That's certainly a fair point, but I would argue that a historian studying other areas of history will likely do it better on account of formal training. History being a weird field, you can easily know far more than a historian about a given area simply out of interest, as opposed to sciences, but they will I think be in a better position to study the matter rigorously and catch nuance and context which might result in an interested but casual reader being mislead.




Well, he was very good at pushing the agenda, but he was also a major author of it, and I tend to consider that an important variable in 'deep thinker' on political matters. I would agree though that in many ways Newt is trying to re-fight prior battles, and that this is not constructive. I could easily see a race between him and Obama amounting to a non-stop Bush and Clinton bashing.



Well there's no rigorous definition for it of course. My own internal definition is mostly field-oriented, to me a scientific deep-thinker is a theorist, poking around beneath the surface of the general mish-mash of debris that coagulates into 'accepted practice', so as an example, if people are debating the pros and cons of term limits and life-long SCOTUS appointments, the person who says 'with ever increasing lifespans, we should consider how a justice or senator who has held their position for a century might effect things' or for gun rights "in right to bare arms, what do we mean by 'bare' and 'arms'" as opposed to specifically talking about the established notion of 'carry a gun'. There's certainly no doubt that in politics it is something people like to think they have, though this is hardly limited to politics, I sort of take for granted that I am a deep thinker, but most people I know think they are too, and while in fairness my socializing tends to be biased toward interacting with those who are or think they are, it seems a pretty normal trait in and out of politics. I would say normally a loose rule of thumb for the difference with politicians is going to be those who say 'this is wrong/bad' and those who say 'this is wrong/bad because...'