[Malza]

I think the only person Ben really fancied was himself, he was so obsessed in talking about how things he did and say may look on the outside.

Every time someone came to Ben to talk about any topic, it took only minutes until he had turned the conversation into a chat about him, his problems, his look, his own little world...

The only time he talked about others, was when he was bitching, or if he thought he could impress any of the girls with his knowledge about politics.

Not really sure if he's really that clever in general. He was for sure very educated when it came to politics, but to be honest, Mario was able to talk about all sort of general knowledge (not only talk about it, he also could explain everything... History, Nuclear fission, Planets, religion and so on).
But Ben was always just specialised on political conversations.