# Proof that there should be a mandatory basic skills test for President
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [October 28, 2002, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195 "2002-10-28T03:44:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/1 "2002-10-28T03:44:34Z")
Fark posted a link to this [calendar](http://www.bushcalendar.com/examples/example1.htm) of Bush quotes. Here are a few choice selections:
“The California crunch really is the result of not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”
“If affirmative action means what I just described, what I’m for, then I’m for it.”
“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
And the most frightening of them all:
“Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”
-When asked in an interview to name something he’s not very good at
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/2 "2002-10-28T04:28:24Z")
Sorry. I think that he is an intellectually lazy (as opposed to stupid) tool of big business, but a propensity for tripping over his own tongue should not be a statutory barrier to office. If he can get the vote of five Supreme Court justices, he gets to be president. Let it go and move on.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/3 "2002-10-28T04:37:59Z")
No. He’s an idiot.
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### Author:  [@Hickory6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hickory6)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/4 "2002-10-28T04:40:37Z")
I’m just happy to to have someone in there who knows what the meaning of “is” is.
It’s also nice to finally have a Vice President who’s figured out that he is HIMSELF a “controlling legal authority.”
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### Author:  [@Max\_Harvey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Harvey)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/5 "2002-10-28T04:45:26Z")
The worst was “I know how hard it is to put food on your family.” Not the mangled syntax so much, but that it was a **blatant lie**. He _doesn’t_ know how hard it is to feed a family.
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/6 "2002-10-28T04:49:09Z")
> [@](#):
>
> “More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
What’s wrong with that? There are two continents full of countries that the US imports things from that are not, in fact, overseas.
Although I suppose most things from South America go by boat.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/7 "2002-10-28T04:56:50Z")
When you put your pedantic head on there is nothing wrong with the statement **friedo**
But I assure you bush wasn’t refering to the fact that some imports come from land-bordered countries. he was in fact being stupid.
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### Author:  [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/8 "2002-10-28T05:23:56Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by cainxinth \*
> **"More and more of our imports come from overseas."**
In fairness to the Shrub (who I think is nearly too stupid to be president), there’s nothing stupid about this line. Canada and Mexico are huge trading partners for the U.S.; Bush’s assertion means simply that the balance of imports is shifting away from those two.
Or did you think that Canada and Mexico are somehow “overseas”?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/9 "2002-10-28T05:34:45Z")
How about when he asked the president of Brazil, “Do you have black people too?” This was not just garbled syntax or a malapropism, it was a dumbass thing to say.
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### Author:  [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/10 "2002-10-28T06:41:14Z")
Sorry I managed to mangle that as well, it should read:
“It’s clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
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### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/11 "2002-10-28T07:03:36Z")
I wonder when he’s going to tell the Germans that he’s a Jelly Donut? Or refer to former President Hoover Heever. Or pick a dog up by it’s ears. Or bonk someone in the head with a golf ball while falling down an airplane companion way.
C’mon, every President has done/said goofy shit. Give the dork a break.
Hey, I helped put him there, I can make fun of him!:p;)
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### Author:  [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/12 "2002-10-28T07:17:08Z")
“Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”
-When asked in an interview to name something he’s not very good at
That’s not just goofy shit, thats our most important public policy figure telling us that reading indepth public policy isn’t one of his strong points. Is the Whitehouse drawing up fow charts with pictures and cue cards for him?
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### Author:  [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/13 "2002-10-28T07:19:11Z")
\*flow charts
(some nights nothing goes right)
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/14 "2002-10-28T09:01:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> But I assure you bush wasn’t refering to the fact that some imports come from land-bordered countries. he was in fact being stupid.
Yeah, I can make uneducated conclusions and not ever consider the possibility that I might be wrong, too.
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/15 "2002-10-28T11:54:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic \*
> \*\*How about when he asked the president of Brazil, “Do you have black people too?” This was not just garbled syntax or a malapropism, it was a dumbass thing to say. \*\*
Or maybe it wasn’t said at all. From [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/quotes/brazil.htm):
> [@](#):
>
> This items sounds like, at best, a second-hand account recounted months after the fact, one which to many seems a little too perfectly ironic in that, of all the people present at the meeting, it has Condoleezza Rice intervening and fixing up Bush’s embarrassing inquiry (a black woman with superior knowledge coming to the aid of a “racist” white man in trouble).
>
> […snip…]
>
> So, what this issues boils down to is a non-specific, single-source item, one which the Washington Post has the White House dismissing as “total crap.” Lacking anything more to go by, we have to leave this one in the “undetermined” column.
Regarding the rest of them, whether he said them or not, it will be difficult ever to top this classic from Clinton: “That depends on what your definition of is is.”
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/16 "2002-10-28T13:18:20Z")
I also heard the “imports from overseas” remark attributed to Quayle.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/17 "2002-10-28T14:09:52Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Libertarian \*
> \*\*Regarding the rest of them, whether he said them or not, it will be difficult ever to top this classic from Clinton: “That depends on what your definition of is is.” \*\*
That wasn’t really a mark of stupidity, that was a shamless attempt to cover his ass.
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/18 "2002-10-28T14:48:49Z")
What irks me about this whole “How stupid is Bush?” debate is not the argument about whether a few ineptly worded remarks are evidence of intellectual weakness, but rather that, having been characterized as the Forest Gump of the White House, every time he manages to walk and chew gum at the same time without falling over someone uses it as evidence that he’s got the brainpower needed to be president.
There is a lot of ground on the intelligence scale between “vegetable” and “Einstein”, and just because Bush isn’t one doesn’t make him the other. I have serious doubts about his ability to understand the requirements of his post to the degree that he needs to, but I don’t think he’s incapable of basic day-to-day bodily functions.
Frankly, given that the US may be going to war for the purpose of gaining votes for the Republicans and oil rights for George’s cronies, whether or not the President can form a coherent sentence is not high on my worry list right now.
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/19 "2002-10-28T14:56:27Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by cainxinth \*
> **"Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something."
> -When asked in an interview to name something he’s not very good at**
If those books are written anything like some of my college textbooks, I’m not suprised.
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### Author:  [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2002, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proof-that-there-should-be-a-mandatory-basic-skills-test-for-president/134195/20 "2002-10-28T15:25:44Z")
> [@](#):
>
> If he can get the vote of five Supreme Court justices, he gets to be president. Let it go and move on.
I think **tomndebb** should be President. That’s just beautiful, man.
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