I think the real idiot here is Tom Brokaw. He has a few minutes to interview John Kerry and this is the type of question he thinks to ask? :wally
I’m not saying that IQ is meaningless, I’m saying that IQ cannot be extropolated from a military aptitude test.
The article’s limitations are that they can only work with the information that’s available, and for John Kerry, that’s not much.
But you can take this to the bank: 1) Kerry’s SAT scores were lower than Bush’s, and 2) Kerry got lousy marks in school.
How do we know? Because he hasn’t made them public. If Kerry had scored higher SAT’s or marks than Bush, you can bet it would have been a campaign issue.
<after googling>
That’s interesting - I just found a cite that claims to know Kerry’s SAT scores:
The Free Dictionary. According to this cite, Kerry’s SAT score was 1190 - 16 points lower than Bush’s.
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, only scored 1030. But even he was higher than Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo (950).
I posted that IQ is a score on a test, not a salient feature. The conception is that we have IQ scored whether or not we’ve been tested, and that the test magically reveals our “IQ,” when quite obviously IQ is a construct of the IQ test. I don’t need to cite this – a moment’s reflection will reveal the essential saneness of the position. When people project the IQ of someone like Socrates, who lived long before the IQ test existed, they are indulging a simple misunderstanding of what IQ is.
See the wikipedia entry, for example:
One might as well ask, “what was Socrates’ SAT score?” For that matter, you might as well ask, “what was his bowling score.” Since I’ve now outlined this three times, please either say (a) that you understand this point, and the degree to which it undermines anyone trying to speculate about someone’s IQ without a test score, or (b) take a clear contrary position, i.e., that someone has an IQ whether or not they’ve taken an IQ test, and explain how this position makes any sense. I certainly welcome you to locate “an .edu source with supported narrative and results” that indicate that IQ is a tacit inborn trait, and that IQ tests reliably “get at” this quantifiable index that is enscribed on the brains of humans at birth. I think it will take you some time to find that source, so I will just accept your concession that IQ is only the score on a test and move on.
The silliness of assigning someone an IQ without having a test score is my primary objection to the study. It is complete rubbish and should be treated as such by newspapers, but so rooted is the misunderstanding of IQ that most college educated people believe the fallacy of the Intelligent Quotient as something like a blood type or shoe size, something that is measured, rather than a construct.
If you have actual IQ scores, we can have a different discussion. I think IQ scores have poor construct validity, but there is a vague correlation between IQ and success. It’s common sense to suppose that people who do well in school will do well on tests and in life, but this something of an accidental correlary – like pointing out that many people who are good at chess do well in life. Unfortunately, after your GREs there are few opportunities in life to work your way up by taking a multiple choice test. This is what I mean by construct validity – the test is nothing like life, and hence it is really only a predictor of how well someone will do on an IQ test. Social skills and drive are far more important than test skills.
If you peruse the wikipedia article, you will learn everything a layman needs to know about IQ – what it is, what it means, what the objections are to it, etc. For example, you’ll learn that the inventor of it did not have any conception that it measured intelligence as an inherint quality in humans (as most people perceive it), he used it to measure their current abilities in order to identify those who could use more help in school. He treated the IQ as a score on a test with the assumption those scores were a reflection largely of environment and that scores could be improved (where IQ is now believed to be a kind of immutable constant).
SAT scores really ARE meaningless. They do not measure intelligence but only one’s ability to perform on an SAT. Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar and was arguably the most intelligent POTUS of the 20th century.
We have no access to Kerry’s SATs (and no, I will not accept Sam’s cite) so we don’t know how they compare to Bush, but no matter how much the Pubs try to apologize or wave paper around, they’re never going to kid anyone into thinking that Bush is a rocket scientist.
One thing occurs to me, though. Drug use and alcoholism can cause brain damage. So who’s to say that Bush didn’t start off with something akin to a normal intelligence but that he didn’t pickle his brain with booze and Bolivian marching powder by the time he was into his 30’s. I sense a little bit of “Ozzy Syndrome” at work in GeeDubya.
