think about it
Obmaa is a great orator, he is able to convey his thoughts with such clarity
Jefferson was known to be a terrible public speaker, that he refused to to a state of the union
It’s hard to make a straight-up comparison, but, had Obama been around in the late 18th century and very early 19th century (and had skin color not been an issue) I doubt he would have been as inventive and creative and original as Jefferson was. I don’t see Obama as the kind of guy who invents gizmos (like the thing that let Jefferson sign two documents at the same time.)
Would Obama have been a polymath? Architect, surveyor, Bible critic, and so on?
I think, as in our time, he would have been a successful lawyer and constitutional scholar, and there is every reason to believe he would have been successful in running for high office. (Again, leaving race aside…)
It will be interesting to read his memoirs when he has left office. The quality of his writing may give us a hint as to his inner capacities.
Also, public speaking ability isn’t a great way to measure “raw intellect”.
Probably. Due to the Flynn effect IQs are much higher now than in the past, and who knows if there was a Flynn effect before 1920. Average today is about the 95th percentile in 1920.
So yeah probably. However isn’t Clinton or Nixon considered the highest IQ president? Obama would be pretty high though.
Yeah, oratory isn’t really a good way to judge intellect, particularly in the context of speeches which have been planned out, edited and re-edited beforehand. Jefferson may have been a less than inspiring speaker, but his writings are inconstebably those of a brilliant person.
Garfield and Wilson were considered to be highly intelligent, as well.
I’m old enough to have observed both of them, and my conclusions is
What kind of crazy-ass idea is this?
Averages mean nothing when comparing two people. And Jefferson did a lot more than just write the Declaration of Independence and be president. So, much as I think Obama is really smart, I’m going with Jefferson.
As JFK said at a gathering of Nobel prize winners
[QUOTE=JFK]
I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, thought it was a parody thread.
I have heard that BOTH men fathered children with a black woman, so there’s that!
The OP is very keen on figuring out who is the best and smartest in a variety of fields. I don’t think any of his threads have ever come to a definitive conclusion.
Jefferson was a polymath, a Renaissance man, a tinkerer, overflowing with esoteric interests, yet a deep thinker, and I’ve seen it argued pretty convincingly that he had Asperger Syndrome. I have to imagine that, especially for his time and place, he would have come off as a “smarter” guy by most readily observable criteria.
Having said that, Obama is no slouch.
Except that Obama is just reading speeches written by somebody else. Intellectually, he’s a complete lightweight…a man who thinks that there are 57 states, and that all good things come from Washington.
To the main question of the thread, does Obama surpass Thomas Jefferson in terms of raw intellect, I think we can safely answer “no.” Not that Obama is a dummy by any means, but I don’t think any president stacks up intellectually with Jefferson, Adams or Madison.
Well, for all his accomplishments Jefferson was pretty bad at some things. He was constantly in (personal) debt and his estate owed a fortune when he died.
When John Kennedy hosted a dinner at the White House honoring Nobel Prize winners, he said in his speech, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
(OK, that doesn’t answer the question but it is a nice quote.)
Yes, for all his theoretical brilliance, Jefferson often displayed a lack of practical intelligence. He personified the ivory tower intellectual.
Thomas Jefferson invented physical things that worked. Some of those things still work to this day. I wouldn’t call that “ivory tower intellectual”. I would call someone an “ivory tower intellectual”, say, a person who theorizes in robotic ethics and writes papers, while I would consider an ivy league professor who builds real robots to be a guy who knows his stuff.
I think you’re implying he was better at writing and inventing than making practical governance decisions. You could be correct - it’s hard to be good at everything.
He invented the carbon copy thingy for handwritten documents, and a weird door-linking gear mechanism for Monticello. Was there anything else?
President Obama never struck me as that great an intellect himself. He absorbs and expresses ideas well but he really doesn’t adapt or expand on them very much. Jefferson was good at doing that; taking an idea or looking at something and making something new out of it. So I’m afraid I have to give the lead to him.
ahem Post 7.