Well OK, but I think you picked the wrong example. He had malapropisms galore, true, but he was also not smart. Maybe not as dumb as Dan Quayle, but that’s a really low bar. He rode in on Daddy’s coattails (name recognition is a valuable tool) and the electorate fatigue of Democratic scandal (the oval office hummer), not because he was some shining light of intellect.

I didn't say he was a shining light of intellect - especially since when people talk about "intellect," they usually refer to a very specific aspect of human mental acuity. But he wasn't (isn't) dumb, because genuinely dumb people aren't going to do well in politics.

Granted, I have my own perspective on this. When I was in college, I ended up (by accident) spending a fair amount of time with Howard Gardner. I wasn't a psych major, but by happenstance he was an especially close friend of the family of another Miami kid who was a student with me (and who was my friend, and so invited me to a bunch of stuff). So I ended up hanging out at his house a bit to get some homecooked meals and such, and babysit his kid. Anyway, his theory of multiple forms of intelligence really stuck with me, and I see it all the time in politics and real estate development. There are people who are really good at "conventional" intellectual tasks - book smart, math smart, logic smart. But there are also people who are very good at other types of mental activities that Gardner argued were also part of "intelligence" but which don't fall into that conventional basket, including people smart. People smart is the core skill of politics, and it does not always map onto conventional intellectual skills.

en.wikipedia.org - Howard Gardner
en.wikipedia.org - Theory of multiple intelligences