Diogenes: The source listed on that site is TIME magazine. Unfortunately, the entire TIME article is not online.
From your own site:
I dismiss the entire cite out of hand. I am especially leery of the alleged scores for Clinton.
Not that SATs mean anything anyway.
Since I haven’t read the TIME article, I don’t know what their source is. I was surprised to find that, as I said, because I thought Kerry hadn’t released his SATs.
But still, TIME is a pretty reputable cite. If they were willing to put that number down, either they covered it with a ton of caveats, or they have a pretty good confidence that it’s right.
My personal opinion on SATs is that when they are in the range of 1100-1200, they indicate a reasonably bright and agile mind, but the difference isn’t great enough to swamp other predictors of future success, such as work ethic. An SAT close to 1600 tends to indicate an exceptional individial with some real gifts.
Frankly, the difference between Kerry’s alleged 1190 and Bush’s 1206 is meaningless. As is their slight difference in OCS scores. But that’s really the point - Bush isn’t an idiot compared to Kerry’s genius. They are both somewhat above average in intelligence.
Neither test is a measure of intelligence. That is my primary objection to the OP.
As evinced by their debates. While Bush fidgeted unattractively, Kerry seemed no more intelligent. They both held their ground just about equally in terms of their grasp of issues and opponent rebuttals. Put Bill Gates in there and I imagine he’d make fools of them both.
But in terms of their relative intelligence I’d rate them about the same. Kerry certainly didn’t drown Bush in the glare of his awesome intellect.
(Uh, Starving Artist? Can you say “mixed metaphor?” Yeah, I thought that you could.) 
Have you seen Bill Gates speak in public? Especially without prepared notes? Admittedly, he’d fare better than George W. Bush, but Gates is nowhere near the caliber of a public speaker that Kerry is.
Kerry went into all three debates well-read, well-prepared, and well in command of the facts. That’s why he trounced Bush three for three, because his opponent couldn’t do much more than repeat stump speech sound bites over and over again.
No, I haven’t heard Gates speak in public, but he’s clearly quite a force to be reckoned with among the intelligencia on his own turf. And there’s no question he’s a great deal smarter than either of those two guys.
I think, however, that your observation only goes to show that public speaking isn’t a very good indicator of intelligence. If Gates stammers and seems lost without prepared remarks, I certainly don’t think Bush’s intelligence can be faulted because he does the same.
As far as Kerry’s polish as a speaker is concerned, I regard him as something of a con man, and con men are notorious for smoothness and composure in the face of their marks.
But be that as it may, I certainly don’t think Kerry “trounced” Bush in the debates. “Edged him out,” maybe, but certainly not trounced. And like I said, in the debates it wasn’t so much that Kerry made Bush look bad, it was that Bush made himself look bad. Still, they seemed to me on an even par in terms of intelligence.
I don’t think your con-man-detect-o-meter is all that hot, if you still think Bush is a competent leader at this stage of the game. 
In IQ-related threads, several people will often post something like “I think this IQ stuff is bogus, because I took a couple of online IQ tests and…blah blah blah.”
No one has said that here (yet), but I think my usual response is still relevant: to the extent that IQ scores have any value at all, they only have it when obtained by a qualified professional administering one of the standard IQ tests.
We cannot compare Bush and Kerry’s scores unless we actually have their scores. It’s fairly likely that both men, when schoolkids, took one of the mass-administered IQ tests that used to be common in American schools, but I wouldn’t give those a lot of weight if they ever did come to light. Guessing at their IQs based on other tests, or worse still guesses as to what they made on other tests, sure isn’t going to cut it. If both men, as adults, took the same IQ test under the proper circumstances then we might fairly compare those scores…if we had them. Which we don’t. We don’t even have good reason to believe that they exist.
I personally wouldn’t see much value in comparing the scores if we did have them. High IQ is not a requirement when it comes to being president. It’s not a job that Joe Average would do really well at, but in terms of basic intelligence I don’t think being president demands “genius”. “Above average” should do it, provided the candidate has the necessary skills. And if the candidate doesn’t have the necessary skills, a genius-level IQ isn’t going to make up for it.