You…you mean december might have been…:eek: ???
And just for the record. No, I do not think that the man is stupid. But not having had the pleasure of his company I can’t really make an informed judgement. All I have to go on is what gets reported in the media (which, of necessity, is very selective in what it shows). At best all I can do with that is form an opinion of whether the man is a good or bad president.
Which I haven’t done yet.
Or maybe Wildest Bill…?:eek:
Why does this stupid question come up so often on this board? Can’t you guys deal with a Republican without calling him stupid?
No one who has actually met Bush thinks he’s stupid. I think his plain speaking manner and ‘aw shucks’ good-old-boyisms are calculated.
For the record:
- Yale undergrad.
- Harvard MBA
- Fighter Pilot
- Two term governor of Texas, defeating very popular incumbent first time
- President of the United States.
HIs SAT scores indicate an IQ in the 120 range. That seems about right.
Now let’s look at Al Gore:
- Lower marks than Bush
- SAT’s about the same - slightly higher.
- Flunked out of law school.
- Flunked out of divinity school.
- Got beat by ‘Dumb’ George Bush, when he had all the advantages of an incumbent, a solid economy, a budget surplus, and should have crushed Bush like a bug.
- Wrote a book called “Earth in the Balance” which was idiotic and simplistic.
Clearly, Al Gore is the dumb one.
God, how stupid can you get?
[sub]I kid! I kid! Nobody ever called Karl Rove stupid.[/sub]
Sam Stone makes a great point.
Al Gore, a two-term vice-president under a very popular president, with an unprecedented US economy, was unable to beat a two-term Texas governor whose DUI arrest was front-page news the week before the election.
Gore should’ve won that election in a landslide.
I think like a few other posters have said is that there is a tendency to see behavior you don’t like (i.e policy decisions) and apply them to the indivual making those decisions. As a business owner, I feel like a pretty smart guy, but I know if someone followed me around with a camera and mike, you’d probably find no shortage of footage that’d make me look like a moron.
As to the OP, ehh, to be truly honest I immediately change the channel anytime he’s on. It’s not that I think he going to mangle the English language. No I recognize that I’m just not going to agree with any policy he lays out, so why watch? I think we really need to be able to recognize that people can legitimately hold a different view, without that decision being purely a function of intelligence, or morals for that matter, considering a few of the debates lately.
I’d just like to point out that an IQ of 90 is not “a few points away” from being some sort of helpless infantile creature. It is well within the range considered to be normal funtioning intelligence by the psychological community. A person with an IQ of 90 is not mentally retarded, borderline mentally retarded, or even at the bottom of the “normal” group. What you describe above would be more typical of a person with an IQ of less than 20.
Oh, and I realize that MyFootsZZZ probably knew this, indeed I think his point was that 90 isn’t so bad, but I know that a lot of people aren’t too clear on the whole IQ scoring system so I wanted to be sure there was no confusion.
Why did so many posters mention Media portrayal as negative for Bush ? In fact the media has more than done their share of protecting Bush… no hard questions… tendency to show him in a good light. American media only of course.
If you are judging Bush by the way he looks your going the wrong way... I judge by his policies and a bit by his speeches. (I agree that not everyone needs to be a Tony Blair and make nice verbal defenses in Parliament questioning.) Still his speeches and policies denote a simplicity, that endears many US voters, but is woefully inadequate for a globalised and complex world. His overdone morality and religiousness tends to cloud issues into simple black and white too. ( I seriously doubt that the speechwriters are making up this persona too... its part of Bush.)
I agree the Bush bashing here might have spoiled a bit a possibly interesting discussion... how about we seriously see why Bush is stupid or not ? We shoudl talk about what kinds of intelligence too. He certainly doesnt appear witty to me... which some other presidents did. He might be politically savvy I guess.
One prejudice I have is the fact that he is from a rich family... Daddy was president and he NEVER travelled to anywhere else outside the US except a short trip to Italy. That for me shows a serious limitation of curiosity, world view and intelligence.Oh, for Christ’s Sake. George Bush is not stupid in any way, shape or form. He is, when properly scripted, one of the most awesome orators I’ve ever seen. He has the political sense of a wolverine. He is however, amoral and a war criminal. But he sure as hell isn’t stupid.
