re: #94 WindUpBird

Petraeus wouldn’t be able to touch Obama. Personality matters.

I like how you move “constitutional lawyer” to “clever lawyer”. Like he’s an ambulance chaser or something.Scholars are merely clever, where as a guy with a gun… brilliant!

I want a scholar in office. A war hero can be smart, a war hero can also be brave and dumb as hell. I want smart people running my country.

Can you seriously entertain the notion that Petraeus isn’t every bit as smart as Obama? The military gives IQ tests and no bones about it, and Petraeus stood high enough that they knew if he also had character and energy, that, together with brains, could carry him far.

But that’s just test scores. Maybe they don’t really say anything? But Petraeus turned around what looked to almost everybody like a lost cause in Iraq. He even wrote a manual explaining how to do such things, and then he went in and proved that his theorizing was correct. He’s the nearest thing we have to Cletus Graeme of the Dorsai saga.

Whether he’d be any good at politics is another question. Eisenhower was, but Patton, not so much. From what I can tell, Petraeus isn’t in the least interested in running.