Well we have to agree to disagree then. “People skills” is surely a talent, but that is a different thing than intelligence. They are both personal characteristics, but only one of them will tell you whether the person can solve an international crisis or plot a course for political nirvana or whatever.

I hear you, but "intelligence" means a lot of things and covers a lot of skills. Ken Jennings and Magnus Carlsen and Martin Scorcese and Toni Morrison and Neill DeGrasse Tyson and Phil Ivey are all intelligent people - but none of them would be able to "solve an international crisis or plot a course for political nirvana." Or even necessarily be particularly good or effective politicians.

Political leaders need skills that require significant mental acuity that don't necessarily map onto "book learnin'" kinds of intelligence. They need to be able to bargain and cajole and wheedle and find weak points and bluff and make effective threats and a host of other things that we lionize when those skills are being used to ends we support (hi, LBJ!) but tend to minimize when used by people we disdain. Those are brain skills. Being able to walk into a room, size up another person, and then by using nothing but words to dominate them and cow them into doing what you want them to do in that meeting? That's a mental skill.

And sure, it doesn't correspond to the ability to digest a complicated briefing book to formulate a series of policy proposals - but neither does the ability to understand astrophysics necessarily correspond to the ability to write a screenplay.

I do not think DJT has the complete toolset of the Platonic ideal of an effective political leader. Quite the opposite - I think he's pretty f'ing far from that. But that does not mean he's an idiot, because the stuff he is good at is stuff that requires mental acuity and a fair amount of sharp thinking.