Gotcha. I missed that and still scored higher than Bush on the SAT 
Oh hell yes. I would hate for my intelligence to be judged according to my poise and articulation behind a podium. :eek:
Ok, how about this route- has he shown anything since his jetfighter days that would lead one to think he is an intelligent man?
I’ve always gotten the impression that he’s not dumb – just very average. I’d be surprised if his IQ is much higher or lower than 100. I think he appears dumb because he’s filling a role that’s normally occupied by very intelligent, competent people, so it’s natural that he looks a little pale in comparison.
I think the main problem with the man is that he’s lived a very insular and protected life – he strikes me as a guy who’s always been surrounded by those who tell him how great he is. I don’t think he’s ever needed to come to terms with his own limitations and weaknesses, and as a consequence he’s never really striven to better himself or expand his horizons. I think by this point he’s probably found a set of comforting belief systems to reinforce this laziness – magical religious thinking (God is guiding my every move!), and old guard elitism (I deserve this position because I come from a good line).
Baldwin, I wouldn’t mind hearing more on your drug abuse theory. I’d be a little surprised if he was snorting coke off the president’s desk, but I could see him abusing prescription painkillers or something.
Tests are meaningless when the privileged and corrupt are being tested. Testing above average just means that they thought that Bush would make it obvious nonsense if they declared him a genius.
Judging by performace, he’s a complete incompetent, a moronic fool.
One thing to remember is that although Yale was an “elite” school, that used to mean it was a school for the children of the elite, rather than a school for elite children. Sure, you got a better education at Yale than you would at a state school, but even in the 60s the kids who went to Yale weren’t chosen from among the very smartest kids in the country, rather they were the kids of the upper crust plus a few welfare cases.
As for Bush being in prison, why exactly? Because he drank a lot and used cocaine? Or is it because he’s eeeevil, and eeeevil people end up in jail unless they’ve got mommy and daddy to protect them? I know plenty of assholes, jerks, coke users, alcoholics, sociopaths and scumbags with no family connections and not many smarts and very few of them end up in jail, even for drunk driving. If Bush were born in an average family he’d be the manager of an underperforming furniture store, or a salesman at a radio station, or some such bullshit job.
I think you might be exaggerating a bit there, Lemur. There was a legacy system, for sure, but I don’t think that’s how most of the students got in. Although I’m about 10 years younger than Bush, I went to an Ivy League school, and I can tell you that most of the kids there were pretty darn smart.
If Wikipedia is to be believed pre-1995 scores can be roughly centered with modern ( or at least 1995-2005 ) scores by adding 70 points to the Verbal score and 20-30 to the Math score. So G.W. Bush’s modern composite score would be equivalent to roughly 1300. Not all that bad, really ( by comparison my recented score would be ~1400 
).
But I’m not really confident that good SATs is all that great a measurement of intelligence, which is a metric that is difficult to even define. I’ve known a couple of pretty dense people that were good at taking exams ( a bit slow on the uptake, but great at regurgitating in a structured manner ), though obviously they were a minority in the overall universe of good test-takers.
So to be clear here, this is your theory: Even though his SAT score was clearly irrelevant to his Yale acceptance, his family somehow bribed or cajoled the proctor of the test and/or ETS to give Dubya a mediocre SAT score because too high a score would have made “them” suspicious. Yes?
Is this a faith based argument then? Tests of the privileged are corrupt and meaningless? And you base this on…what exactly?
And what metric of ‘performace’ are you making this judgment based on? Your obvious partisan dislike of the man? I’d say, based on his ‘performace’ he’s done quite well for himself (being a Governor AND the POTUS and all). I certainly don’t see any indications he’s a ‘moron’ (unless you are simply using that term in a derogatory way…in which case I’d agree with you there). Being a ‘fool’ is obviously subjective so my agreement with you there is meaningless wrt the intelligence question.
Seriously, you are basing all of your argument on Bush’s intelligence on a rejection of any objective metrics we could use, and cruising off into the realm of faith…which is kind of ironic coming from you, since you deride others for making these kinds of faith based assertions that fly in the face of objective metrics. Ehe?
-XT
Dude… :dubious:
For one thing, when Bush took the SAT (1963) he was the grandson of a Senator, and the son of a guy (George H. W.) who was in the middle of a (losing) Congressional campaign. Who is this mysterious “they” who would risk the scandal of being discovered manipulating his freaking SAT score?
Me too, but I’ve never known anyone who became a worse public speaker the more practice they got.
You’d think if drug abuse was the reason for his difficulty speaking, he’d be better some days then others depending on how recently he’d used. But while he does OK if he’s giving a big speech that he’s obviously spent a lot of time preparing for (State of the Union, etc), he otherwise seems to be pretty consistently bad at speaking.
Since we’re pretty much speculating in this thread anyways, my WAG, for lack of a better theory, is that for all his bravado the fact that he’s president is actually pretty overwhelming for Bush in away that being governor of Texas wasn’t. As a result he’s just been too consistently nervous for the past eight years while public speaking to do a creditable job.
Note–he is said to have never left the United States prior to becoming President.
If true, this is a demonstration of an utter lack of imagination or intellectual depth. He is a millionaire many times over, & the son of one. He could afford to go whenever he wanted.
He never tried.
What does this say about the 3 gears turning in his noodle?
I’m afraid to spend the dough, or I’d be off to London or Rome like a shot.
Meh, I’m sure we can pull up many examples of intelligent and well off people that never bothered to travel. It’s a bit odd, but I don’t think not wanting to travel makes someone stupid.
It only makes you stupid in the derogatory sense for the waste of an opportunity. I’d say it is an indication of how limited, unimaginative and lazy Bush is that he never took advantage of his families wealth to explore the world a bit.
-XT
What do you mean he’s never traveled abroad? He left Texas a number of times!
Could be, though I’ve known some intelligent and otherwise intellectually creative people who, for whatever reason, just hate to travel.
That “Bush never left the US” story is an Urban Legend.
I searched for the average score to get into Yale at the time, and couldn’t find it. This very pro-Bush, anti-Kerry site says that in 1960 Harvard averaged 1373, so Yale wouldn’t be too far off. The Yale site for the college board says that 95% of Yale students are in the top 25% of their class, and 100% in the top 50%. I think it is fair to say that parental alumni points and money helped.
I wonder if Harvard Business School has the same grade inflation as Harvard College is famous for. I’m not sure his MBA grades count for all that much.
Still. Bush’s issue isn’t intellegence, it is laziness. Even when he was running in 2000 he seemed not to care enough to actually learn the names of foreign leaders. He doesn’t seem to want to follow through, or to ask the difficult question that will tell if his subordinates are bullshitting him. Especially when they say something that fits in with his biases. I think the comics call him dumb because it is harder to do gags on a giant lack of curiousity.
Stupid is as stupid does.