Are we debating philosophies or personalities?
Perhaps I'll "throw in" here, to clarify. I'll try and make it short and sweet.
First, there's a platitude, probably drawn from something written by Noam Chomsky or Jacques Ellul: "One man's education is another man's propaganda. Let that fuel further discussion, but keep it in mind.
Second, you can study the History of Ideas as either a physicist or someone taking a course with that focus in English Lit. You mentioned "philosophy," and I may think some philosophies aren't good enough for a dime for a Starbuck's Mocha. Well, I'll qualify that, too.
Ayn Rand got her bachelor's degree at the University of Petrograd. She studied classic philosophy -- Plato, Aristotle and so forth. She studied languages -- toward her ability to write prolix books that took 10,000 words to say one thing that might have been said in a hundred. But as far as I can tell, her curriculum included little Mathematics, no Economics which is a social-science attempt to be scientific as pertains to economic phenomena. I don't think they had a political science class. But she was on a forward path by her thinking: Friedrich Nietzsche was her guiding star and intellectual titan of her worship -- something in common with the Fuhrer there. "Man and Superman." The Bolsheviks, by the way, allowed her to complete Film School (it was the early 1920s) in a graduate program -- despite her protests against the new regime, and she was on her way to be a protégé of Cecil B. DeMille.
I wouldn't trust one idea in the b****'s drug-addled narcissistic brain.
History of Ideas: Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Empiricism (data collection and observation), and Logic (deductive reasoning, based on axioms and inferences applied with mathematical precision).
Those are two trustworthy and complementary approaches of modern science. [Those who like to make fun of the word "Theory" should stop driving their car, because the internal combustion is just the application of a "Theory" of Thermodynamics, Boyle's Law, the behavior of gases.]
Someone mentioned "Intuitive thinking." If that's a valid skill, it has supplementary usefulness. Genius can sometimes be the ability to see simplicity where everyone else sees the complex. Perhaps Einstein had the ability to take an intuitive leap through what would otherwise be several predicate calculus statements and empirical observations. And that's probably what he did, but Einstein knew the drill: it would require an expression in precise mathematics using the ratio of v^2/c^2 -- squares of an object's velocity and that of a photon. So he didn't avoid desCarte's methodology or take shortcuts.
The average voter probably has at least two modes of "thinking:" {Logic, empirical observation, deduction -- inference}, and emotion. [UPDATE:] A third mode: "pure Belief" -- a refuge of the lazy mind, with an insufficient dose of the first category, and an infusion of the latter.
Emotion leads to "I don' like his name" or "Ah voted fuh Bush cuz of that Monica and Clinton thing." [Oral sex is disgusting, in other words.]
So -- with my own intuitive leap (or is it? There's an observation) -- there was that election in 1932, with Hindenburg (IIRC) as incumbent.
Anybody want to make any intuitive leaps from that one? We can then go back and fill in the blanks to make sure it has sense.
Common sense and any other kind that doesn't fall into the category of "insane."