One would expect that the general run of American voters would consider intelligence a requirement for being president of the United States, leader of the free world, commander of all our armed forces, the one who has nuclear weapons release. But then, before 2020, one could have expected a certain level of mental sharpness as likewise a requirement - but now we have Joe Biden, who was already sliding into dementia in 2020 and who has gotten much worse since.

And yet he remains in office. But that's a story for another time. What's concerning is his understudy, Kamala Harris, who is campaigning now to replace him. And we're dealing with the fact that, to be perfectly candid, she isn't very bright. In an article last Friday, "The Federalist's" Managing Editor, Kylee Griswold, laid that problem right out for us.

After one voter observed that Harris was never elected to be the Democrat nominee but just magically became such when “President Biden was pushed aside,” the vice president naturally drove home the point for the umpteenth time that Donald Trump is the “unprecedented” threat to democracy. Funny she brought up Trump and democracy because the former president actually made an apropos comment about the topic earlier the same day, telling the Economic Club of Detroit: “Our biggest threat to democracy is stupid people.”

He’s onto something. Stupid people — people who know nothing of civic responsibility or common sense — do threaten the fabric of our self-government, especially when they hold power, and Kamala Harris is the poster child. She’s frankly too stupid to be president.

Read that last sentence again. If that's not the understatement of the month, it will do until a better one comes along. But Kylee Griswold isn't done yet.

Speaking of words, Harris is a woman of many. They just don’t make sense. She’s clearly never internalized the Abe Lincoln aphorism, “Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” Since her first cry for “fweeedom,” Kamala’s been removing said doubt.

“In terms of” how she talks, she constantly parrots vapid phrases like that one as a stand-in for real thoughts. In her Colbert interview, for instance, you can count three or four “in terms ofs” in a matter of seconds. She has the same habit with “I grew up in a middle-class family,” chanting in “blaccent,” and nervous laughter. No silence to be found.

Not only is Harris inarticulate, but she’s also unlikable. She’s like Barack Obama without savvy. Hillary Clinton without brains. Joe Biden without the facade of charm. There are simply no redeeming characteristics. Biden could at least sell the “unity” persona in 2020, even if it was a swindle. Kamala hasn’t found the right pitch and never will. No phony accent will convince astute Americans that she cares.

There's a lot of accurate assessment there. 

I've got one benchmark I use to gauge a person's intelligence, and that's the ability to speak extemporaneously. Granted some intelligent people can't do that, and some dullards have the gift of gab, but it's a good general rule. Ronald Reagan was rightly known as "The Great Communicator" because he had this ability. Donald Trump is pretty good at speaking off the cuff. JD Vance is better. 

But the other team? Barack Obama was lauded for his speaking skill, but when off the teleprompter, he was awful; he hemmed, he hawed, he went "uhm, uhm, uhm" until you wanted to throw things at the television. Bill Clinton was great at it and, given a topic, could talk at length; one could disagree with him but he could speak clearly on a variety of issues, even if he was wrong a good part of the time.  

It's possible to be eloquent in defense of a bad case, after all. But Kamala Harris isn't eloquent. She's frequently unintelligible. The word salads, the ever-changing phony accents, the endless recycling of very few points, the grating cackles - she's just bad at this. And finally, the polls are starting to show it - and what may be worse for a liberal Democrat candidate, late-night television is starting to make her the object of fun.

See Related: Is Wisconsin Kamala Harris' Last Stand? Let's Look at the Latest Polls.

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Take it all into account, and you come up with the same obvious conclusion that Kylie Greenwold has arrived at, and, we can hope, plenty of American voters will agree with: Kamala Harris is simply too stupid to be president of the United States. Unfortunately, it will take a constitutional amendment to make an IQ test a requirement for the presidency, so it looks like we'll just have to rely on the voters. And, with a bit of luck, and if the Trump/Vance campaign's seeming momentum holds, Kamala Harris won't be president.