He has an amazing ability to simplify already simple issues, and communicate them in such a way as to convince a nervous and scared population, in order to execute war plans 30 years in the making, with the most splendid and expertly delivered rhetoric, that puts the ancient Greeks to shame. He is a great man, in his way.
He simply has no clue what is going on.
As has already been pointed out, 90 is a normal IQ. For those who don’t know, an IQ of 100 indicates normalcy, if 90 were a nearly nonfunctional idiot, you’d have 90 IQ points beneath it that don’t measure a whole hell of a lot.
That’s my honest assessment of Bush’s intelligence. As for all of his “achievements,” I think Daddy bought 'em for him. Including the Presidency. I think the DUI, coke-snorting, AWOL Bush is the real Bush.
Naw, I’d say 125, with huge spikes in certain specific aptitudes. 100 is average. 90 is functional literacy. Nothing under 140 should even be considered a serious comment. But the test is fucked anyway.
Evil Captor:
If Daddy is so easily able to buy Dubya the presidency against a successful incumbent, why couldn’t he have bought himself a second term against an obscure small-state governor?
I thought what you said was extremely offensive. Whether intentional or not, the way you wrote your post shows a great deal of ignorance and/or insensitivity.
It read as if you were saying; “He’s a moron, how much of a moron? 90 IQ range sounds about right, based on how stupid he sounds.”
Of course I’m exaggerating your comments a little, but it certainty doesn’t sound very flattering to those members of SDMB who have a lower IQ than most others here. If you think Bush is an idiot, that’s fine. Don’t try to explain how stupid you feel he is by assigning an IQ # to him. In this case it sounds as if you’re calling a whole group of people, “stupid”.
The rest of the post sounds as if the work he’s capable of ‘HAPPILY’ doing is limited because of his, (estimated by YOU), IQ of 90.
Maybe you can get away with the second part of your post a little easier than the first, but you certainly could have expressed it a little different.
A little off topic:
IQ scores mean NOTHING to me. I know some high scoring morons, and some low scoring deep thinkers. Some people have a hard time expressing their logic or brilliance, and come off sounding idiotic. Some people know how to argue, but aren’t REALLY able to back up anything they say… they just sound as if they know what they are saying. Some solve certain problems differently than others, others may not be able to solve common problems, but are good at other forms of problem solving. The point is, an IQ test is by no means a measurement of a persons overall intelligence. There are many ways to measure a person’s “smarts”.
It almost seems as though some people with higher IQ’s often like to make themselves feel ‘that’ much more superior, by putting a lot of emphases on IQ scores.
BTW, I’m referring to Evil Captor
It seems a little odd that this should bother you. After all, much of the world is accusing him of being a crazed warmonger, and you get upset because we call him stupid? Also, seeing as the US president affects the whole world, not just america, I think we have as much right to take the piss as you guys do.
As for Blair, go for it.
In the interests of expressing myself clearly, I try to avoid being too sensitive of the feelings of others when I post, as this tends to produce wishy-washy claptrap that I myself find boring. So it must be ignorance – by your lights. I ws just using IQ as it was intended to be used, as a rough and ready guide to general intelligence, not a detailed analysis of Bush’s psyche (such as it is).
I’m sorry if I offended any 90 IQ posters on this board. Perhaps the folks with IQs of 90 or less could all identify themselves in this thread so I could apologize personally to them. Then again, I AM saying a guy with an IQ of 90 CAN become President in this great land of ours – if he has a sufficiently rich and well connected Daddy.
For the record, I never said Bush is a moron. I think he’s a dull normal.
It’s the ol’ “respect the office even if you can’t respect the man” thing, I suppose. He may be a “crazed warmonger” but he’s OUR crazed warmonger. Get your own crazed warmonger.
Wait…you already did, didn’t you? 
The only people I’ve met who don’t like the office are corner-enthusiasts