# Democrats -- No Winners?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 28, 2004, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526 "2004-04-28T17:51:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/61 "2004-04-29T10:22:03Z")
[Previous post got mangled] > [@Sam Stone](#): > > You forgot: > 3) He scored roughly the same on his SATs as Al Gore. Cite please? In any case, it’s known that SATs don’t test intelligence. > [@](#): > > 1. He scored very highly on his Officer’s exam, including scoring in the top 5% of all officer candidates on the ‘leadership’ test. Cite please? Also, what does the officer’s exam test exactly? > [@](#): > > 1. He managed to graduate from fighter pilot school, was considered to be one of the top pilots in his squadron, and was considered by other pilots to be ‘the smart one’. - Cite please? - \*\*iamme99’\*\*s response seems to dispute your assertions - Being considered ‘the smart one’ by other pilots hardly seems to be an indicator of intelligence. > [@](#): > > 1. He managed to beat a popular incumbent governor of Texas, and then win re-election in a landslide. How does winning an election make you smart? He most likely will get re-elected President, but that is no proof that he is smart. Surely you must agree that intelligence is not a prerequisite to getting elected to any office, with all the advisors each politician has, with the sound-byte-crazy media and public, and with all the attack ads form both sides. > [@](#): > > 1. He beat Al Gore twice in the Presidential debates. I don’t agree with this assesment. The expectations of him were so low, that simply by not making a fool of himself, the stupid media (who shamelessly focused on such important issues as “how much makeup Gore was wearing”) claimed that he did great. > [@](#): > > 1. He rose to become the most powerful man in the world. As I said above, winning an election is no proof of intelligence. Also, if it wasn’t for those stupid butterfly ballots in Florida, he would not be President today, so he is President due only to a random election-time quirk, to say nothing of the Supreme Court’s role in all of this. Any other facts you’d like to bring up? Up to now, the only possible indicators that I see are that he was accepted and graduated from Yale and Harvard, and I have already mentioned that I don’t know whether it is possible for someone to ‘coast’ at these places, though I assume it is possible. ---
**Author:** ![rockle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rockle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rockle)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/62 "2004-04-29T12:17:19Z")
> [@Starving Artist](#): > > {I}t surprises me that so many of the posters to these forums continue to portray Bush as some sort of moron, when his educational acheivements, for the most part, far outdistance those of their own. If you disagree with his policies that’s one thing…but claiming he’s dumb or a moron only shows the ignorance and/or bias of those making the claim. FWIW, I not only think he’s a moron, I also think he’s kind of a jerk. (And I freely admit to my biases.) IME, the people who brag the most about their “educational achievements” are the ones who have no other way to indicate that they might have any actual working brain cells in their heads. GWB’s pedigree on paper does not particularly impress me - as Dave Barry once said, “MBA’s are about as rare as air molecules these days.” I know quite a few MBA’s (and beyond) who cannot find their own asses with both hands, a flashlight, and a map. Having an MBA doesn’t make one smart. What you do with it does. Long story short: “Educational achievements” do not mean much, really. Especially if you have to substitute those achievements for actual demonstrable intelligence, which I think is the case here. He may actually _be_ smart, but he sure doesn’t _act_ it, and that matters to me. I just can’t vote for someone whom I feel makes dumber decisions than I would. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/63 "2004-04-29T12:25:01Z")
> [@rockle](#): > > Having an MBA doesn’t make one smart. What you do with it does. Ok, I guess I can follow you so far. Bush has gone and made himself president of the most powerful country on earth with his MBA. What, pray, have you done with yours, supposing you have one. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/64 "2004-04-29T12:46:35Z")
I think **Mace** ’s first post is right, I think- **ghuff** just assumed a bunch of stuff and fired away. > [@](#): > > Funny, didn’t you just imply in your first post that Kerry’s voting record shows the pattern of someone bought off? Zing! Anyway, **ghuff** , can you please state specifically what the problem is with his voting record? You just keep saying it’s bad. > [@](#): > > John Kerry does not strike me as one of the sharpest knives in the drawer. He got his ass routinely kicked in the Democratic debates against people like Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean. Kucinich’s performance in those debates was irrelevant. He never had a prayer of winning, so he could say any thing he damn well pleased and not worry that it would hurt his chances or that he’d be held accountable for it. The only thing he had in his corner was the far, far left and he couldn’t do anything to displease them anyway. Dean is a more exciting speaker than Kerry, but I think we saw what his problems were. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/65 "2004-04-29T14:13:51Z")
