like perhaps some of his staffers/surrogates and the MSM, not necessarily him. I've noticed he tends to play his language proficiency down when asked, though he's generally able to hold his own when put on the spot in an interview, by a foreign media outlet, etc.

I think at best the better word to use is probably conversant.

But tbf even an intermediate capacity to hear/understand, read, and converse in a broad range of languages is still a great skill to have, certainly as a politician.

I have maybe a basic capacity to hear/understand and read 2 languages aside from English (french, igbo... actually I guess 3 languages if pidgin/creole counts) and it's paid noticeable dividends in my life, tho not professionally. The ability/confidence to not only converse at his level (plus nail the accents, which is a skill in and of itself), but with even more languages would be a game-changer, personally.


>Being DC fluent doesn't count. He's gotta actually *speak*
>another language for us to trot this out. Good accent. At
>length. Extemporaneously.