That’s right… an analysis of intelligence tests taken when each of the candidates was serving in the military, Bush has the higher IQ at the time.
Mr. Bush’s score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120’s, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry’s I.Q. was about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer’s extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.
Linda Gottfredson, an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware, called it a creditable analysis said she was not surprised at the results or that so many people had assumed that Mr. Kerry was smarter. “People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can’t understand,” Professor Gottfredson said.
New York Times: Secret Weapon for Bush?
Of course, the quest for the presidency isn’t an intelligence competition. All this news does it provide a quick response to those who say that Bush is “stupid”: Not as stupid as Kerry.
(Hat tip to Dean Esmay)
Dude…your white hood is showing.
Prof. Gottfredson, the “I.Q. expert” you qouted, is financed by The Pioneer Group, a white power hate group.
They are the same folks who bankrolled the Bell Curve nutjobs a few years ago—phony science to cover up xenophobia and blatant racism.
Is John Kerry black, all of a sudden?
The Pioneer Group is indeed a white power group, but why does that mean that a person they are funding is biased when it comes to an issue that has nothing to do with race? If Al Sharpton had received the Democratic nomination, and this story came out, you would have made a valid argument for discounting Gottfredson’s opinion on the matter.
I posted this to point out that the evidence shows that Bush isn’t unintelligent. That evidence stands, regardless of the racial viewpoints of one of the experts quoted in the article and regardless of how much you or I might disagree with that person’s views on race issues.
It is unfortunate that you were unable to make your point without accusing me of racism or calling me a “halfwitted fearmonger”…
I might be a little upset over those charges, were it not for my 140-150 IQ and your obvious superiority when it comes to racial fearmongering.
Your rationalization—“Well, Goober might be a cross-burning Klansman but other than that he’s a right smart fella”—is as nonsensical as your original post.
Hitler’s IQ was greater than 140. Your attempt to discredit someone’s opinion based on an unsavory aspect of them is a classic example of a “poisoning the well” fallacy.
You seem to make a lot of those.
Let’s just say for the sake of argument tha Bush’s IQ was higher than Kerry’s. It just proves that IQ is meaningless, when it comes to both smart leadership and debating skills–Bush looked awful in the debates, like a petulant child whom the teacher had confined to the corner.
Hitler’s IQ was greater than 140. Your attempt to discredit someone’s opinion based on an unsavory aspect of them…
Dude, I think that white supremacists are a bit more that “unsavory”—and if someone will bend the data to “prove” that African-Americans are sub-human, I will question their data about everything else.
I was using “unsavory” in the “morally offensive” way, not the “yuck…” way. How about “despicable”?
I’ve not seen any evidence to show that Gottfredson has “bent” any data, but I’ll gladly consider it. Bending data is different from looking at data and coming to a conclusion that implies racism. If she indeed has used blatantly dishonest research methods, then her opinion on other matters would certainly be less authoritative.
Brad,
Show me some examples of Kerry’s smart leadership, and tell me why you think strong debate performance should be a qualification for president.
Democrats were making a big deal about the supposed IQ gap in the 2000 election. Either liberals are smarter than conservatives (I’m a libertarian so I’m smarter than all of you fools :-P), or IQ doesn’t matter, and they should drop the matter.
Well, one example of Kerry’s smart (& courageous) leadership that rarely gets talked about, even by the Kerry campaign, is his Senate investigative work to expose the Contra-cocaine scandal, and at the height of Reagan’s popularity. Despite not having much support from his own party Kerry lead an investigation that revealed how drug money and the CIA were assisting the Contras in their rebellion against a democratically elected Sandinista government. While Contras in Costa Rica and Honduras formed alliances with Colombian drug cartel, the Reagan White House found other ways to keep the Contras afloat, turning to third countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and eventually to profits from clandestine arms sales to Iran. Kerry exposed this–and showed real courage doing so.
Pointless argument. First, those were not IQ tests they took. Second they were DIFFERENT TESTS. You have apparently read some article on The American Conservative or some other slanted website and presumed that the statements therein are some sort of scientific analysis of two alleged scores (haven’t actually seen them) on two different officer entrance exams for two different branches of the military. There may be some portion of those tests that bear some relationship to the “g” factor, which is a theoretical concept that is ascribed to that portion of today’s standardized tests that are actually related to base intelligence. Being a betting man, I’d bet that W fared slightly above average on those portions of the test. If “Dr.” Gottfredson made those statements, based on those alleged test scores, she is not an “IQ expert”. For argument’s sake, Bush is a GENIUS – nonetheless, check out the bushisms at http://slate.msn.com/id/76886/. If he is, in fact, a genius, there is definitely a neural link somewhere between his brain and his mouth that has been fried by his “youthful indiscretions”. The site is hilarious (and I am not affiliated with it in any way.
If these scores are close (and you’re right… converting these test scores to IQ scores is far from scientifically certain), both Kerry and Bush are of “above average” intelligence. I think that’s a safe bet. The whole point of this, in my mind, was to point out that there is some evidence that tends to show that Bush is in fact not a person of sub-standard intelligence, as claimed by many.
That being said, I don’t think he’s a genius by any measure. He also seems to have problems putting his thoughts into words, as evidenced by his numerous “word-ventions” and gaffes (or Bushisms, as they are commonly called). Of course, even people who have a greater command of language than Bush can at times make mistakes, as shown by Kerry’s “I actually did vote…” remark, or his “well, it depends on the outcome” quote.
While these things tend to make the person look bad, they don’t really speak to intelligence.
I think there are a number of misconceptions in these postings. 1) Linda Gottfredson is a recognised authority on IQ testing, but the comparison is in no way based on her own work–she merely said that Sailer’s view was “credible”; 2) The Pioneer Fund did not fund Murray and Herrnstein’s “Bell Curve” work–that was done by the Bradley Foundation (an arm of the American Enterprise Institute)–though Murray and Herrnstein did quote from a number of studies that were funded by the Pioneer Fund; 3) Given the fact that Bush and Kerry took two different tests (neither of them an IQ test), and that the difference in the scores is fairly slight, the best conclusion that can be drawn is that both men were probably of about equal intellectual ability (approx. +1.5-1.8 SD) when the tests were administered.
Maybe… just maybe… Bush has an IQ higher than yours making you unsuitable to judge the intelligence of his remarks?
You might just not be getting it.
Bush is above two standard deviations of IQ. From this point on, people quite quirky. Bush was just not very good in emulating the thoughts of the idiotic 95% of the population who is below his intelligence. You know… it’s a very tiresome and faulty process for a genius to think like a moron.
It actually hurts my head all the time.
Ouch.