**iamme99:** I’ll get your cites later, as I’m off to work. But your message didn’t refute a thing I said. I said that his SAT’s were roughly the same as Gore’s. Your ‘refutation’ was that they were lower than average for Yale grads - which has nothing to do with what I said. Your ‘he scored 25 percent on the pilot aptitude test’ is classic spin, but I don’t blame you because I’ve seen it reported that way all over the place. Here’s the deal on that exam: It’s an exam for aircrew candidates which has numerous sections. Spatial relationships, number series, all the usual IQ stuff, plus a bunch of questions to test prior knowledge. After the test is written, it is scored in a number of categories. There’s the ‘pilot score’ category, made up of several sections deemed to be most important to pilots, a ‘navigator score’ category, etc. There are minimum scores required for each of these categories for the various aircrew positions. For example, for a pilot you need to score an overall percentage of X, but you have to get at least 25% on the pilot section, and 15% on the navigator section. Bush scored 25% on the pilot section, and FIFTY percent on the navigator section. Which is a very high score. In fact, if he had blown the pilot section, he could have become a navigator with only 25% on that section and he still would have been flying jets. I posted a message about this a while ago, and I’ll dig it up later, but in all the other sections Bush scored very highly - way, way above the minimum requirements. That these results today are spun as “he almost failed the pilot exam” is misleading in the extreme. Oh, and do you know why he scored only 25% on the pilot section? Because that section includes an entire category which tests previous aviation knowledge, and Bush had not flown before. It had absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. On all the ‘intelligence’ parts of the test, Bush scored quite high. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/66 "2004-04-29T14:34:56Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Bush has gone and made himself president of the most powerful country on earth with his MBA. Uh…no, he didn’t. He made himself president of the most powerful country on earth with the backing of a major political party, the network created by a former president of the most powerful country on earth (his father), and a political landscape that favored his party’s election. If he ran on the merits of his MBA, he wouldn’t have had a chance. In the business world, Bush himself refers to himself as a failure (he constantly joked about his biggest mistake being trading away Sammy Sosa, as well as referring to himself as ‘just a failed oil man from Texas’). ---
**Author:** ![rockle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rockle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rockle)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/67 "2004-04-29T14:36:39Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Ok, I guess I can follow you so far. Bush has gone and made himself president of the most powerful country on earth with his MBA. What, pray, have you done with yours, supposing you have one. _[sic]_ See, I don’t think “Bush has gone and made himself [P]resident.” I think _the people around him_ (including his family connections) have done that for him. I think they’re really the smart ones. Bush is just the “beard,” if you will. I will give him credit, though, for being bright enough at least to surround himself with people smarter than he is. That does take some level of intelligence (although, I would argue, that takes more common sense). I think Cheney is much smarter than GWB is, and he flunked out of college (IIRC), so there you go. I don’t have an MBA, and I don’t pretend to. I do have a Bachelor’s _(summa cum laude)_, and I am 15 credits away from my M.Ed (Dean’s List the whole time). But I don’t use those facts to try to convince people that I may or may not be intelligent - I try to do that through what I say and what I do. I’m not going to apologize for thinking the President is stupid, regardless of the pedigree he might have to suggest otherwise. He just hasn’t done, in my opinion, anything particularly _smart_. If he had a GED or a Ph.D., I’d still think he was a jackass (who, I will reiterate, looks like a chimp in a suit when he gives a public address). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/68 "2004-04-29T15:47:55Z")
I decided to get the cites before work after all. On the SATs, I have to eat a little crow. Here are the numbers: Bush: 566 verbal, 640 math. Al Gore: 625 verbal, 730 math. So I’ll have to retract what I said a bit - I had remembered them being a little closer than that. But still not a huge difference - especially not enough of a difference to describle Gore as brilliant and Bush as stupid. Bush’s 1206 puts him in the 88th percentile. The average SAT score is 500, and the population of people who take the SAT is already above average because it eliminates high school dropouts or people who do not intend to go to college. Bush scored slightly above average on the exam. In no way can you spin this to conclude that the SAT shows Bush is dumb. Now, on to the Pilot exam. The exam in question is the [AFOQT](http://www.baseops.net/afoqt/). The site I linked has a very good description of it. Here are the minimum requirements for aircrew: **Pilot Requirements:** [ul] [li]Pilot score of 25[/li][li]Navigator score of 10[/li][li]Combined Pilot and Navigator score of 50[/li][li]Verbal score of 15[/li][li]Quantitative score of 10[/li][li]Academic score has no minimum[/li][/ul] **Navigator Requirements** [ul] [li]Pilot score of 10[/li][li]Navigator score of 25[/li][li]Combined Pilot and Navigator score of 50[/li][li]Verbal score of 15[/li][li]Quantitative score of 10[/li][li]Academic score has no minimum[/li][/ul] [This cite](http://www.thesyndrome.com/archives/3-Grade_Determination.pdf) has a photocopy of Bush’s scores. They are: **2nd Lt Bush Score:** [ul] [li]Pilot score - 25[/li][li]Navigator Score - 50[/li][li]Combined Pilot/Navigator score - 75[/li][li]Verbal score - 85[/li][li]Quantitative Score - 65[/li] [li]Officer Qualification: 95%[/li][/ul] Now, have a look at just how far above the minimums Bush’s scores were on EVERYTHING except the ‘pilot’ score, which again is more of a test of prior aviation knowledge. For example, the ‘Quantitative’ score is basically Math. The minimum is 10, Bush scored 65. The verbal minimum is 15, Bush scored 85. The cite says that the average score is around 40 for the exam. Bush scored 66. And yet, it’s spun as, “Bush got the minimum marks needed to be a pilot”. No, he didn’t. He scored way, way above the minimum, scoring the minimum on only one aggregate collection out of five required, and he scored well above average of those taking the exam. And he scored in the top 5% on the officer qualification test. And, the lowest section he scored on was the ‘pilot’ section, but here’s a description of it: The Pilot composite includes subtests which measure verbal ability, **knowledge of aviation and mechanical systems, the ability to determine aircraft altitude from instruments, knowledge of aeronautical concepts** , the ability to read scales and interpret tables, and certain spatial abilities. So which of those sections did he bomb? Well, the navigator score gives us a clue. Here’s what the navigator score is based on: The Navigator-Technical composite shares many subtests with the Pilot composite. **Subtests that measure verbal ability, ability to determine aircraft altitude, and knowledge of aeronautical concepts are not included** So, it’s the same as the pilot section, without the aviation-specific knowledge, and without verbal. Now, Bush scored FIVE TIMES the minimum requirement for a pilot on the navigator section, and in fact twice the minimum requirement should be have wanted to be a navigator. And, he scored 85% on his verbal. Add those all up, and the picture is clear: Bush didn’t know anything about airplanes at that time, and it dragged his marks down (but still above the minimum requirement). Had he taken a private pilot’s course beforehand or joined the service as a licensed pilot (as many candidates do), those scores would have been much, much higher. That Bush scored as high as he did without any prior aviation training is a sign of intelligence, and not a lack thereof. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/69 "2004-04-29T16:01:48Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > That Bush scored as high as he did without any prior aviation training is a sign of intelligence, and not a lack thereof. No, those scores don’t mean that at all. Unless we have a population to compare them to, they mean nothing. For all we know, the monkey from “Project X” scored higher. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/70 "2004-04-29T16:33:28Z")
You’re suggesting that the Air Guard set its minimum standards to be 1/5 of what a monkey could achieve? And did you miss the part where I said the average score for the test among pilot candidates was 40, and Bush scored 66? Come on, at least pay attention before spewing the usual anti-Bush lines. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/71 "2004-04-29T18:01:40Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Here’s what I propose: After the presidential debates, if Bush is not perceived as the winner I will post a thread on the SDMB with the title, “George Bush is a stupid moron.” If Kerry is perceived as the loser, you post a thread “John Kerry is a stupid moron.” “Perceived as the winner” by whom? As the 2000 Presidential Debates showed, the expectations for Dubya are so low that he gets praise just by not drooling on himself. Which may be acceptable for Fine Purveyors of Conservative Political Porn, but is hardly a measurable metric. Hell, even if Bush _does_ drool on himself and answers every other question with “Duh, I dunno,” you’ll still find conservative pundits like Limbaugh and Coulter and O’Reily who will gladly sing his praises to the heavens. I’ll bet you thought his last press conference was a “home run,” too… ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/72 "2004-04-29T18:08:34Z")
And since I’m feeling slightly scrappy at the moment, I’ll just point out the obvious, that **Sam Stone** is too busy spinning the “George W. Bush is a success” lie that he’s ignoring the fact that [Bush repeatedly ran his oil companies into the dirt,](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0712-06.htm) and had to be bailed out by well-financed friends. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/73 "2004-04-29T18:19:28Z")
As Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote, the problem with Bush is not that he’s stupid. It’s that he thinks the rest of us are. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/74 "2004-04-29T18:21:51Z")
And, to a distressing degree, he’s right. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/75 "2004-05-01T06:44:27Z")
> [@ghuff1](#): > > Now they place someone who is most likely going to be excommunicated by his church Odd how the Catholic Church threatens to deny communion to pro-choice politicians, but not to pro-death penalty politicians. Both stances go directly against church doctrine, and both result in the death of humans. I don’t see them denying communion to Justice Scalia for his unwavering support of the death penalty in his jurisprudence. Seems kind of inconsistant on the church’s part if you ask me. > [@](#): > > throws medals/ribbons away in protest Of a horrible war that resulted in 68,000 U.S soldiers deaths, and millions of dead vietnamese. God bless Kerry for getting us out of there sooner. Who knows how many lives he saved by speaking out. > [@](#): > > and not to mention his voting record. What’s so bad about his voting record? ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526/76 "2004-05-01T07:09:22Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > And, to a distressing degree, he’s right. Yup. Just look here: [Jay Walking](http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/jaywalking/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-no-winners/242526.md?page=3)