Four years ago, I wrote a letter. It was meant to badger someone into doing something I thought was important. They refused, but I don’t apologize for it, even though I completely understand that person’s decision — and ironically, have made exactly the same one. Hypocritical? I don’ t know — is it hypocrisy when I admit to it?

Well, as I related over at Bridgebunnies, I have been going through some old files, and I found a copy of that letter. It’s been almost exactly four years since I sent it, and while it rambles a bit at first, I think it makes an interesting read, particularly in light of how events have played out in the meantime. Of course, I might be biased about that. Nevertheless, I present an excerpt comprising about 85% of the letter.

Reading it, you can probably guess to whom it was sent. I will not confirm or deny speculation, in order to spare the target further annoyance, and me further embarassment. Looking back at it, in the first half, I appear to be explaining the concept of “big” to an elephant. It made sense at the time…

Wisdom

. There is an egotistical thought common to every human being, that we, and we alone, have the Only True and Correct Opinion on SomeThing. And it seems the dumber a human is, the more likely they are to think there are more SomeThings that they have Correct Opinions on. In reality, it’s not true. There’s four things that have to come together to produce a Wise One, someone whose word and Opinion is, far more often than not, actually correct. ‘Wise One’ is awfully cheesy, but I don’t have a good term to substitute here. ‘Savant’ implies mere intelligence. ‘Authority’ implies lack of humility (granted, you’ve never been accused of that virtue, but your writing betrays that you lack the opposite vice also). So, ‘Wise Man of the Tribe.’

Intelligence: A Wise One has to be smart. S/he has to have the a bit more than rudimetary thinking and deduction ability.

Education: more than formal learning, it is honing, supplying with facts, and getting experience in the ways of the world. But don’t sell the formal learning short.

Wisdom: Common sense isn’t common. The Wise One knows when to draw the line and say “I don’t know.” Education, in the sense of experience above, can somewhat make up for this, but it takes one wise enough to be willing to learn the lesson. In the end, Wisdom trumps Education in our culture’s self-view, even if Education may earn more money.

Erudition: A true Wise One has the ability to *explain* him/herself, to make the complicated seem simple. Not just to look smart, act smart, and be smart, but to enrich those around him or her with their own talents.

All four of these are needed to produce a Wise One. Leave any out, and you get… well, something that may look like a wise one, but isn’t.

Lacking Intelligence produces a hack, someone able to plod from point a to point b based on their learned reflex and common sense, but they’ll never be brilliant or innovative. Change the conditions of their environment, and they flounder because they can’t adjust.

Lacking Education produces a (sometimes) well-spoken fool. In the sense of worldly experience, young people often fall into this trap. They think they know everything, have learned all the latest tricks, and are just naturally smarter than everyone else. God knows, I did. But that’s not to “diss” formal education. I don’t think Einstein would have been a great physicist if he’d been born an illiterate serf in Russia. Who knows… maybe someone smarter than him *was* born as such a serf. But we’ll never know, will we? To that extent, education is a combination of luck and opportunity, plus making the most of both.

Which takes Wisdom. If it lacks, you find someone who makes obvious and stupid mistakes, and keeps making them. They make self-destructive decisions, spurn opportunities, alienate potential allies, and often back themselves into a corner. Intelligence can make a good short-term decision: “Hm, bonds are currently a better retirement investment than the stock-market.” Wisdom is why the investment is made in the first place.

And finally, Erudition. Of the four, this one is least necessary. It helps immensely if a Wise One can get the message across to the masses, but it isn’t always required. Some lead by example. They do, and maybe they’re fumble-tounged when it comes to explaining why or how, but they *do.* And others see that and follow.

Which explains the stark choices we have today in leadership, and why it was typing that paragraph that made me change the whole idea behind this letter.

A bit more on wisdom first. I believe that this is considered the primary virtue in our civilization. Perhaps not in the European branch, anymore. But definately in ours. Whom do we look up to? And why do we stop looking up to them? To look at our society, one would think we value Erudition the most. It’s the sports starts, the singers, the actors whom we seem to venerate and raise on a pedestal. But when one looks closer, it’s wisdom. Forex: Hugh Grant. Well off, good-looking, famous; considered a total idiot for shagging a two-bit street hooker when he had Elizibeth Hurley waiting at home. Look at the sports stars who get knocked off their pedestals for drugs and violence. Look at George Foreman. Just another boxer, decently Erudite, decently Intelligent, but wise enough to take those assets, brand himself, and become a public icon. Who do we venerate? The smart self-made millionare who loses it all to gambling, or the shrewd old farmer who never lost a crop and retires after putting four kids through college on an eighth-grade education?

