Who is Smarter? (Gotta Read!!)

WLS a.m. Radio ^ | March 20, 2003 | Cindy Osborne

[Congressman Billybob]

Excellent piece. The computer whizzes on FR should get this piece into the hands of every radio talk show host and every cable news host (the ones who can think and read) in the nation. This could do some good.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, not yet up on UPI, and FR, "Don't Trust My Words"

Latest book(let), "to Restore Trust in America."

[Lost Highway]

I have to admit I am surprised the actors have the level of education they are attributed with.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Ping to me.

[ericthecurdog]

URBANLEGENDS.COM and www.urbanlegends.com both lead to test pages.

Use this: www.snopes.com

[ozaukeemom]

Charlie Sykes in Milwaukee had this on his radio show the other day. I linked to it on the Wisconsin page. Pretty interesting, eh?

[Screaming_Gerbil]

URBANLEGENDS.COM and www.urbanlegends.com both lead to test pages.

Use this: www.snopes.com

Thanks.

The specific page on the "Bush I.Q. myth" is at: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/presiq.htm

Claim: According to a study by the Lovenstein Institute, President Bush has the lowest IQ of all presidents of past 50 years.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]

President Bush Has Lowest IQ of all Presidents of past 50 Years If late night TV comedy is an indicator, then there has never been as widespread a perception that a president is not intellectually qualified for the position he holds as there is with President GW Bush.

In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush.

Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published it's research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking.

The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

182 .. William J. Clinton (D)
175 .. James E. Carter (D)
174 .. John F. Kennedy (D)
155 .. Richard M. Nixon (R)
147 .. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 .. Harry Truman (D)
126 .. Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
122 .. Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
121 .. Gerald Ford (R)
105 .. Ronald Reagan (R)
098 .. George HW Bush (R)
091 .. George W. Bush (R)

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. No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176.

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language 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. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.

"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."

The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist.

This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001 and released on July 9, 2001 to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community.

Origins: No, this isn't a real news report, nor does it describe a real study. There isn't a "Lovenstein Institute" in Scranton, Pennsylvania (or anywhere else in the USA), nor do any of the people quoted in the story exist, because this is just another spoof that was taken too seriously.

The piece is simply a political jibe, made obvious by its ranking all the Democratic presidents of the last several decades as having high (even exceptionally high) IQs -- note that Bill Clinton's IQ is listed as being exactly twice George W. Bush's -- while ranking all the Republican presidents from the same time frame as average to moderate in intelligence, with the current president and his father assigned below-average figures placing them at the very bottom of the list. (President Nixon is the sole exception, presumably because his reputation is still so tarnished that not even a high IQ measurement can yet redeem him in the court of public opinion.)

[Some noticeable errors: Although the study includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in office in 1945, the report is described as covering presidents in office "over the past 50 years." Also not true is the claim that "all the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt" -- some of them authored no books until after becoming president, and George W. Bush did have a book to his credit before being elected president, 1999's A Charge to Keep. Plus, if there's a "Swanson/Crain" system for ranking intelligence, nobody else seems to have heard of it.]

In any case, IQ is a dodgy enough concept even when measured by tests designed for the purpose -- trying to guess not just relative rankings but specific IQ scores based solely on writings and speeches is bound to be error-prone. Based on President George H. Bush's extemporaneous speech-making, for example, he couldn't "speak with clarity" to save his life, but he was clearly far more intelligent than the insultingly low IQ assigned to him above. And a recent article reports President Kennedy's IQ as 119, far below the genius-level 174 ascribed to him here.

Update: As obvious as this joke was, at least two publications were taken in by it: The [London] Guardian and the New Zealand Southland Times. Both ran the "Presidential I.Q." tale as a factual item (on 19 July and 7 August 2001 respectively). The Associated Press publicized The Guardian's error on 12 August, moving The Guardian to post a retraction on 14 August, and U.S. News & World Report clearly reported the I.Q. item as a hoax on 20 August, 2001.

