Who's the Dumbest Person In Washington?

I could tell you. But then I would have to kill you.

Calling somebody stupid, my friend Michael Schaffer observed in Politico last June, “may be one of Washington’s last taboos.” If you’re a reporter or a political professional, you’re allowed to think this or that politician is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and you’re allowed to hint it to your heart’s content. But you aren’t allowed to say so out loud, because that automatically enrolls you in the despised Cultural Elite. So when you read about, say, House Speaker-in-Waiting Kevin McCarthy, wrote Schaffer, what you get is indirection. McCarthy is

“a golden retriever of a man,” “not known for being a policy wonk,” “not known for his immersion in policy details,” “not known to have a mind for policy,” “a coastal extrovert of ambiguous ideological portfolio who … would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code” and “not necessarily a policy wonk or political mastermind like his predecessors in House leadership.” His elevation would mean that “even though the fractured House Republican caucus may benefit from McCarthy’s networking abilities, others may have to step up to help filter out the details of policy quagmires to come.” No wonder “many believe he lacks the political and tactical gravitas to be a force” and “there are those who privately question his policy chops and intellectual abilities.”

Schaffer received more direct answers when he invited reporters to speak not for attribution. “He’s a lightweight,” said one. “I would never consider him to be smart,” said another. “In a strange way that is hard to explain,” said a third, “he’s gotten more stupid the longer he’s here.”

My favorite story about dumb politicians concerns a 1974 article that Nina Totenberg wrote in the now-defunct New Times. The article identified then-Sen. William Scott (D.-Va.) as the single dumbest member of Congress. In response, Scott called a press conference to deny it—thereby proving Totenberg’s point beyond a reasonable doubt.

One difficulty with calling a politician dumb is that you may be called upon to calculate precisely how dumb he or she is, and, unless you live with this person, you won’t likely have enough information to make that call. Dan Quayle was the last politician to be openly ridiculed for being dumb, prompting Bob Woodward and David Border of The Washington Post to write a whole newspaper series, later expanded into a book, that made the possibly-true-but-not-very-interesting case that Quayle, while dumb, was slightly less dumb than everybody supposed.

Ignorant isn’t quite the same thing as dumb. President George W. Bush wasn’t terribly well-informed, and not all that interested in becoming better-informed, leading your faithful correspondent to label him “functionally dumb.” Maybe he was an idiot. Maybe he was smart but intellectually lazy. It didn’t much matter; the result was the same. Michael Kinsley identified laziness as the trademark characteristic of Dubya’s lies. “Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious,” Kinsley wrote, “that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven’t bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they’d try that too.”

Donald Trump was dumb in most of the ways that count when you’re president. But the rap against Trump focused only on one particular type of dumbness: moral idiocy. Like a psychopathic killer, Trump was blind to the difference between right and wrong. He had a vague, lizard-like sense of what sort of things might get you in trouble, but even that grew faultier over time.

McCarthy, they tell me, is a dummy. I have no first-hand experience of this, but in my latest New Republic column I quote him at some length on why he wants to impeach the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. It certainly wouldn’t lead you to conclude he’s smart. The short answer is that he has no idea why, which is bad enough, and never seems to have anticipated the question, which is worse. Neither does Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, whose speakership bid McCarthy is trying to head off. You can read my piece here.