(Lovenstein) Study pegs Democratic presidents as brighter

It´s right there in the files of the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pa., which has been publishing its research on each new president since 1973.

The GWB study published in October 2004 took four months to complete and compared him to all the presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Bill Clinton.

Based on the report´s findings, Democrats are smarter than Republicans -- quite a bit so, in fact. The three smartest Democrats were -- in order of intelligence -- Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and John Kennedy with IQs of 182, 175 and 174, respectively.

At the bottom of the Democrat list were FDR (147), Harry Truman (132) and Lyndon Johnson (126).

The three smartest Republicans were Richard Nixon (155), Dwight Eisenhower (122) and Gerald Ford (121).

At the bottom of the Republican list were Ronald Reagan at 105, Bush the Elder at 98 and -- like father, like son -- Bush the Younger at 91.

The highest IQ readings of 200-plus were garnered by Marylin Vos Savant -- who holds the Guinness record -- and Truman Capote, whose IQ at one time was said to be so high, it couldn´t be accurately measured because they couldn´t come up with a test he couldn´t ace.

The report notes that the six Republican presidents in the past 50 years scored an average IQ of 115. Nixon led the pack with 155. The Democrat average was 156, with Clinton´s 182 at the head of the class.

Criteria for the study included any writings they generated on their own without help from staff, their ability to “speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors” that were “scored using the Swanson-Crain system of intelligence ranking.” It´s considered accurate to within five percentage points.

Of course, IQ isn´t everything. Jimmy Carter, for instance, was among the brightest but certainly not among the best because he lacked the charisma and forcefulness needed for true leadership ability. Genius and sincerity alone aren´t enough.

Ronald Reagan had the charisma and the sincerity and the public appeal but not the brains, which allowed him to be led around by forces he wasn´t even aware of.

When it comes to GWB, he´s not only short on brain power and charisma, he also has this disconcerting air of detachment -- even indifference -- about him. When told about New Orleans, his first response was, “I used to party there.”

His father before him projected that selfsame air of disengagement -- best illustrated when he glanced at his watch with an irritated look on his face during one the “debates” that are really nothing more than canned questions and predictable answers.

According to the Lovenstein study, GWB´s poor showing as president comes from his difficulty with the King´s English “in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis.”

Said Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein: “He has no published works or writings, which made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We relied more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking.”

The complete report can be found at www.lovenstein.org. It includes a telling “voice-stress confidence analysis.”

(Richard Orr is a Herald correspondent. He can be reached at richard@texasonline.net or richard@plainviewdailyherald.com.) Posted to MyPlainview: JANUARY 16, 2006 19:59 CST

In fairness he did retract it. However he did want to believe it was true without first fact checking. Here is the link: Another Liberal Who Wanted to Believe in a Hoax But Ended up with Egg on His Face

Writer hoodwinked by phony IQ article 01-22-2006 By RICHARD ORR

Herald Correspondent

I really got snookered on Bush´s brain. But I wasn´t alone.

Last Sunday, I wrote a column saying GWB and his father before him scored the lowest IQs of all the presidents for the past 50 years. It was based on an Internet article from an official-sounding outfit called the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pa.

Well, it turns out there is no Lovenstein Institute, and GWB isn´t as dumb as the article made out -- or as he appears sometimes.

According to the Urban Legend website snopes.com, the article got its start about five years ago. It was a prank so well-executed, the perpetrators actually registered www.lovenstein.org on the Web “in an attempt to fool people into thinking there really was such an institute,” according to Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, creators of the snopes site.

“The piece is simply a political jibe,” they note, “made obvious by its ranking all the Democratic presidents of the last several decades as having high (even exceptionally high) IQs” -- with Bill Clinton´s “being exactly twice” GWB´s.

Except for Richard Nixon, the Republicans were ranked as “average to moderate,” and the Bushes were at the bottom of the pile. Tricky Dick was rated at genius level: 155. The Bushes were ranked 98 (father) and 91 (son), respectively.

The Mikkelsons pointed out some “noticeable errors” -- chiefly that “the study includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in office in 1945.” Yet the study says its spans the presidents “over the past 50 years.”

Another error occurred when the phony report claimed all the presidents who preceded GWB had written at least one book while he had not. In fact, according to the Mikkelsons, some did and some didn´t. In truth, he´s listed as the author of a book in 1999 titled “A Charge to Keep.”

“Plus,” said the Mikkelsons, “if there is a ÔSwanson/Crain´ system for ranking intelligence (which the non-existent Lovenstein Institute claimed was used to rate the presidents), nobody else seems to have heard of it.”

“In any case,” they continued, “IQ is a dodgy enough concept even when measured by tests designed for the purpose. Trying to guess specific IQ scores based solely on writings and speeches is bound to be error-prone. Based on (GWB´s) extemporaneous speech-making, for example, he couldn´t Ôspeak with clarity´ to save his life.

“But he was clearly far more intelligent than the insultingly low IQ assigned to him. And a recent article reports President Kennedy´s IQ as 119 -- far below the genius-level 174 ascribed to him” in the alleged Lovenstein study.

The Mikkelsons note that “as obvious as the joke was, at least two publications were taken in by it: The (London) Guardian and the New Zealand Southland Times” in the summer of 2001.

After the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report printed articles showing that the IQ yarn was just that -- a slick fabrication -- The Guardian posted a retraction.

I had some reservations about the study -- mainly because it seemed a bit too pat that Democrats were so much brighter than their Republican counterparts, who generally come from moneyed roots and the better schools.

But given GWB´s bumbling persona, the apparent authenticity of the Lovenstein Institute and a quote from its alleged founder -- a “Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein” -- I ran with it.

User beware.

As marvelous a tool as the Internet is, there are no editors or fact-checkers overseeing its accuracy. Anyone can put anything they like on it with impunity. I´ve seen the same dumb quotes alternately attributed to both GWB and Al Gore.

So if it sounds too good (or bad) to be true, check it out before accepting it. The best place to do that is the Urban Legend site -- assuming it´s on the up and up.

Who knows anymore these days?

(Richard Orr is a Herald correspondent. He can be reached at royko@sptc.net or richard@plainviewdailyherald.com.)

From The Plainview Daily Herald

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