Quote:
|
Originally Posted by scandium
I think this paragraph, from one of Skybird's links, sums it up nicely:
Quote:
The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of
115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W.
Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six
Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton
having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the
lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126.
|
I'm not familiar with the particular test they used, but generally a score of 100 is the median value which puts GWB just slightly below "average"; so he is not actually retarded, as some believe he is, only that he is better suited to managing a lemonaide stand rather than the world's most powerful country. But IQ tests can't factor in wealth, affluence, political connections, and being the hereditary next-in-line to a well accomplished and well connected former President who also happens to be his daddy.
Too bad he screwed things up so badly that he soured any chance of Jeb succeeding him in '08. Thus I expect the Repubs to run a lemon who will lose in '08 (any (R) will be seen as a lemon after 8 years of Republican disasterous governing), and Jeb can then, after a couple terms in the Senate, continue the Bush dynasty in '12 or '16 after the Repubs have had a chance to blame the fallout for George Dubya's failed leadership on his democratic successor.
That's my prediction. I'll have to check back in 6-10 years to see if I nailed it on the money or not |
Eh, hear-hear - my prediction, too (except that thing on Dubya).
Note that I quoted two different studies. One is indirectly concluding on IQ by analysing all material about a given person, speeches, articles, biography, here the author came up with ridiculously high scores, the important thing here is to look not at the absolute values, but the relation between values, and than it matches, roughly, the second study (which you quoted), which probably used more direct input (IQ-tests) people may have done for axample at university, shows more believable scores. IQ-tests at university are not uncommon, at least in Germany, I had three tests myself to earn points for participating in experiments, a certain number of such points was needed to get access to the half-time-exams (purpose is to supply ongoing reasearch works with a constant stream of willing rats, eh, subjects, I mean). for the latter design, ordinary clinical IQ-tests will be used. Outcome depends on the design of the test (culture-free or not, knowledge-free or not, focus on language or mathematics or abstract thinking or graphical presentation, time-limits or not). Ask 100 psychologists what intelligence is, and you get 30-40 different answers. Some IQ tests say more about the author than about the examined subject
Intelligence shifts and changes with age. A score of 91 is close to the limit when kids would be sent to special schools for mentally handicapped children and those with intellectual deficits.
but all that is academic only. Far more valid and interesting is the finding of Bush's repertoire of words he uses when analysising all his speeches, and statements and recordings. What was said about him: 6500 words, compared to an avergae of 11800 or soething like that. This deficit could mean two thingS: either his mental flexibility and intellectual capacity is seriously handicapped, or he is extremely clever and knows that those people he adresses are mentally inflexible or intellctually handicapped, so that he takes care of getting understood and reduces the niveau of his language to the needed lower level.