having a clutch of well intentioned clods fouling up the process. Intelligence can only really be measured by verbal capacity and skill. IQ measures and tests are inaccurate. Churchill owned the English language and he owned the skill of persuasion. As such he commanded the heights of leadership. He could communicate the moment, the mission, and the energy. Churchill was one of the few politicians in our century that had a beautiful, lucid communication and vocabulary. Emboldening this was his common sense, technical skill and creativity. Above all the dynamism of his verbal adroitness lied in the desire for action and not drift.
A baser form of intelligence is what can be termed ‘Political Antennae’. In most political circles this skill is usually too overdeveloped. In the case of Churchill it was surprisingly weak and poorly unused. Churchill’s rhetoric was maybe too developed and at times not flexible enough for his audience or plainly inappropriate. But this weakness is still overshadowed by his capacity at conciliation and political problem solving and more vitally by his verbal capability. Churchill engineered delicate dispute resolutions over South Africa, Ireland, and social reform in England to name but a few, quickly striding across political boundaries and ideologies and involving himself intimately with those who had the greatest grievance in order to solve the conflict. Coupled with his strong array of communication skills he achieved a political pre-eminence that darkly shadowed his companions.
His oratory and conciliatory skills were allowed to flourish due to the mastery of technical details. Churchill was one of those rare politicians that actually knew what he was talking about. This dedication to
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