# Presidential IQs **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 24, 2022, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307 "2022-01-24T13:22:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/41 "2022-01-25T11:44:25Z")
I am glad that the POTUS is no longer newsworthy every single night in Europe for reasons related to his ego, his obnoxiousness and other caracter flaws, so I have not been paying that much attention to Biden: just glad I don’t need to know much about him, I thought. Now it turns out all of you consider him to be the least intelligent president among the democrats, but still less asinine than Bush Jr. and Deluded Dumb Dotard Donald. Still I wonder why he was chosen as a candidate if there is consensus about his lack of sharpness. If being stoopid was an asset for DDDDonald it does not seem to work the same way for the Democrats. I also find it interesting that although the OP started his list with Reagan several posts have mentioned Nixon and Ford, but nobody has mentioned Carter so far. Does he not compute on the stupid/intelligent scale? ETA: I see the OP started with Ford, my bad. The more remarcable he skipped Carter. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/42 "2022-01-25T12:43:54Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > 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. I think politics does come into it though, because look at it from the point of view of a trump supporter: I think even they could not claim with a straight face that trump’s _knowledgeable_, or could go into detail on, well, anything. But they would think that he’s \*right\* on many topics. So he at least shows a canny shrewdness to see through all the waffle and find the salient facts. And to sniff out all the many conspiracies and fake news. And it’s a _good_ thing be doesn’t listen to the “so-called” experts. To them, yeah, they might think of him as smart. As laughable as it might seem to us. > [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > it turns out all of you consider him to be the least intelligent president among the democrats, but still less asinine than Bush Jr. and Deluded Dumb Dotard Donald. Still I wonder why he was chosen as a candidate if there is consensus about his lack of sharpness I was surprised to see Biden at the bottom of everyone’s list but I guess I can’t think of a time where he demonstrated amazing insight or being able to pull together many ideas at the same time. But as some have said upthread, I don’t think those things are important for a president. It’s a figurehead role and largely about delegation. I wish he was a better orator, but the problem there is more his age than mental horsepower (speaking slowly, confusing words etc). ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/43 "2022-01-25T13:04:36Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > he OP started with Ford, my bad. The more remarcable he skipped Carter. Also intentional. I wanted equal-sized groups, and I thought Carter, like Nixon, would wind up at the top of most folks’ list, though perhaps not as high as Obama or Slick Willie. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/44 "2022-01-25T13:10:20Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > they would think that he’s _right_ on many topics. OK, but this isn’t an argument for being smart about things. Simply, he supports white supremacism, one of the most simplistic and dangerous ways to view the world, and most of his supporters are white supremacists. How does this make him remotely smart? Because he’s able to exploit the racist tendencies of most Republicans? I think most GOP candidates for POTUS saw that as a potential plus that they were careful to raise only in very cautious code words–he appealed to it much more directly. It’s quite possible to be “shrewdly exploitive” without having a shred of brains, and he is. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/45 "2022-01-25T13:20:24Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > OK, but this isn’t an argument for being smart about things. After posting, I realized I’d get this response, as I hadn’t been clear enough. Obviously the supporters of \*anyone\* are going to think that that person is generally right. And they don’t necessarily have to think of that person as smart (indeed the OP relies upon us being able to separate “right” from “smart”). The difference with trump though, is that he’s so “out there” relative to established science, politics and even the republican party as it used to be (which was already pretty wacko IMHO). And he makes the claim that all those other groups are/were wrong. So to believe trump is right, you have to believe he’s seen the flaws in all these people’s positions. He’s the one person to see through the matrix that all the other supposedly smart people have been fooled by. You’re basically obliged to think he possesses at least incredible levels of insight. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/46 "2022-01-25T14:02:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But when other people like Rubio tried to adopt his childish name-calling, it backfired on them. That’s more a measure of Rubio’s stupidity than Trump’s cleverness. I recall that the worst example (where Rubio made a psuedo-coy allusion to the reputed implications of Trump’s small hands) was preceded by an actually clever retort where he “introduced” a pro-Trump hekcler as “the valedictorian of Trump University” – if he’d just let it go after that, he would have scored a hit rather than a self-own. ---
