Is George W. Bush's IQ Really 129?

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The discussion centers on the IQ of George W. Bush, which is suggested to be 129 based on a pre-1974 SAT score of 1206, as converted using the Otis-Gamma IQ test. This score places him in the top 3% of the population, according to the correlations established between SAT scores and IQ tests prior to 1994. The conversation also touches on the historical context of the SAT's development and its intended purpose as a measure of intelligence, rather than educational quality. Participants debate the implications of Bush's IQ in relation to his presidency and public perception.

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  • #31
You can guess answers using "enie, meanie, minie, mo" and sometimes, just luck out and get a decent score. I've no doubt whatsoever, that's what happened ! :biggrin:
 
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  • #32
All I know is I've taken 20 different IQ tests and had scores ranging from 45 to 192 so I'm not thinking too much of it.
 
  • #33
Tigers2B1 said:
Now look here – it's best you learn this now even if them 'diatribes' scare ya. No European is smarter or meaner than an American, and no American is as smart or as mean as a Texan. So figure, would you rather be an effete, powered wig wearin' European, sipping tea with your pinky held high, or a rough honed Texan, sitting at the dinner table splattered with cow blood? Americans don't drink tea, we throw it off ships. We're wild men, sired by the smallpox. Eating petrified hearts by the bushel and drinking desert sand by the barrel.
:smile:
Except maybe for "a skinny little boy from Cleveland, Ohio... Here to drink your women and chase your beer" - Alex Bevan's "Skinny Little Boy"
 
  • #34
GENIERE said:
What he did do that the neo-libs cannot do; is he defied the USSR, put us at the brink of nuclear disaster, because it was the right thing to do.

He set up the Bay of Pigs disaster and deployed missiles to Turkey, intigating the Cuban Missile Crisis. He then publicly stood up to the USSR while quietly removing the missiles from Turkey.

Not a great strategy, but he did do one good thing that George W. did not. He always had a safe retreat available and that is what pulled us back from the brink of nuclear disaster, not his defiant stand.
 
  • #35
the number 42 said:
Does anyone actually believe that George W Bush has an IQ of 125? Where is the hard evidence of the test he took? Sure, the guy may be cunning, but that may be more to do with emotional intelligence of a kind, which I would credit him with having. However Reagan - someone who probably had a pretty high EQ in his day, had some charm, which we more typically associate with EQ.

My analysis of GWB's IQ isn't scientific, but going by speeches, actions etc he doesn't strike me as bright in any way, except perhaps in cunning.
If the skillful manipulation of words had anything to do with intelligence, Mohamad Ali would be proclaimed a genius.
 
  • #36
No one said anything about "skillful manipulation". And even so, I believe that skillful manipulation of words does have something to do with intelligence - wit and intelligence have a high correlation. It's not the only thing, however, and that's the flaw in you line of "reasoning".

But if you don't have a basic vocabulary, or seem to be oblivious of grammar, or even what constitutes a logical argument, you can't claim to be a man of intellect.
 
  • #37
Robert Zaleski said:
If the skillful manipulation of words had anything to do with intelligence, Mohamad Ali would be proclaimed a genius.

If the skillful manipulation of words was the only measure of intelligence I might agree.

I've met many people who are not articulate but appear to be intelligent in other ways e.g. strong artistic talent, complex mental arithmatic skills etc but GWB is a different matter. Let me put it this way: if he was ordinary joe delivering the mail I would consider it cruel to highlight his fairly obvious lack of intelligence. Come on, guys - who can look at this guy and listen to him speak without thinking 'Thunderbirds are Go'...? An IQ of 129?
 
  • #38
Some bloggers are wondering whether his mind has deteriorated since he was governor of Texas. Apparently when he debated the former governer during his first run for that office he gave every sign of inteligence, responded quickly and flexibly and used big words with ease. Versus now. Daring doctors are offering diagnoses ranging from pre-senile dementia to mad cow disease. Personally I think that if true, it could be due to excessive cocain usage in his thrities. Well known to rot your brain.:)
 
  • #39
Not to mention all the drinking he did...
 
  • #40
I'd like to add a point.

Are you sure Bushes IQ isn't .911? That's a real intelligence problem.
 
