How is this question even meaningful? What do we mean by “Raw Intellect”? And what good is raw intellect without the tools to apply it?
Is anybody wondering if had TJ lived in this day and age and had access to modern education he’d have become a combination of Steve Jobs, Dick Branson, Elon Musk and Bill Clinton rolled into one? No way to ever know that.
ISTM Jefferson, in his time, was more notably above the achievement norm for his group of educated white landowners, than Obama is above the norm for his demographic of Ivy-grad law professors and politicians. Even though the respective demographic was smaller for TJ than it is for BO. They are both extraordinary vis-a-vis the global average. And that’s about as much as I can say for sure.
Are you not familiar with the OP? This is entirely consistent with previous threads he/she has started:
[ul]
[li]who are the most brilliant physicists[/li][li]how does Sylvester James Gates compare to Ed Witten[/li][li]why is ed witten considered the best?[/li][li]top 5 living mathematicians[/li][li]who is considered the greatest 20th century mathematician [/li][li]who would you consider the 3 greatest mathematicians of all time[/li][li]greatest novel of the 20th century?[/li][li]who is the most influential living sociologist[/li][li]greatest academic economist 20th century[/li][li]can we say Carl Gauss is the greatest mathematician to ever live[/li][/ul]
Many of these are similarly meaningless comparions.
So henceforth should we just say “This is a meaningless comparison” whenever thanatic starts one of these threads and continue to repeat that whatever he says?
A more interesting question: does Obama surpass Richard Nixon in raw intellect? Nixon is, or was, thought to be the smartest modern president. Clinton seems to have replaced him in the public’s mind for that designation. I place all three men in the top rank, the top one tenth of one per cent of the general population. It’s pretty clear, though, that both Nixon and Clinton surpass Obama in political skill. No surprise there - they had much longer to learn the trade.
The whole, “He ain’t so smartz when he don’t gotz no telly-prompter” meme is just retarded. It’s the retort of losers who still can’t accept that they lost.
I forgot that I intended to include Jimmy Carter. Naval Academy graduate and nuclear submarine officer. You simply can’t become a nuke without a top flight intellect and ferocious work ethic. The fact that it doesn’t even occur to us to name check Carter when it comes to smart presidents shows that there’s a lot more to political skill than just raw intellect.
Carter’s post presidency career has shown us plenty of evidence of his intellect and work ethic. Still not a great politician.
Lots of people pronounce “corpsman” as if it was spelled “corpse man”. That’s not the standard pronunciation, but it doesn’t prove much of anything, especially since it only happened once. Lots of people say “folks” when they’re addressing a crowd. Again, it doesn’t prove much of anything. Nobody is claiming that Obama is a great speaker. Nobody is claiming that Jefferson was a great speaker either, so going back to the question in the OP, how does any of this prove anything about their intelligence?
I’ve looked at the video of Obama speaking where he says something about Austrian. It’s not clear to me what he’s saying there. I think that he was trying to say that in Austria there is “wheeling and dealing” just like in the U.S. He was simultaneously trying to say that he didn’t know what the word used in Austria would be for “wheeling and dealing” would be. Again, I think that he was going back and forth in his mind about what he wanted to say and ended up putting together a couple of different ways of saying what he wanted to say. This caused him to sound like he was implying that there is a language called Austrian. This shows that he not a very good spontaneous speaker, not that he doesn’t know what languages are spoken in Austria.
The point is not primarily that Obama got it wrong for whatever reason. The point is that if Bush had made the same mistake, it would’ve been accepted as gospel proof that he was as stupid as everybody “knew” he was.
In other words: “Obama made a mistake” vs “Bush is an idiot.” Why the different evaluation?
Hmm, where’d the OP go? I wonder why he opened this thread.
I have never argued that Bush is an idiot. Please, look through all of my posts to the SDMB. I have never argued that. I was not speaking to any such claims. I was just talking about the claim that Obama thinks that there are fifty-seven states. If some feel that they have to argue that Obama must be an idiot because they feel they have to do that in order to counter the claim that Bush is an idiot, that is a terrible way to argue. Again, that is a terrible way to argue. The fact that Bush and/or Obama made mistakes in their speeches because of hesitations or temporarily forgetting words or any similar thing is not relevant to how good a President they are or were. The important thing is what their policies are or were. Please, let’s make good arguments on the SDMB. The fact that your opponents make terrible arguments doesn’t give you the right to make terrible arguments too.
Obama probably doesn’t have Jefferson’s raw creativity. But he’s probably also not creepily obsessed with his wife’s mixed-race half-sister, so he’s still ahead of the game.
what about Obama’s grasp of geopolitics? the man seems to know nothing about the Middle East-when he makes a speech and says “I stand with the Muslims”-he is (apparently) unaware that his words are actually having effect? Putin picked up on this right away-and sensed (correctly) that Obama could be easily manipulated. Muslim terrorists also took this seriously-interpreting this as a blank check to commit wholesale atrocities. Meanwhile, his (advertised) confusion encouraged a new intifadeh in Israel-and there are now 50 dead people, and countless wounded who are paying the price.
Obama (despite his alleged brilliance) doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
And, talk to the people of Baltimore-he (and his henchman Holder) did their best to spread chaos.
Brilliant? With that kind of brilliance (to quote King Pyrrhus) we are undone.
Give us some specific quotes, ralph124c. What specifically did he say about standing with Moslems? What specifically did he say about Baltimore? It’s possible to say that (for instance) the Moslems of the Middle East have rights or the people of Baltimore have rights without thereby saying that they have the right to randomly kill people. Again, be specific.
And even if he did say ill-advised things, that doesn’t prove that he is stupid. Having bad political opinions is not stupidity. This is a very important concept. There are many politicians out there whose political opinions I consider to be very ill-advised, and yet it’s also clear to me that they have high I.Q.'s. You can simultaneously be very ignorant about many things and also very smart.
I’d say quite a few world leaders have sensed that Obama can be easily manipulated. It’s really the only explanation for that bizarre Nobel Peace Prize award.