"Since less intelligent individuals are more poised, they are more persuasive."

What? So every professor you had in college was a stuttering mess? The best trial attorneys and actors are dumb? The people giving successful TED Talks are a bunch of knuckleheads? That is just silly. You are also assuming that there is only one kind of intelligence.

We end up with certain people as leaders simply because they are willing to do it. They have the ego to drop everything and go for the power, while at the same time have a willingness to beg for money and votes. Most of them will lose, so they have to be risk takers as well. I could never participate in representative government beyond as a citizen because I hate meetings. Could you sit through two hours of deliberations about the language to the zoning code that will grant a homeowner a three inch easement on city property in a gravel alleyway, in the evening after your regular job of course? Is the answer is no, there is no place for you in politics, because that is where most politicians start. I was on a state delegates' advisory committee once, and attended committee meetings with the delegate. Funeral home regulation reform? Updating the industrial insurance code? I don't know how they stay awake. The little bites on TV don't do justice to how boring the whole thing is.

Again, it's the people who are willing to do it.