OK, imagine that some future time a very accurate method is found to discern people’s intelligence retrospectively. It’s an interesting concept (“What is ‘intelligence’, anyway?”) but we won’t get into that–define it as you will. I have no idea how they’ll do it, whether it’s by close examination of vocabulary, complexity of sentences in written work, ability to think on one’s feet in extemporaneous speech, close reading of early unpublished papers, or a hundred different things we haven’t even considered, much less quantified, but let’s just say it is very accurate. How would you suppose current (last 40 years or so) candidate for president would rank?
To avoid partisan rankings, let’s do this by party: I’ll list the last eight Dems and the last eight GOPers to run for President, and you place them in order of intelligence, as determined by an objective ranking, not taking into account whether you agree or disagree with their political decision-making, policies, personal opinions, etc.
I don’t know enough about all of them to rank them all. However, I feel absolutely dead certain that Trump would be absolutely 100% dead last. He is clearly unintelligent. It would not surprise me if he has a below average IQ, if it were tested. Look at his speech patterns, repeated failures, uninformed even on topics in which he should be an expert (i.e., business).
Obama, Bush Sr, and H. Clinton all strike me as being quite intelligent in that approximate order. I think Reagan was suffering from dementia during his presidency, but prior to that he does not appear to have been unintelligent. I cannot speak to Dole’s intelligence, but he seems to have led a successful life for the most part, and seemed to speak intelligently on matters so perhaps above average.
Put a gun to my head and here’s my order:
Obama
Bush Sr
H Clinton
Gore
Dole
Romney
Dukkakis
B. Clinton
(below here it would be mainly a tie)
Reagan
Mondale
Kerry
McCain
Ford
Biden
(until here)
Bush Jr
Trump by a landslide. Like he really makes Bush Jr look very intelligent by comparison.
P.s. I missed that it was supposed to be by party. I think I was pretty fair to both parties overall. D and R are in the top 2 spots for example. Plus I’m neither a Republican nor Democrat so I’m not especially partisan.
Re Trump, it’s much harder to tell his underlying intelligence than it would be for a normal person. His arrogance is so monumental that he refuses to educate himself about politics and policy and anything related, and as a result, his understanding of these matters is very rudimentary, and he therefore thinks and acts like an idiot. And he comes off even worse since he persists on pontificating about it anyway so that it’s all out there. But that’s a mental issue, not an IQ thing.
I know a guy-who-knows-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy who is a multi-billionaire real estate guy who has dealt with Trump personally in that field. He commented that in his real estate dealing with him, he did not see any of the craziness that he sees in his political persona. I don’t recall that he assessed his intelligence specifically, but the general idea was that in the real estate mogul world he came off more-or-less like a typical guy in his position, in marked contrast to in the political world.
I don’t care to do a full ranking, but I would place Bill Clinton higher than he has been ranked so far. He was a Rhodes Scholar (and, thus, attended Oxford), and he got his law degree at Yale Law School. I think he’s highly intelligent – where he is likely lacking, in the brains department, is in wisdom.
General notes: None of them are geniuses. Bill Clinton and Obama are likely the highest IQ holders of the bunch. Reagan’s intellect was under-rated, and Hillary’s and Al Gore’s over-rated. All of them are likely above average in intelligence, except for possibly Biden who is my pick for the lowest IQ person to have been President in maybe 100 years, and that’s without considering senescence. He’s been dumb since I can remember.
None of them have any more brainpower than your average executive, IMO. They are probably in the average IQ range for college grads with Clinton and Obama on the upper end of that scale and Biden being in the, ‘How did he manage to graduate?’ range.
All of them have above average skills for a successful politician, or they wouldn’t have become President. But that doesn’t have to include intelligence.
Intelligence isn’t even particularly relevant for a president. A president needs to be able to recognize the limits of their own ability, and they need to be able to recognize who does have the ability they lack, but neither of those is precisely what I would call “intelligence”. For the oft-used Idiocracy comparison, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho was actually a pretty good president: He recognized that he was facing a very serious crisis, he recognized that he didn’t have the capability of dealing with the crisis, and he found the best-qualified person available to put in charge of dealing with the crisis.
To me, this is like saying “I don’t think we can possibly make unforeseen advances in technology in the future.” Obviously I’m not talking about tweaking what we have now but developing a whole new approach, and one that works astonishingly well. You know, like having access to millions of books on your phone would have seemed in 1975.
