Should Presidents Be able To Spot Three Move Forced Checkmates?

[ALawPoker]

I guess, but it wouldn't matter much. Because someone who proves himself to be smart will not necessarily govern according to his wits. He (like every politician who is good at getting elected) will be more likely to govern in a way where he's perceived to be solving problems rather than necessarily actually solving them. So he is no better than the whims of his masses.

For example, if nobody cared about illegal immigration, a rational legislator would do nothing about it, even if he saw some option which was +EV for the country. He would rather wait until the problem reached crisis stage and people cared so that he could get credit for solving the problem, or even just for aggressively fighting it. His being smart doesn't really help us in the way you're implying it does, because the name of the game is just satisfying knee jerks anyways.

But sure, it wouldn't hurt, all else being equal. I happen to think that being a fellow human means he should be disqualified from making decisions for me. But if we're talking from the assumption that the President actually solves problems and is a +EV thing for us, then sure, I agree with you that it would help for him to be analytically smart.