Why is America Failing?
Sure, we can quibble about the exact numbers, the lines are definitely blurry, and perhaps we can even quibble about the order. But this chart is close enough to get the point across. I purposefully did not label the bar. Consider it what you will: Political Intelligence or maybe Voter Intelligence. I am tempted to label it just plain Intelligence, but I am sure that would be unfair. In my view, it is definitely some concept of reason versus emotion, religion, and self-interest.
One reason left-of-center elites (the Con Men) often outperform right-of-center elites is that they understand that it is not about policy. Rather it is about making winning emotional arguments. Meanwhile, the much less clever right-of-center leadership struggles to make good policy, which is extremely difficult, and often fails. But this is not a problem if you don't really care about policy.