**Author:** ![anny\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@anny\_m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anny_m)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/47 "2022-01-25T18:58:14Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > None of them are geniuses. Bill Clinton and Obama are likely the highest IQ holders of the bunch. My brother knows a woman who worked for some years in the White House. I think she retired before the Obama presidency. She said that Bill Clinton was the most intelligent person she ever knew. (OT, I know, but still interesting – G. W. Bush was a really nice guy; the kind of person who, if you mentioned your mother was sick, would ask you the next time he saw you 2 weeks later how your mother was doing. Cheney, however, was “evil incarnate.”) ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/48 "2022-01-26T02:11:36Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’m honestly not sure of Trump’s intelligence, because he has so many character flaws it’s hard to separate intelligence out. I haven’t done research on this, but I’m thinking that IQ is school smarts. Second hand info is that one of Trump’s profs said he was the dumbest student he ever had. But that was before grade inflation, and DJT didn’t flunk out, so I don’t take that jibe literally. Maybe, Trump was more the most annoying in class discussion than the dumbest. Wharton real estate an easy major? Doubt it. But no honors, so, above average IQ. Does IQ correlate with presidential performance? Doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/49 "2022-01-26T02:24:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > 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. Sorry, but he said on national TV that injections of disinfectants might be a therapeutic for COVID. This isn’t garden variety disinterest in academic topics, this is an inability to think things through. At the very least its sort of an inverse Turing test. If the ignorance is such that there is no way to distinguish it from stupidity than for all intents and purposes it is stupidity. As for my ordering: Republicans: 1 Romney 2 Bush 3 Dole 4 McCain 5 Ford 6 Reagan 7 Bush Jr 8 Trump Democrats 1 Gore 2 Obama 3 H Clinton 4 B Clinton The remaining 4 in a mishmash at the bottom since I don’t know them well enough to distinguish them. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/50 "2022-01-26T02:52:14Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I wish he was a better orator, but the problem there is more his age than mental horsepower (speaking slowly, confusing words, etc). Were you aware he has a speech impediment? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/51 "2022-01-26T02:53:47Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Sorry, but he said on national TV that injections of disinfectants might be a therapeutic for COVID. This isn’t garden variety disinterest in academic topics, this is an inability to think things through. Some high IQ people, who are expert in one area, think they are expert about everything, and thus say extremely dumb things (example: James D. Watson, DNA/race). So I don’t consider Trump’s statement there incompatible with high IQ, much as it is an example of poor job performance. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/52 "2022-01-26T02:58:01Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Second hand info is that one of Trump’s profs said he was the dumbest student he ever had. But that was before grade inflation, and DJT didn’t flunk out, so I don’t take that jibe literally. Although there are also reports that Trump’s sister did his schoolwork for him while he was at Fordham, and then he paid someone to take the SAT for him to get into Wharton. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/53 "2022-01-26T03:05:27Z")
I think his expertise is an a con man, and these, in the last post, are examples. If he was a philosophy major, I might wonder whether he got through college by having others write his papers. But I’m think that as a real estate major (in what seems now to be the number 1 department in that subject), he had to pass exams of a sort where cheating, although on some scale possible, wouldn’t help much. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/54 "2022-01-26T09:28:41Z")
It wasn’t just the disinfectant thing. Remember that Trump’s briefings had to be dumbed down to a few paragraphs with colorful pictures and mentioning his name. He failed to demonstrate a coherent understanding of _any_ public policy (for example, he continued to believe that tariffs against China are paid by China despite having it explained to him several times). And that’s not getting into the frequent word salads and bizarre brainfarts like saying that windmills cause cancer or that Washington’s troops liberated the airports. Of the last eight presidents I would likely put Biden in sixth or seventh place (comparisons to Bush Jr are a little earlier to assess well; he’s more likely to turn out to be like Ford) but any suggestion that he’s less intelligent than Trump is _really_ distorting reality. ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2022, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307/55 "2022-01-27T05:12:45Z")
Trump is all bluster, no brains. There are reports that Trump’s finances are really hurting. These days, it doesn’t appear to be at all difficult to become a multi-millionaire by being President, but Trump has the dubious honor of doing it by starting as a multi-billionaire. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presidential-iqs/958307.md?page=2)