Paul Ryan is listed as Number 8 on Foreign Policy’s list of the top 100 Global Thinkers. Barack Obama is listed at Number 7. Both Clintons and the two Gates (Bill and Melinda) are listed ahead of them. For some other comparisons Netanyahu is listed at 13th, Ben Bernanke at 15th, Dick Cheney is 38th (tied with his daughter Liz), Charles Murray writer of “The Bell Curve is 43rd (though Salman Rushdie beats him out by ten spots), Bjorn Lomborg, a well known climate denialist (until he changed his mind – sort of – in 2010) is 58th, Rand Paul (yes, that Rand Paul) is listed at 71st, and (ahem) journalist and Iraq war supporter (until he wasn’t) Peter Beinert is at 99th.
Not sure what criteria Foreign Policy, a very “Inside the Beltway” publication, used to compile this list (e.g., the Opposition leader in Burma and Nobel Peace prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Burma’s current president, Thein Sein, are tied for the top spot) but please feel free to peruse it yourself and discuss the idiocy, laziness boot-licking tendencies, wisdom or lack thereof, of our so-called elite public policy intellectuals.
