George W. Bush has become this year’s Dan Quayle- comedians and late-night talk show hosts seem to think they can take any ancient Polish joke, insert Geore’s name, and get laughs. Well, I think that’s unfair… but hey, politics is a rough business, and if you can’t stand the heat, etc. So, I won’t waste too much time feeling sorry for George. BUT…
John McCain finished at the BOTTOM of his class at Annapolis (okay, okay, FIFTH from the bottom), by his own admission. And it’s now been revealed that Al Gore was a pothead with a C minus average.
So… why aren’t comics eagerly ridiculing McCain and Gore? It’s pretty clear that neither is an intellectual giant! Indeed, the record shows they’re both mighty dim bulbs!
I believe Gore scored over 1300 on his SATs, which hardly puts him in the “dim bulb” category. Obviously, he is an intelligent man who was something of an indifferent student in college.
Yes. He often uses Spanish in his speeches to his Mexican constituents. And as governor of Texas, I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t spend much time wondering what’s on the other side of that wall to the south. Any other blatantly false accusations you want to make about Bush?
According to a news story linked to the thread “SAT scores” in MPSIMS, “Gore entered Harvard with an impressive SAT score of 1355 (625 verbal, 730 mathematics), compared to the 1206 (566 verbal, 640 mathematics) earned by prospective Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush.” Neither got very good grades in high school. (I think Gore did B- work at St. Alban’s and Bush did C+ work at Andover, but I’m not sure if I remember this right.) Gore’s IQ, according to this story, was measured at 133 in one test and 134 in another. Judging from Bush’s SAT scores, I would say that his IQ is about 125. Neither of them are geniuses, but they’re a cut above Dan Quayle, whose IQ I’ve seen estimated as being between 95 and 100.
Gore slowly improved his grade average at Harvard, so that he was getting pretty good grades by the time he graduated. Bush never improved and graduated from Yale with mediocre grades. Bush would never have gotten into Yale given his mediocre grades and SAT scores if he hadn’t come from a rich and powerful family. He also would never have gotten into Harvard Business School after college without pull either. Gore was a marginal prospect at Harvard given his reasonably good SAT scores and so-so grades. It’s a toss-up whether he would have gotten into Harvard without some pull.
Let’s use some perspective here. Neither of them were dim bulbs. Bush never worked very hard in high school or college. Gore only slowly caught onto working hard. (Bush didn’t do very well as a businessman either.) They are both rich kids who partly got where they are by using their families’ pull.
I am not sure that SAT scores or high school and college grades are relevant here. If George W. didn’t make so many foolish statements, nobody would care about his class standing. Besides, book smarts are not the same thing being savvy and sharp.
I look at what George W. says. He shows both ignorance and lack of intelligence. His ignorance is highlighted in his oft-quoted remarks. His lack of intelligence shows in a) the fact that he does not seem to realize that his ignorance is a problem and b)his choice of advisers.
An example: In the aftermath of the hoo-ha surrounding the Bob Jones University fiasco, George W. said he did not know of the University’s anti-Catholic and racist stance. He blamed his advisers for not telling him aobut it. He should choose more savvy advisers, and he should realize that a President should be familiar with the major institutions of higher learning in the U.S.
Another example: A reporter asked him the leaders of 4 countries, all hot-spots. George W. didn’t know. He should know about the countries that are likely to be important in foreign policy decisions. He should choose advisers that make sure he knows this kind of stuff.
Point is, there is plenty of evidence that (IMHO) George W. doesn’t have the brain-power needed for the presidency. In spite of the multitude of problems with McCain, Gore, and Bradley, none of them ever made me wonder if they were smart enough to be president.
I don’t think Bush is too dumb to be President. I do think that he is too lazy to be President. A modestly intelligent person might succeed if he was willing to pick intelligent advisors and listen to them. Bush just doesn’t care. He’s been given everything he wanted all his life, and he expects to be given the Presidency.
Being a conspiracy theorist at heart - the people with their hands up the president’s butt making their mouths move with their fingers don’t want anybody smarter than them doing the job.
To be a successful politician, and perhaps one day the president, you have to be able to stand up for the views being bankrolled by your biggest supporters as if they were your own. If you can fake sincerity in this, the rest is easy… Thus it has been and thus it continues to be…
Or perhaps is simply the case that no truely intelligent person would choose to be the president…
Neither of them would have gotten into their schools without their families wealth and/or influence. I scored significantly higher than Gore in both SATs and high school average and I got rejected from Cornell, much less Harvard.
Also, since when did you need any brains to be a President? Not that I believe that any of the candidates are as stupid as you guys are saying…
Regarding McCain: Yes, he did finish fifth from the bottom at Annapolis, but I don’t believe that makes him an idiot. By his own admission, he was more into the ladies and partying in those days. He says his Vietnam experience in general, and his imprisonment in a North Vietnamese POW camp in particular, and meeting his current wife upon his return, were the events that made him who he is today.(Like it or not.) I tend to believe him.
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
Clinton was a Rhodes scholar and has a Law degree from Yale. Bush has an MBA from Yale. I think Gore just has a BS degree.
So, I think Bush is more educated than Gore. However, some would say that a private school MBA is something that can be “bought” by the parent’s tuition and not “earned” by intelligence.
Neither Bush nor Gore have educational credentials as impressive as Clinton. However, both of them seem to have better judgement in personal affairs.
IQ and SAT tests? Their merits are debatable.
Who says dumber things? Both Bush and Gore look dumb or silly at times. Reagan wasn’t exactly a mental giant, but he managed two terms.
I have never equated the president’s office with scholarship or intelligence. Otherwise, mainly professors and PhDs would get the office. I think Woodrow Wilson is the only phd and former professor to be prez.
James Garfield was also a college professor. He taught classics.
I think that most of the complaints about politicians not being very smart comes from people who haven’t thought very much about the issues that politicians have to handle. What these people are really saying is, “X disagrees with me on many issues. Since no intelligent person could possibly disagree with me on anything important, X must be stupid.” I see a range of IQ’s among politicians from some pretty dim bubs to some very smart people. One of the important skills in politics is having to accept that other reasonable people may have different ideas than you do, and you may have to occasionally comprise.
When I was in unversity, I didn’t see a whole lot of correlation between grades and intelligence. The people who got the best grades worked the hardest. The smartest guy I know dropped out with below-average grades and became a computer programmer. Years later he got bored and went back into Engineering. This time he was interested in the subject, and flew through with straight A’s. I did much the same thing, in reverse order (did great the first time through, the second time I got bored, and eventually left).
Gore is an enigma. On the one hand, he strikes me as being pretty sharp, and he seems to have fairly large breadth of knowledge. However, on the other side of the equation we have “Earth in the Balance”, which is the work of a very mediocre intellect.
