To qualify for the post of teacher in chief, a candidate must demonstrate the ability and the desire to transcend the culture of distraction and deliver the most important message that any political leader can deliver to an intellectually lazy public: “Pay attention.”

What commands attention is not an admonition to the distracted public, but instead a real gift in communication. The educator-in-chief has to be the communicator-in-chief. That is a skill that goes beyond erudition and hinges on a president’s capacity to connect with his or her audience — to win them over in both thought and spirit. So the job that any American can aspire for but very few are capable of mastering requires a rare mix of intelligence, imagination, courage, empathy, intellectual breadth, along with one of the clearest but most underrated markers of sanity: a sense of proportion.

And two of the most conspicuous presidential failures in recent history — Bill Clinton’s healthcare reform plan and George W. Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq — can be traced, in part, to the inability or unwillingness of both men to educate the public about complex, long-term issues.

It’s just too appropriate that this article appeared on the same page with “Dumb and Dumber.”

Ascribing the failure of the war in Iraq to Bush’s inability to educate the public is the dumbest single idea I read anywhere this week, and that even includes a few jewels from Bush himself.