  • #41
It doesn't matter if he has an IQ of 190- he still is a horrible public speaker. And the institution of the presidency requires more than just raw intelligence. It's all about image. If you're a genius and you portray the wrong image to the public and rest of the world said:
Or rather, it's all about the De-ception. Bush enjoys being perceived as stupid. It will get him more votes than if he was perceived to be smart; at least this is the case with the average joe, american public. It is also protection for him against his enemies who underestimate him, making his job easier. Reagan is also one to understand this very well.

It may be different now, but when I was young, it wasn't cool to be smart, and most people who vote rermember those days. Young people in general are less likely to vote.

I think this was also part of Clinton's problem in never being fully accepted as a leader. Many people in the south deeply hate him, which interestingly is a demographic that is a bit behind in education. Clinton reportedly has an IQ of 137 (I wish I could remember the source). The 182 reported by the "fake" Lovenstein Institute is bogus.

zoidsoft
 
  • #42
Zoidsoft said:
Bush enjoys being perceived as stupid. It will get him more votes than if he was perceived to be smart; at least this is the case with the average joe, american public...

It may be different now, but when I was young, it wasn't cool to be smart, and most people who vote rermember those days.

I can't agree more. People seem to have a soft spot for 'stupid' while 'intellectual' is about the worst thing you can be labeled.
 
  • #43
Gokul43201 said:
I can't agree more. People seem to have a soft spot for 'stupid' while 'intellectual' is about the worst thing you can be labeled.

Forest Gump was a real hit in this country in 1994. Just another observation that I'm not quite sure of:

It seems to me that the nerds, misfits, blenders in high school became democrats predominately, while the jocks and social climbers became republicans.

I could swear this was true at my high school, but maybe it's peculiar to my experience.

zoidsoft
 
  • #44
Zoidsoft said:
It seems to me that the nerds, misfits, blenders in high school became democrats predominately, while the jocks and social climbers became republicans.

As Larry King said, (in response to a Bill Maher statement that the South is, on average, dumber than the rest of the country), "Can you actually say something like that...I mean, in this day and age ?"

(I wonder what Larry meant ? In this day and age...of political correctness ?)
 
  • #45
I think that this is cultural, not genetic. This is as politically correct as I'm willing to get. The issue that worries me long term is that the USA as a whole does not favor intelligence, as say many other countries, particularly India, japan and China. This means that the US is going against evolution, which in the long term dooms the "american species" to extinction.

zoidsoft
 
  • #46
the number 42 said:
GBW's IQ 129? I can't imagine he scored too high on the verbal reasoning part of the test, so he must be a GENIUS in visuo-spatial and mathmatical skills (if I'm right in assuming that these make up the test).
Either that or he's a walking example of how we don't use our whole brain.
 
  • #47
Zoidsoft said:
I think that this is cultural, not genetic. This is as politically correct as I'm willing to get. The issue that worries me long term is that the USA as a whole does not favor intelligence, as say many other countries, particularly India, japan and China. This means that the US is going against evolution, which in the long term dooms the "american species" to extinction.

zoidsoft

Ha ha...but the Indians, Chinese and Japanese (especially, the intelligent ones) are becoming Americans! I'm sure you see enough of this...at Cornell ?
 
  • #48
Gokul43201 said:
Ha ha...but the Indians, Chinese and Japanese (especially, the intelligent ones) are becoming Americans! I'm sure you see enough of this...at Cornell ?

Actually, there was a report on 60 minutes a couple of months ago about a school in India that was so good (in computer science) that the worst students go to Ivy league schools in the USA as a fall back position (if they flunk out). I wish I could remember the name of the school.

zoidsoft
 
  • #49
I'd comment on this but I don't understand what you and Gokul are arguing about right now, are you saying Americans shun Intelligence and that's why they're getting weaker, are you saying that Chinese, Japanese and Indians are following this trend? or are they on the rise?
 
  • #50
Smurf said:
I'd comment on this but I don't understand what you and Gokul are arguing about right now, are you saying Americans shun Intelligence and that's why they're getting weaker, are you saying that Chinese, Japanese and Indians are following this trend? or are they on the rise?

