Full article by John Dean here.
Hopefully Obama Will Not Shift His Strategy toward Playing Dumb
Senator Obama's smart speech on race is true to his campaign theme of "change," for he is departing from the contemporary, Republican-created norm of Forrest Gump presidential politics. Do Americans really want the dumbest candidate answering the phone at three o'clock in the morning? Of course not.
While the correlation between Presidents' successfully leading the nation and their intelligence cannot be easily measured, University of California psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has examined this question in his study "Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives" (partially available online).
Using complex statistical and analytical tools, Professor Simonton has estimated the IQs of all our presidents. For example, for the last sixteen presidents he estimated (and I have rounded his figures) the following IQs: Wilson (155), Harding (140), Coolidge (142), Hoover (142), F. Roosevelt (151), Truman (140), Eisenhower (145), Kennedy (160), L. Johnson (141), Nixon (143), Ford (140), Carter (157), Reagan (142), G. H. W. Bush (143), Clinton (159), and G. W. Bush (139). With the exception of LBJ, the Democrats have provided the country with much higher wattage than the Republicans. But clearly, none of these men are stupid.
Let's hope that Senator Obama continues to be willing to publicly perform at his intelligence level. Perhaps he will trust voters to realize that the key criterion to serve in the highest office should not be which candidate is the person with whom you would most enjoy having a beer. To the contrary, presidents should not be encouraging C students to continue to earn Cs so they can become president. Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better - which is one of the core points in Obama's message.
Anti-intellectual Republican presidents have led this nation into a new age of unreason, as former Vice President Al Gore argued in The Assault on Reason (2007) and more recently, Susan Jacoby has reported in The Age of Unreason (2008). As Senator Obama campaigns, he can truly change America by simply refusing to play dumb. That strategy, if Obama continues it, may turn out to be not only courageous but also wise, for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.
Hopefully Obama Will Not Shift His Strategy toward Playing Dumb
Senator Obama's smart speech on race is true to his campaign theme of "change," for he is departing from the contemporary, Republican-created norm of Forrest Gump presidential politics. Do Americans really want the dumbest candidate answering the phone at three o'clock in the morning? Of course not.
While the correlation between Presidents' successfully leading the nation and their intelligence cannot be easily measured, University of California psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has examined this question in his study "Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives" (partially available online).
Using complex statistical and analytical tools, Professor Simonton has estimated the IQs of all our presidents. For example, for the last sixteen presidents he estimated (and I have rounded his figures) the following IQs: Wilson (155), Harding (140), Coolidge (142), Hoover (142), F. Roosevelt (151), Truman (140), Eisenhower (145), Kennedy (160), L. Johnson (141), Nixon (143), Ford (140), Carter (157), Reagan (142), G. H. W. Bush (143), Clinton (159), and G. W. Bush (139). With the exception of LBJ, the Democrats have provided the country with much higher wattage than the Republicans. But clearly, none of these men are stupid.
Let's hope that Senator Obama continues to be willing to publicly perform at his intelligence level. Perhaps he will trust voters to realize that the key criterion to serve in the highest office should not be which candidate is the person with whom you would most enjoy having a beer. To the contrary, presidents should not be encouraging C students to continue to earn Cs so they can become president. Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better - which is one of the core points in Obama's message.
Anti-intellectual Republican presidents have led this nation into a new age of unreason, as former Vice President Al Gore argued in The Assault on Reason (2007) and more recently, Susan Jacoby has reported in The Age of Unreason (2008). As Senator Obama campaigns, he can truly change America by simply refusing to play dumb. That strategy, if Obama continues it, may turn out to be not only courageous but also wise, for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.
3 comments:
...the contemporary, Republican-created norm of Forrest Gump presidential politics.
Hadn't heard of that one. New talking point?
Carter (157)
And you complain about the state of the country under the relatively dumb Bush!?!?!?!
Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better - which is one of the core points in Obama's message.
A point on which we can all agree.
for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.
Does that exclude Hillary's supporters?
Anyway, I'm just going to have to quote you every day about Bush:
But clearly, none of these men are stupid.
Damn, guess you're not on the fringe anymore.
I don't believe he's stupid, but I believe what he says is.
I've also had a difficult time trying to understand how a man who had the privilege of attending some of the finest schools in the country could have such a difficult time speaking his own language.
His fractured English and syntactically tortured sentences are an embarrassment.
I believe this man rose to the highest level of his incompetence.
And we are the poorer for it.
But Bush invented the word "strategery" for us. There can be no greater service he has given us.
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