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Old 09-27-2003, 07:03 PM   #69 (permalink)
Phaenx
The Northern Ward
 
Location: Columbus, Ohio
From Cecil Adams

Quote:
Originally posted by james t kirk
I have to disagree.

The man is a first class moron. I can think of no other american president in my life time that i would apply this label to.

He can read a teleprompter, but that's about it.

He shuns press conferences because he knows that he will have to think on the spot and he is unable to do that. If it isn't scripted, he can not handle it.

On the odd occasion where he does speak, i find myself pulling the blanket over my head because i can not bear to watch anyone struggle so much.

Saturday night live had it right 3 and half years ago when they paradied (spelling) him getting all freaked out at the thought of actually being president. He's in way over his head.

JMHO

It's lucky for him that in the last election, Gore wasn't a hell of a lot better.

You had two doofusses to choose from.
In 1999 the NewYorker obtained a copy of the future president's Yale transcript and revealed that he'd had a C average in college and, more interestingly, scored 1206 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)--566 on the verbal and 640 on the math.

To find out how this score stacked up, I called Educational Testing Service, publisher of the SAT, and learned that in 1994, SAT scores had been "re-centered." To offset the steady downward drift of test scores over the years, the scoring scale was adjusted upward so that the mean score for both math and verbal was again 500 (the midpoint on a scale of 200 to 800). Those who took the test before 1994 are now entitled to add a prescribed amount to their scores to see how they compare to students today. Having made the necessary adjustment, Little Ed announced, "I got 800 on my verbal! I'm a direct beneficiary of the stupidity of the American public!" Doing the same for Bush gives him 640 on both verbal and math, good enough for 88th percentile on the verbal and 86th in math were he entering college now. Those scores may not be as high as mine, of course, or even Al Gore's (625 verbal, 730 math unadjusted), but they ain't bad.

Then again, I recall having seen a college guide circa 1970 that listed the average SAT for Yale freshmen as about 670 in verbal, 705 in math. So Bush was well below average for his class. He must have written a great essay.

(2) Is Bush the stupidest president? Doubtful, but here the data is lacking. You can get a book called The Intelligence of Dogs but not The Intelligence of Presidents. I refrain from the obvious jokes. The best I could come up with was a 1926 list in which intelligence researcher Catharine M. Cox estimated the IQs of 300 famous people based on their achievements in childhood and early adulthood. Presidents ran the gamut from John Quincy Adams (165) to Thomas Jefferson (150) to Ulysses Grant (125). She didn't single out stupid presidents, but near the top of everyone's list you're sure to find Warren G. Harding, probably the nation's least competent chief executive, who described himself as "a man of limited talents from a small town. . . . I don't seem to grasp that I am president." Among presidents since FDR, political scientist Fred I. Greenstein (Presidential Difference: Leadership Style From FDR to Clinton) cites Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan as being "marked by cognitive limitations," although even detractors would concede they had their gifts.

Smarts aren't easy to judge. Greenstein gives John F. Kennedy high marks for brains, but according to biographer Thomas C. Reeves (author of the infamous A Question of Character), Kennedy as a kid scored a less-than-brilliant 119 on the Otis Intelligence Test and graduated 65th out of 110 at Choate. And remember Bill Bradley, who everybody considered brainy but boring? His verbal SAT score, according to Slate: just 485
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Last edited by Phaenx; 09-27-2003 at 07:05 PM..
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