For sheer brain power, entirely apart from party or ideology, who do you think has been the smartest president since Eisenhower? Who would you pick for #2 and #3? I've been thinking about this myself and wondered what you thought. (No fair just picking the ones you like the best.). Reply greatly appreciated!

Percy,
You asked, "For sheer brain power, entirely apart from party or ideology, who do you think has been the smartest president since Eisenhower?"
In my humble opinion the smartest was in my party but one that paradoxically I disagree with the most on basic political philosophy. I am a classical liberal while he was a collectivist Liberal at heart. That was Dick Nixon. He has been said to be the most liberal president in the past 100 years. However sitting our political differences aside he was the smartest.
For numbers two and three I will pick Reagan and Clinton without any further attempt to rank them. I am exempting Obama from my list.
Eisenhower I would like to know more about. Ike shared an interesting quirk with MacArthur. MacArthur smoked a pipe. In any formal or informal conference (impromptu press conference?) if asked a question. that pressed him, MacArthur would suddenly go into motion with his pipe, refilling, lighting, tamping, etc (sometimes the full gamut). You would get no answer out of him until he was prepared then suddenly his pipe would be drawing well and he would tell you what he wanted you to hear. Eisenhower used his garbled syntext to the same purpose. He would speak clearly and distinctly when he was ready, until then you got garbled syntext. I often wonder how much his garbled syntext influenced my estimate of his intelligence.
Who are your top three?
Ron