Gary Trudeau's 26 August 2001 Doonesbury comic strip features an invisible George W. Bush being told about his ranking on the presidential I.Q. ladder by an underling. (This strip appeared on the Doonesbury web site on 2 September 2001).

Last updated: 5 September 2001

[Argh]

I already found it there, but thank you kindly!

[beckett]

Osbourne gives Sheen a little too much credit. He may have failed an entry exam to university, as she says, but she should also have pointed out that his last completed year of schooling was 9th grade. Sheen is a high school dropout.

[Diddley]

Actually, the list is of "schooling".
Many people who are schooled are not well educated.
Conversely, many people who are not multiple-year schooled, are quite intelligent.
Much intelligence (knowledge) comes from living the life and walking the walk - not just talking the talk.

I concur that many of the celebs are not educated at all, even with their schooling.

Also, many on "our side" are educated, with or without multiple-year schooling.

In short, the Libs/celebs are illiterate in these matters.

[Diddley]

So, it is a spooof.
But, even if it were true, itelligence doesn't necesssarily equate with goodness and humanitarianism.
:)

[Chewbacca]

Yup.

Intelligence and wisdom are two different things.

Take X42 for example. He is claimed to be a really smart person (oooh, a Rhodes Scholar), but his personal actions regarding all the women he sexsually harassed were not wise choices.

A wise man wouldn't fall into those types of traps. Only a foolish man would. A wise man learns from past mistakes, the foolish man repeats.

[Diddley]

A wise man wouldn't fall into those types of traps. Only a foolish man would. A wise man learns from past mistakes, the foolish man repeats.

You are so right.
And I agree that a better word (than intelligence) is wisdom.

[Lando Lincoln]

ping

[Mr. Thorne]

bump

[MarkL]

This is good. So ironic how these same libs used to criticize Reagan because he, "was just an actor."

But even while an actor, he did get some political experience, being the president of SAG... Later, wasn't he the president of a university? (I may be wrong about that). Then he was a governor: Don't leftists think that's OK prep for the white house? Well, not for GW Bush, but it seemed to be enough for Carter and Clinton.

Never mind the fact that President Reagan was a decent man, which really seems to piss off the leftists!

Mark

[MarkL]

URBANLEGENDS.COM and www.urbanlegends.com both lead to test pages.

Then try Snopes.com, and do a search on george bush iq.

Mark

[MeekOneGOP]

Barbra Streisand : Completed high school Career: Singing and acting

Unsuccessful vice presidential candidate Barbra Streisand (Democrat). Picked by a desperate President Al Gore in his 2004 re-election race, hungry to shore up the female vote after photos of then-Vice President Bob Kerrey in a ménage with Debra Winger and Jack Nicholson were discovered, Streisand's foray into electoral politics was an unmitigated disaster. She even lost the middle-aged-Northeast-liberal-Jewish-woman's vote. "Papa? Can you hear me?" she sang to the incredulous Democratic Party conventioneers in Malibu that summer. Her campaign commercials were criticized by many in the media for, as NBC's Brian Williams put it, "being short on substance, and long on legs. And what's with the soft lighting? What, does she think we're idiots?" So insistent upon casting herself as her own campaign manager, pollster, handler, and media consultant, Streisand collapsed in a fit of exhaustion while pressing flesh in New Mexico. Hubbie James Brolin rushed her off to the hospital; she was never heard from or seen again.

DEMOCRAT BRAIN TRUST active member.

Tue Sep 24, 9:29 PM ET

Barbra Streisand is emerging from self-imposed retirement as an entertainer to help out her old pals in the Democratic Party. Two years after bidding farewell to her career as a public performer Streisand will sing nine songs at a benefit for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, organizers said September 24, 2002. Streisand is seen backstage at the Academy Awards in Hollywood, March 24. Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters

Barbara Streisand was born April 24, 1942

I wonder how long it takes to get the makeup, etc. applied every day?

---

Alec Baldwin: Dropped out of George Washington U. after scandal. Career: Acting

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up! Jeepers...

[My back yard]

This was a good one. I got it in my e-mail too. Sent it to everyone.

[Argh]

Thank you.