Before I get 500 emails like this one, let me say I know Hoover and TR were smart. Of course, it’s not clear that TR was all that conservative. He certainly thought he was smart enough to fix a lot of things. But, nevertheless, he was a hoss:
Mr. Goldberg,
On the point of “who is the smartest President” you mentioned the assumption
that he is probably a more liberal President. While the intellectual strength of men like Clinton and Carter is fairly certain, I think you leave out a few notable Republicans.
Herbert Hoover was perhaps the world’s most noted engineer who coordinated
Far East mining concerns and created a supply chain management system to
feed Europe after WWI.
The case can be made that Teddy Roosevelt had the most active and wide-ranging intellectual capacity. Check out the range of books he wrote: http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/research/biblioworks.htm. I know of know other President who was published so much, and most of his books have nothing to do with politics.
thanks,
Jason A. Greer