Are you seriously defending the thesis that it doesn't matter whether a teacher is smart, bearing in mind that just about the only thing IQ is good for is predicting good academic performance which is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for (for once!)?
"A ditz who can really connect to the students" sounds like a mortal threat to my child's education, not something to be celebrated!
Personality is a lot more important than intelligence in elementary school. You should actually be smarter than your students, yes, but dealing with young kids takes a certain temperament and ability to adapt to personality differences.
Between kindergarten and fifth grade, I'd probably rate my teachers entirely based upon personality. The ones who lost their temper with me or were arbitrary or capricious in discipline were bad teachers. To some extent this remained true even until eighth grade (I was somewhat of a disciplinary problem until high school), but middle school is where my teachers' stupidity started becoming an issue.
In high school, most of my teachers were pretty smart at what they taught. But personality still mattered.
Education ought to be about more than academic performance. I see what you're saying, but having teachers that can't work with students is just as much a problem as having teachers that don't know their subject.
Then, of course, there are the teachers that can't do either. I TA'd a writing class with a teacher that was both ignorant and disliked, who was kept on because of tenure. Not a nice position to think of.
"A ditz who can really connect to the students" sounds like a mortal threat to my child's education, not something to be celebrated!