Reduced to spewing in Britain’s anti-American Guardian, here’s disgraced former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines, still telling the world that George W. Bush is stupid.

To be fair, innate intelligence has to do with capability and ignorance to do with variables such as educational opportunity and personal diligence. But the conundrum remains. Is intellect important in presidents? If Americans can’t solve the question definitively in the matter of John Kerry and George Bush, we damn sure ought to make an educated guess.

One highly imperfect but salient way to do so is at the level of campaign tactics. Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I’m sure their SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead. Yet at this point in the campaign, Bush deserves an A or a high B instead of a gentleman’s C when it comes to neutralising Kerry’s knowledge advantage. That much was apparent even before the campaign got mired in the current argument over the nasty television commercials questioning Kerry’s record of heroism as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam.

Over the course of the summer Bush, or more likely his political adviser, Karl Rove, dictated the subject-matter of the campaign by successfully triggering Kerry’s taste for complicated ideas and explanations. Kerry is telling voters that we live in a complex world. Americans know that, but as an electorate, they are not drawn to complexity. Kerry’s explanations about his conflicting votes on the Iraq war and how he would have conducted it are wondrous as rhetorical architecture. They are also signs that Bush has trapped him into having the wrong conversation with the voters. Last week, Bush trumped Kerry’s intricate explanation of his conflicting votes on funding the Iraq war by going on Larry King Live and saying over and over that a president must be resolute, and that he will be. Meanwhile, his wife Laura seemed to make a sale with the outrageous claim that her husband’s restrictions on stem cells are not really hurting medical research.

Whatever his IQ, George Bush as a candidate is a one-trick pony. The story of the campaign so far is that Kerry is letting him get by with his single trick - endless repetitions of “I make a decision; I stick to it; that’s what presidents do.” As astute an observer as David Broder has written that Bush’s twin millstones - the war and a job-losing economy - may bring about his defeat. I’m not so sure, mainly because Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, keep talking about what the White House wants them to talk about instead of messages that the bumper-sticker guys at Cramer’s and Home Depot need to repeat to their buddies. They have yet to force Bush outside his one-trick comfort zone.