Is intelligence useful to politicians?

Stumbling and Mumbling thinks "it’s a positive handicap", and gives five reasons why. I particularly liked his third point:

3. Intelligent people don’t have the self-discipline to read through the tons of mind-numbing detail that crams ministers’ red boxes and distracts them from their proper job, of setting policy. This is one reason why lawyers – and second-rate ones at that - so often succeed in politics. Only they have the dull patience to slog through such minutiae.

Spot on. I have known many second-rate lawyer politicians. (Though quite a few teachers, social workers and local council hacks seem to get into politics too). But I cannot accept this claim:

Ruth Kelly is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.

Not on the recent evidence, Chris. It is not intelligent to instruct all Ministers to offer "no comment" to the press when a crisis like this hits the fan. It is not intelligent to try and hide which Minister it was that made the error. It is not intelligent to take several days before announcing a review - and then not make it an independent one. And so on... This government has some very able Secretaries of State, but I fear that Ms Kelly simply confirms that the Peter Principle is not dead.

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[r4 sdhc]

What may appear to be "incompetence" could very well be hidden agenda. Even the intelligence committees in Congress are often the last to find out what their "black budget's" are really paying for.