Does Bush have a low IQ?
Yes. Because I got an e-mail that told me so. I apologize to anyone who has received this forward at any point during the past 5 years since this study was released, but for those (like me) who are sometimes just a couple steps behind, let's examine...
"On 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 its 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:
147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
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."
Is it true? You can check out more here. If it's not true, who cares? It's got to be close enough.
"On 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 its 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:
147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
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."
Is it true? You can check out more here. If it's not true, who cares? It's got to be close enough.
posted by Becky Heineke at 7/11/2006 07:02:00 PM
Comments on "Does Bush have a low IQ?"
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Linna said ... (8:54 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Linna said ... (8:58 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Becky Heineke said ... (9:26 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Nothing Really Matters said ... (9:37 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Nothing Really Matters said ... (9:40 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Becky Heineke said ... (10:21 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Becky Heineke said ... (10:23 AM, July 12, 2006) :
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Nothing Really Matters said ... (2:50 PM, July 12, 2006) :
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Becky Heineke said ... (4:43 PM, July 27, 2006) :
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Becky Heineke said ... (5:16 PM, July 27, 2006) :
post a commentI knew it!! There's no way that man is intelligent, even in the slightest way! And I LOVE the statistics that show that the democratic presidents had a higher average IQ than the republican, that kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it?
Thank you PG, this made my day even better! I have to tell everyone I know about this!! :)
And I LOVE the heading "Does Bush have a low IQ?" with a question mark! A question mark!! LMAO!! Hilarious!! :)
Hee! I know! Like it's really a question that we don't know the answer to! :) Someone e-mailed this to me yesterday and I about died. I thought about forwarding it along to everyone I knew and then I was like, nah, this is totally blog material. Let's hit an international audience! :D
LOL. 182 William J. Clinton (D) OMG how is that possible that is rather high!
I'm sure i have a IQ higher than six of these lovely people! Although i could have made than up!
Maybe we should all take IQ tests??? Or maybe not i might find i'm really not that with it!
I don't know where to go for a good IQ test online. I tried one once and came out as like "mildly retarded" but when they tested me in school, I came out as "gifted." I guess I'm somewhere in between? :)
ps i'm sure you will do a great Brit stand in- thank God I was seriously starting to worry that I would be cold turkeying for two weeks.
Oh, brit definitely didn't want that to happen. I'm sure I'll be a subpar replacement at best, but I figure if I post enough pictures, no will know the difference. Maybe? :D
Okay i found this, i will try it when i'm less tired! Which may be never!
http://www.iq-testing-online.com/iqintro.html
It's a fraud! I took it and then it said I had to pay $10 for my score! What-the-hell-ever. I'm giving myself the score of genius.
Oh dear i'm sorry i wasted ypur time!
"score of genius" Hell yeah you much be!
Heh. I don't really care because I skipped a couple of questions because I was too lazy to do the thinking. :) So, I'm sure if I actually took it seriously and actually got the results, I would have proof that I'm super-smart! ;)
You will be an EXCELLENT replacement - you hear me, recruit!
I'm concerned people won't want me back.
On to Bush. At least you know where you stand with him - war and oil. Blair is a SLEAZEbag so I don't care how high his IQ is, I want him out.
Vote for the 4th box party!
Ma'am, yes, ma'am! Sometimes I need a little tough love. :) You're excused from lack of commenting due to excessive vomiting. Also, I know what you mean about Blair. He's kind of a weasel isn't he? Not to mention he's Bush's butt monkey.
How do you know someone's IQ if they have never taken a test or had it published? Are they making it up based on how smart they look. If I wear glasses and a waistcoat and smoke a pipe does that give me a high IQ. Bush is such a dope though. I still laugh my head off just thinking of him trying to get out of that news conference in china where the door was locked - he just stood there looking at the camera as if someone had taken the chip out of his brain. Idiot.
It's possible that Blair plays The Devil's Advocate (and Dubya plays the Devil in a rotten performance), but do you know Spanish president J.R. Zapatero?
He kicked Spanish troops out of Irak only because he was too afraid of losing his leftish voters support. Pathetic in my book.
It's a fraud. Hoax. Urban legend.
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.
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 article quoted above began circulating on the Internet during the summer of 2001. In furtherance of the hoax, later that year pranksters thought to register www.lovenstein.org and erecting a web site around it in an attempt to fool people into thinking there really was such an institute.
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: 15 July 2004
This Just In—Kerry's IQ Likely Lower than Bush's!
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign/24points.html?ex=1256356800&en=50a1bcbb16e7cf21&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
"LOL. 182 William J. Clinton (D) OMG how is that possible that is rather high!"
Answer: It isnt possible. The Lovenstein IQ thing is a hoax and Einstein's IQ was about 160.
Prophecy Girl, just because the Lovenstein "study" is a hoax, so what?
Never let "an inconvenient truth" get in the way of good rant, right?
Oh, good God, people. I was just going to ignore all these comments, but come on! I published this saying it was forwarded to me in an e-mail. All I did was post the contents of said e-mail and link to the site which obviously has a few flaws if you spend any time there at all.
I have no idea why the subject of Bush's IQ (even as a joke) got so many people upset. It was harmless...as opposed to, say, lying about intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction and sending our country into a needless war or ignoring all scienfitic evidence and leading the country (and the whole world with it) into a downward environmental spiral which is basically going to kick our species in the ass.
Regarding Einstein's IQ, last I heard that was a subject of debate. To say Clinton's reported IQ is "impossible" is ridiculous. Marilyn vos Savant has an IQ over 200. The measurement of IQ is not a science nor is it really indicative of anything except the ability to take a test well.
Regardless, Bush is an idiot.
In case I failed to make it clear in that first paragraph, I guess I figured anything I openly admitted to being a e-mail forward would be taken with a grain of salt. Obviously they aren't the most reliable of sources.
Also, oh my God, five more minutes until I get off!!! I want to go home!!