And now the examples that are the point. Up until four years ago, we had as leader of the free world a man with intelligence, erudition (in spades!), and education. William Jefferson Clinton knew how the halls of power worked, how to play the game, the smarts to marry an equally intelligent and forceful woman, figure out angles, and try things no one else ever did. Appear on a talk show? Yes. Play the sax? Sure. He was a greater communicator than the Great Communicator. But for all that, he didn’t have Wisdom. He didn’t have it in his politics, his policies, or, for that matter, the zipper in his pants. So in the end, for all his Erudition, he really didn’t have anything to Communicate.

Then the man he annointed as his successor had a little of the first three, and next to none of the fourth. He wasn’t thought of that badly (at the time), but his own lack of Erudition (and ‘splash’ from his boss’s lack of Wisdom) conspired to cause him to be passed over by a hair, in favor of a man was Educated in both senses. A man who was no dummy (Yale MBA’s don’t grow on daddy’s trees), but not a great Intelligence either, who was Wise enough to straighten out his own messed up life, and to pick subordinates who were smarter than him. A man who, was even *less* Erudite, if possible, than his opponent. He couldn’t seem to string three sentences together without saying something unintentionally hilarious, but just enough voters thought they saw *something* in him to send him to the White House.

My theory is, while all the other factors contributed, the electorate saw Wisdom. How many points did George W. Bush gain at the polls because people said “Here’s a man who has learned from his mistakes and made something of himself?” As opposed to his predecessor, who might have had said about him, “here’s a guy who just won’t learn?”

In my thinking, that was the most crucial decision of the last several elections. It wasn’t crucial until 9/11/01, but on that day we didn’t need an Erudite president. We needed a Wise one. We got a president who had the horse sense to realize the old answers were all wrong, to repudiate 50 years of American policy, hell, 350 years of world policy (Westphalia), and go for broke in an attempt to reshape the world.

Three years into that effort, we’re faced with a choice of whether to continue, or abdicate our position as leader and defender of the free world. Whether to crawl in a hole and wait to be killed, or go out and get the boojum before he gets us. All the rest of it, swiftboats, Vietnam, jobs, oil prices, biased press…. it’s all secondary. The decision is between Wisdom and Erudition. Kerry is obviously lacking in wisdom. It’s been his failing throughout his career, and maybe his life. There’s simply no other way to explain it. Oh, he’s Intelligent–a stupid man couldn’t have parlayed himself from unknown upperclass twit to the U.S. Senate and husband to a rich heiress. And he’s reasonably Erudite, when he’s explaining memories seared, — seared into him. As for education… well he got the formal one. But he drew all the wrong lessons from his life and successes, and that also betrays his lack of wisdom. If this were the Olympics, Bush would get a 9.0 in Wisdom. Kerry would have been eliminated during the college varsity trials.

So here we are, two and a half months from our electoral Armageddon. Oh that’s hyperbole, sure, but it is going to be a hugely important election that will determine if we fail in our war on islamofacist terror. It _won’t_ determine if we “win or lose,” because even if we win here, there will be many, many failure points on the road ahead. Essentially, we (the soldiers of the home front), are ‘playing to not lose’ so that they, our leaders, can ‘play to win.’

Four years later, we are looking at three candidates:

• The wife of William Jefferson Clinton,
• A lightweight senator with no record of legislative accomplishement, ties to crooks and urepentant terrorists; whose greatest qualifications are his skin color and smooth talk,
• A long-serving senator who really got wounded in Vietnam; in fact was shot down and spent years in a POW camp.

Three guesses which one I think is the Wise One. I don’t like him, I don’t like about 2/3 of his policies and he was the second or third worst candidate from his party, IMHO. But after re-reading my words from four years ago, I have to ask myself if I can stay home in November just because he’s not everything I want.

He’s not all I want, but he’s all I can get. Which means my decision not to become involved in this may have been incorrect.