Here's the reason: he has realized that in Obama we have a first class temperament wedded to first class mind.
Mentions Blair's mentor, Roy Jenkins, who once said that Blair had "a second-class mind" and "a first-class temperament".
"Margaret has a second-class mind," the principal of her college, Somerville, opined, the ultimate University put-down.
When Oliver Wendell Holmes met Franklin Roosevelt for the first time, he famously observed that FDR "had a second-class mind, but a first-class temperament".
The description of FDR that he possessed a second-class mind but a first-class temperament was no less true of Mr Reagan.
In an interview with the Spectator Lord Jenkins of Hillhead observed that his friend and protégé, Tony Blair, might have only a "second-class mind".
As Lord Jenkins has subsequently emphasised, he was only quoting Walter Lippmann's remark about Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class mind, first-class temperament"—and arguing that the latter is the more important quality for a politician.
And flatter their self-image as "the best of the best" and the most jet-lagged of the jet-lagged.The most important quality recruiters are looking for is "fit": for all their supposedly rigorous testing of candidates, they would sooner choose an easy-going person with a second-class mind than a Mark Zuckerberg-type genius who rubs people up the wrong way.
Another added: "He has a first-class mind and a first-class temperament".
In addition to a first-class eye, Croce has a first-class mind.
Incisive brevity, it used to be said, is the hallmark of the first-class mind.