I wouldn't say that America is getting weaker. Evolution as a trend takes many thousands of years, but nations rarely last that long anyway, so the point may be moot. But as a metaphor, when America shuns education as an important part of life, it is going against the grain of nature.

zoidsoft
 
  • #51
Zoidsoft said:
Actually, there was a report on 60 minutes a couple of months ago about a school in India that was so good (in computer science) that the worst students go to Ivy league schools in the USA as a fall back position (if they flunk out). I wish I could remember the name of the school.

zoidsoft

Ha ha. Perhaps you refer to the Indian Institute of Technology ?

And NO, I don't think anyone that flunks out will stand a chance of getting into an Ivy League School - not that they would find the level of education daunting, were they accepted.
 
  • #52
Smurf said:
I'd comment on this but I don't understand what you and Gokul are arguing about right now, are you saying Americans shun Intelligence and that's why they're getting weaker, are you saying that Chinese, Japanese and Indians are following this trend? or are they on the rise?

We're not really arguing.

But neither are we saying that the Asians are following the "trend" of shunning intelligence.
 
  • #53
Zoidsoft said:
I wouldn't say that America is getting weaker. Evolution as a trend takes many thousands of years, but nations rarely last that long

Bear in mind that the brain evolves (or devolves too, I suppose) much faster than the rest of the body.

But let's stick to the point: Bush's IQ 129? I agree with the comment that he may have been bright once upon a time, but lifestyle has taken its toll. It would be interesting to see test his IQ now. Indeed if his IQ has deteriorated, that's nothing less than a matter of national security. Its happened before, after all, to poor old Ronnie.
 
  • #54
Gokul43201 said:
Ha ha. Perhaps you refer to the Indian Institute of Technology ?

And NO, I don't think anyone that flunks out will stand a chance of getting into an Ivy League School - not that they would find the level of education daunting, were they accepted.

I googled it and found:

http://www.indianembassy.org/US_Media/2003/mar/cbs_iit.shtml

zoidsoft
 
  • #55
Not to pick on Bush or anything but doesn't IQ decline with age? and how many points a year?
 
  • #56
The_Professional said:
Not to pick on Bush or anything but doesn't IQ decline with age? and how many points a year?
You are treading on soft soil, watch your step!
 
  • #57
Just for the sake of argument

Bush's IQ can't be much higher than the actual president, Al Gore, Gore invented the frickin internet after all, :biggrin: . That was a joke, but still, bush needed an earpiece for all his debates to know where "he" stood. I say "he" because bush is a puppet. Just for the sake of argument, Bush can't have a 129, he'd mention it, because everyone said it was low he'd want to prove it wrong. Clinton was in mensa, with an IQ of the upper 140's to 150's. Mensa is a "club" for those with overly high IQ's, 145ish and up. Bush isn't near mensa, but he'd say he had a high IQ. Thought I should leave you with a quote, "There is no french word for entrepreneur."

P.S. I don't want to go through the time to add the french accent marks to the french word, that Bush said didn't exist.
 
  • #58
I just saw the story of Terman and his "smart kids" again. Terman was one of the early workers in IQ, and he collected longitudinal data on a sample of young people who all had IQs over 130. He often said there were two young men who just missed the cut by a couple of points who later won the Nobel Prize, while none of the people who were in the study did anything like that.

It turns out that the two who were passed over were Robert Shockley and Louis Alvarez. If Bush is not less smart than those two, he is smart enough. Bush is not really dumb, but he is monstrously misguided. It happens (look at Shockley in his later years!)
 
  • #59
Could it be that Kerry’s composite IQ is lower that Dubya’s? Hard to say since Kerry hasn't released his SAT scores - where the SAT-IQ correlation exists. THIS LINKED SITE shows other information which indicates that Bush, may in fact, have a higher IQ than Kerry -

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm

Side Bar To selfAdjoint - The Terman kids (aka The Termites) were kids who scoed in the top 0.5 percentile as I recall. In any event, those kids scored 140 and above on the IQ test used by Terman.
 
  • #60
Boy, Sailor really went through a lot of work to produce his "probably". I'm not going to worry about it. Kerry's history in the Senate supports the notion that he's smart enough. And of course I have never denied that Bush is smart enough, though I think he's been a disaster for the country.