Beware the brilliant leaders

Thomas Sowell:

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

It was, after all, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brilliant “brains trust” whose policies are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s, rather than ending it. The U.S. emerged from the Great Depression only when the Second World War put an end to many New Deal policies.

FDR himself said that “Dr. New Deal” had been replaced by “Dr. Win-the-War.” But those today who support big spending like to credit wartime big spending for bringing the Great Depression to an end. They never ask the question as to why previous depressions had always ended on their own, much faster than the one under FDR, and without government intervention or massive government spending.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration — especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant “whiz kids” tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.

Such people have been told all their lives how brilliant they are, until finally they feel forced to admit it, with all due modesty. But they not only tend to overestimate their own intelligence, more fundamentally they tend to overestimate how important individual brilliance is when dealing with real-world problems.

A couple of observations:

1. Voters, for obvious reasons, tend to place a premium on the intelligence of their political leaders. What must be kept in mind, however, is that the intelligence of any one individual pales in comparison with the collective knowledge of society. This is why so many policies which rely upon the expansion of government power, rather than freedom, are doomed to fail. If you have to coerce someone into taking a certain action there is probably a good reason the individual isn't doing it already.

While a leader must be smart, such intelligence must include the knowledge of one's own limits and the necessity of a humble approach. Arrogance and power rarely mix well.

2. We should be wary of those in power who believe they have all the answers. The default posture of voters towards our elected leaders should be skepticism, not trust or obsequiousness. We must constantly remind those in the highest echelons of government -- and ourselves -- that they are not demi-gods or divinely appointed. Indeed, they are our servants and should be closely monitored as such.