What Reading Speed and Accuracy Have to Do With Leadership: Nothing

What Reading Speed and Accuracy Have to Do With Leadership: NothingFernette Eide MD and Brock Eide MD

President Trump stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suggested that Governor Gavin Newsom should be disqualified from consideration for the presidency because he had identified himself as being dyslexic.

Whether a candidate is qualified for office is for voters to decide.
But no candidate should be disqualified merely on the basis of dyslexia.

The assumption underlying that claim—that difficulty with reading or writing signals a lack of either the leadership ability or the intelligence required to hold office—is not supported by history, research, or experience.

There is, in fact, little to no connection between how quickly or easily someone reads and either their intelligence or their ability to lead at the highest levels.

Leadership is not about processing written text. It is about processing complex realities.

Whether running a large corporation, like IBM founder Thomas J. Watson Jr. or Cisco CEO John Chambers, commanding an army, like General George S. Patton, or founding and leading a nation, the core demands are remarkably similar: seeing patterns others miss, making decisions under uncertainty, and aligning people around a clear direction.

Many individuals with dyslexia have exactly these capacities.

They often show strengths in interconnected thinking—seeing relationships and patterns, and understanding complex systems. They rely on narrative and dynamic reasoning—the abilities to simulate scenarios, anticipate outcomes, and communicate a compelling direction. And growing up in environments not designed for how they learn often builds unusual resilience and resourcefulness.

These are not skills peripheral to holding office.
They are central to it.

History offers a useful reminder.

George Washington, the founding leader of the United States, showed many traits that today would be recognized as consistent with dyslexia. His spelling was inconsistent and often phonetic. His written language could be labored.

His contemporary John Adams was sharply critical. In a letter to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, Adams wrote that Washington “was too illiterate, unlearned, and unread” for his station, and recounted a story that Washington “could not write a sentence of grammar, nor spell his words.”

What Adams saw as a weakness, history records differently.

Washington’s strengths lay in spatial reasoning, strategic vision, and disciplined decision-making. Trained as a surveyor, he had an exceptional grasp of terrain and systems. As a military leader, he could hold the broader shape of a campaign in mind. As the first President of the United States, he helped guide the creation of a nation under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

He did not lead because he processed words quickly.
He led because he could see what needed to be done—and do it.

If dyslexia were disqualifying, it would not only exclude many capable leaders today.

It would call into question some of the most consequential leadership in history.

The issue is not how easily someone reads.
It is whether they can think, decide, and lead.

And those have never been the same thing.