But to me that’s a big part of intelligence. That inherent desire to learn and know things. It is very clear to me that Trump has no interest in knowing more or less anything. He’s only interested in making money, stroking his ego, and being right (regardless of fact). That need to be right is the antithesis of intelligence. I mean we’re talking about somebody who added Alabama via sharpie to a chart just to be right. And that’s one example among many. Additionally, his way of speaking is awful. There’s simply no other way to put it. It is so incredibly disjointed. His vocabulary is poor (he has the best words). Every indication is that Trump is not very intelligent. He was proud of remembering “man, woman, person, camera, tv”, and seemed to honestly think most people would not be able to do that.
Obviously, I disagree with him 100% politically as I’m strictly opposed to fascism, but I really do not think that keeps me from assessing his intelligence. He’s really dumb.
You could quibble with that, but it doesn’t seem relevant here since we’re discussing IQ, not intelligence.
It’s hard to say for sure, because that issue is moot in the case of Trump. He genuinely believes that he already knows everything (at least everything important and relevant) and therefore the question of whether he would be interested to learn anything new doesn’t really arise.
I read that when he got elected, Mike Bloomberg called him up - they knew each other from NY - and told him that he (MB) had been in a similar situation to Trump when he was first elected mayor - a businessman elected to a major political office - and as such could give him useful advice. What he advised is “make sure to hire people who are smarter than you are [at politics]”. Trump responded “that’s impossible. Nobody is smarter than I am”. I think Trump genuinely believes this.
As above, he may or may not be an idiot, but he’s certainly a mental case, which makes the first question very hard to determine.
I agree with Sam Stone on several points, always a surprise. I rank Biden the lowest IQ (shorthand) Dem, but only because the others are a bright bunch, with Bill and Barack just about where Sam has them, and I’d also start my GOP with Romney, which makes the 2008 race a good one in that regard, two very smart guys running against each other.
Biden seems alone among the Dems to have made his career as a successful pol by tacking to the middle (right?) of his party, being affable with those he worked with in Congress, and seeming to be all things to all men, as opposed to out-thinking his opponents. He does have a grasp on details that dwarfs Reagan’s, though–Reagan seems way ahead of Biden in schmoozing skills, and he had the rare ability to argue almost any position, even ones he had only a little information on, and to worm his way out of difficult questions on, which most politicians lack, but I wouldnt categorize that skill under “intelligence.” More like “charm.”
Most of these guys have good worming abilities, except for Hillary, who had a talent for making difficult situations worse, and Dukakis, who was a walking disaster zone. Obama was cool, but he could seem cold or uncaring sometimes, and we all know about Slick Willie.
Almost certainly, but this says a lot about his intelligence as well. Either those were the words from a test and he was proud for remembering them (so he’s an idiot), or those were not the words from the test and he thought remembering five words would be impressive (so he’s an idiot).
I’m honestly not sure of Trump’s intelligence, because he has so many character flaws it’s hard to separate intelligence out. It’s possible that he’s super smart, but totally uninterested in learning anything other than what to say to tweak his opponents on any given day. It’s also possible that he’s a dim bulb who gets by on bluster and name.
But if we look at who was fastest on their feet when not prepared, Trump doesn’t look so bad. He’s quick with a zinger, and can be funny when he wants to. He maybe moves up into the middle of the pack on that measure.
He certainly mopped the floor with the other Republicans during the 2016 debates, but not because of his command of facts, but because he seemed to have a good sense of how to get under their skin and make them make mistakes.
In the ‘fast on their feet’ measure, I think Obama and Bill Clinton still come out on top. Reagan moves up a notch or two. John Kerry moves down a notch or two, as does Hillary and Romney. Biden still comes out the worst - get him off script, and he’s likely to say something really stupid.
He “mopped the floor” with the other Republicans, not because he had a good sense of anything but because his style of juveline insults proved to be highly popular with the Republican base, to the shock of all his Republican opponents and virtually everyone else. No one had ever done something like that before and no one expected that such an approach could succeed in a race for POTUS. But succeed it did.
I’m forced to disagree. He’s quick on his feet only in the sense that his audience will applaud his nonsense. His retorts are not particularly insightful. They actually support the argument that’s he’s an idiot because they’re typically very childish. I, too, could be a great comedian if only people would laugh at my unfunny jokes.