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A successful presidency is the result of the President assembling learned people around him and having the intellectual horsepower to rapidly comprehend their advice (and their motives, personalities and shortcomings).

After comprehending the assessments of his advisers, the successful president will sift through the information, seek additional advice for any uncertainty s/he may have, then move forward, always willing to adjust the route along the way.

Campaigns don't discuss this truism. I suppose that it is difficult to sell the ability to assemble a competent presidential team before the fact? The intellectual horsepower of a candidate CAN be sold during a campaign although his/her ability and willingness as President to winnow the good advice from the bad, and to act on it, still remains unknown until long after the campaign has ended.

In other words, a successful (skilled) President must first surround themselves with a human library of expertise, then they must use the library to make themselves seem a genius. The President stands on their shoulders.

During their candidacy, the eventual successful President will have notions in their head which they will later disavow due to expert advice from the presidential team. It is not possible for a candidate to be as well-versed in everything as a President can be when s/he has access to a human library of expertise.

So, regardless of the "plans" and "ideas" touted by a candidate, their success in the White House is entirely dependent upon the quality of the team that s/he will assemble and his/her ability to comprehend and act upon the collective advice of the team.

This, incidentally, explains why George W. Bush has a failed presidency. He has famously acted on "gut instinct" and moved forward without looking back. Gut instinct is a substitute for the intellectual horsepower he does not possess.

George W. Bush did not assemble an astute team of advisers. Dick Cheney assembled the presidential team, so it was skewed to Cheney's Neocon aspirations. George's successes or failures were handcuffed to Cheney's successes or failures. George was just along for the ride.

I don't blame Cheney entirely for the failed Bush presidency. I don't believe that George W. Bush had the required intellect nor the skills to assemble a learned team, and I don't believe that Bush had the intellect and the personality required to assimilate the information from a learned team, even if he had one.

Even without Cheney pulling the strings, George was screwed from the git-go. He was never competent to be the President of the United States.

If Obama's remarkably successful ability to assemble a campaign team can be extrapolated to his ability to assemble a presidential team, then we have a favorable preview of the future.

I'm not convinced that the former can be extrapolated to the latter. However, I AM convinced that Obama has more than enough intellectual firepower to be a competent President.