided to increase the American presence in Southeast Asia from a garrison to a full-scale army. That decision (and full-bore commitment to it afterward) killed more than a million Vietnamese and more than 50,000 Americans.

I remember the current Prez repeatedly saying "I have not made the decision to go to war with Iraq. I will judge all the evidence before I make my decision." He kept saying this even as his boys (let's call Condoleeza Rice an honorary "boy") were running around screaming "Bomb Saddam! Bomb Saddam!" Again, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the Prez decided a long time ago (and certainly well before the first cruise missiles missed Saddam) that he was going to raze Iraq. Apparently, he made this decision without considering the likely result of a long-term American occupation in Iraq. Looking back over his recent buck-passing statements, it appears that the Prez did everything but seriously weigh the evidence. Plenty of generals told him that conquering Iraq meant occupation, but the Prez decided to listen to the loony theory that "someone else," someone somehow acceptable to us, would sweep in to gather the reigns of power. Plenty of people in the intelligence community told him that all of these reports about weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda were, at the very least, highly questionable if not outright fabrications. Invariably, the Prez chose to accept only the evidence that fit his idea. Last, and perhaps most importantly, almost every nation on the planet told him the invasion was a bad idea. But he listened to a few cronies who kept saying "We're with you all the way, big guy. Just keep the checks coming."

I don't believe this Prez has the intellectual capability to process all of the information necessary to make a moral and ethical judgment on the necessity of war. I think he's proven this belief beyond the shadow of a doubt. His excuse for "misstatements" --that he listened to the "wrong people"--just bolsters my case.

My point here is more philosophical than anything else. When I call the Prez a moron, I'm not always insulting him. Some of the dumber presidents we've had have made some of the most best decisions in the history of our country, and smart presidents have made some of the worst. Still, when it comes to an extraordinarily complicated decision involving the use of pre-emptive military force, give me a smart commander-in-chief every time. At least that way you've got a fighting chance that he (or she) actually has thought things through.

Jon Worley is well-known for his stupidity in making the same mistake over and over again: Rooting for the Royals years after year.