The Optimality Thesis: Why America Doesn’t Need a Smart President

In Ed West’s viral post, “Doomscrolling ourselves to death,” the contrast between Truman and Trump is interesting: Marriott contrasts Harry Truman, who ruled America during the peak of literacy, with the current incumbent. Truman ‘was the son of a livestock dealer in Independence, Missouri. And yet as an earnest and bespectacled schoolboy he spent great tracts of his time in the local library. “Watched over by a plaster bust of Benjamin Franklin,” Truman made his way past all the familiar landmarks of a twentieth century autodidact self-education: The Bible (which he claimed to have read through twice by the time he was twelve), Plutarch’s Lives, the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato’s Republic, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Eventually, he read every single one of two thousand volumes stored in Independence’s library — including all the encyclopaedias. It’s an inspiring story but not at all a unique one.’ Donald Trump, meanwhile, is so averse to reading that aides…