# What politicians past and/or present were ACTUALLY dumb? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 12, 2015, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475 "2015-04-12T05:22:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/21 "2015-04-12T20:56:49Z")
Sheila Jackson Lee In 2003 she complained that storm names were too white. She demanded that “all racial groups should be represented” and asked the weather officials to “try to be inclusive of African-American names.” …claimed in a speech that US is 400+ years old (“we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not”). …claimed in a speech that there are two Vietnams today - North and South: “Today we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they’re living side by side.” … and of course she, when in her role as the Congresswoman that is sitting on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics she visited the JPL she asked the guides if the Mars Rover would be able to show “the flag the astronauts planted there before”. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/22 "2015-04-12T21:22:32Z")
I’ve heard numerous times that Harding was no intellectual heavyweight. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/23 "2015-04-12T21:30:18Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > That’s clearly giving into wishful thinking, and trying a scheme that didn’t work (“Maybe if I get the Supreme Court to say that slavery is constitutionally protected, the issue will go away”), but I don’t think it’s stupidity. > > As for George W. Bush, [George W. Bush is smarter than you.](http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/) > [@](#): > > President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting. > > I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary. There is a problem with this, if that was the case then there are only 2 options when he got us into Iraq, 1) he was given the information but was incompetent and clueless to see how he was being manipulated, or 2) [he knew what was going on and he is a dirty rat.](http://downingstreetmemo.com/) As they say one should not blame malice when stupidity will do, but then again if defenders of Bush like Keith Hennessey want to push what in reality is the “evil” explanation they are welcomed to do so. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/24 "2015-04-12T21:38:51Z")
Smart people can make dumb decisions. Does the phrase “best and brightest” mean anything to you? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/25 "2015-04-12T21:42:08Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Smart people can make dumb decisions. Does the phrase “best and brightest” mean anything to you? That requires that they **acknowledge** that they made a dumb decision, Has Bush Done so? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/26 "2015-04-12T21:46:43Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ve never believed that. I think Bush was a pretty intelligent man. I feel his problem was mental laziness - he was smart enough to get by in life and he didn’t exert himself. Agreed. W is dumber than the average POTUS but smarter than the average American – at any rate, smart enough to earn an MBA, which most Americans probably are not. But there are none so blind as those who will not see, and none so dumb as those who will not think. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/27 "2015-04-12T21:48:57Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Smart people can make dumb decisions. Does the phrase “best and brightest” mean anything to you? Dumb people make dumb decisions too. The fact that Bush made dumb decision after dumb decision doesn’t mean he’s not a little dim. Now I don’t doubt he’s kinda bright. I see him more as lazy and delusional. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/28 "2015-04-12T21:52:29Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And this reminded me that Nixon is also in the run for the dumbest politician title when we take his cabinet and plumber 🙂 choices into account, hard to think of a move like that that leaves such a legacy of under miners like Cheney to get into high levels of government and to come back again (under Bush) like a bad penny but with more power. Oh, Nixon was pretty damned smart – blinkered and narrowminded in some ways, but smart. He mistakes were driven by his demons – his social inferiority complex, his persecution complex, and most of all his fundamental dishonesty. Nixon never accepted even in theory that a pol has a duty to tell the truth to the people, his attitude was always that those in-the-know will make the decisions and “the public will be told what the public needs to be told.” Quite a tragically flawed figure, but you have to be a great man in the first place to be that. Rick Perlstein’s [_Nixonland_](http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/074324303X) is worth a read, BTW. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/29 "2015-04-12T21:55:42Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > As for George W. Bush, [George W. Bush is smarter than you.](http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/) > [@](#): > > For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. Yes, well, Dr. Hennessy, if he actually listened to you and acted on your advice about economic policy, I’m not too impressed with your brains either. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/30 "2015-04-12T21:59:08Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > [Ronald Reagan](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/not_even_a_hedgehog.html) was the Patron Saint of Stupidity. Perlstein’s [_The Invisible Bridge_](http://www.amazon.com/The-Invisible-Bridge-Nixon-Reagan/dp/1476782415/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z) is also worth a read. Reagan was indeed a nasty piece of work as a human being, a lifelong self-aggrandizer, a cold and indifferent parent, and what intellect he had was severely limited by his habit of viewing the world through a lens of heroic mythology. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/31 "2015-04-12T22:00:58Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I just don’t think Truman was bright at all. Not a moron like Louie Gohmert, but somehow he Forrest Gumped his way to a pretty successful presidency. Truman was an avid reader in his youth (he claimed to have read every book in the Independence Public Library) and was interested in history. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/32 "2015-04-12T22:04:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Yes, well, Dr. Hennessy, if he actually listened to you and acted on your advice about economic policy, I’m not too impressed with your brains either. On a very recent and very damming documentary (Inside Job) the point was made that many economists got scott free because the mainstream media barely questioned or investigated why was it that the economists that approved of the ideas and methods that led to the meltdown did not had at least a hit on their reputations, it seems that as usual they still can get plum jobs. ---
**Author:** ![DeptfordX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DeptfordX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeptfordX)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/33 "2015-04-12T22:10:17Z")
I agree Bush wasn’t dumb, he had bad judgement. Decent INT score, WIS was his dump stat. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/34 "2015-04-12T22:11:39Z")
For good reason the OP requested the thread avoid recent politicians. I concur. Stop it. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/35 "2015-04-12T22:11:55Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > As for George W. Bush, [George W. Bush is smarter than you.](http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/) Hey my mommy says I’m really smart when we conversate. Can I cite that when I apply to college? (Seriously, though, absorbing information is cool and all but intelligence lies in drawing conclusions and crafting effective policies from that information. Bush sucked ass at doing that.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/36 "2015-04-12T22:18:18Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > That’s clearly giving into wishful thinking, and trying a scheme that didn’t work (“Maybe if I get the Supreme Court to say that slavery is constitutionally protected, the issue will go away”), but I don’t think it’s stupidity. I still think one property of stupidity remains the incapably to acknowledge that a scheme was a mistake, in essence making yet another mistake; the Dred Scott Decision came very early in his presidency and very quickly many on the North saw it as a horrid decision. It ended strengthening the North’s opposition to slavery. And then for 4 years Buchanan did essentially nothing to deal with the issue and allowed it to get worse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/37 "2015-04-12T22:21:07Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > On a very recent and very damming documentary (Inside Job) the point was made that many economists got scott free because the mainstream media barely questioned or investigated why was it that the economists that approved of the ideas and methods that led to the meltdown did not had at least a hit on their reputations, it seems that as usual they still can get plum jobs. For the same reason Bill Kristol still has a job, I suppose. Whatever that reason is . . . ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/38 "2015-04-12T22:29:09Z")
I don’t know if hereditary monarchs count as “politicians,” per se, but since they do/can exert political power I can’t resist mentioning the sad case of [Carlos II of Spain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain). > [@](#): > > Charles did not learn to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight,[6] and was treated as virtually an infant until he was ten years old. His jaw was so badly deformed (an extreme example of the so-called Habsburg jaw) that he could barely speak or chew. Fearing the frail child would be overtaxed, his caretakers did not force Charles to attend school. The indolence of the young Charles was indulged to such an extent that at times he was not expected to be clean. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/39 "2015-04-12T22:39:13Z")
Ford did not deserve his reputation for physical clumsiness (that’s also covered in _The Invisible Bridge,_ BTW), but I recall even Betty said of him, “He never was much in the brains department.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475/40 "2015-04-12T22:46:12Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > I don’t know if hereditary monarchs count as “politicians,” per se, but since they do/can exert political power I can’t resist mentioning the sad case of [Carlos II of Spain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain). James II of England wasn’t quite that bad, but one of his supporters called him “undoubtedly the silliest man I ever met.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-politicians-past-and-or-present-were-actually-dumb/717475.md?page=3)