Presidential Brains

Forgive me for deviating from the topic of my garden. The weather over the weekend was foul. Being driven indoors, I found myself along side The Man of the Place, painting the newly plastered walls. Blank white walls offer no stimulation at all and has caused my brain to wander, considering meaty topics like my personal spiritual journey and politics.

I may delve into the topic of spirituality later. Meanwhile I'll tell you that I have always been a fan of President Clinton. He was a president that understood foreign and economic policy. There were never any blank looks or grammatical errors when he spoke to the press. He could discuss political theory AND what was important to me, he had actually spent time outside the US before he went into politics. Did you know that he was a Rhodes Scholar? Having brains and a command of the language scores high with me.

Note: The section below is based on an e-mail my mother sent me. It was a hoax and I fell for it - hook, line & sinker. At best I am gullible, at worst I am too willing to believe the worst in people, especially presidents that I don't like. I was going to take it out but then, I thought I'd leave this in as it is a "warts and all" kind of blog.

As if she has been thinking the same thing, my mother sent me a link to a report by a group called The Lovenstein Institute. This group has compiled a report estimating the intelligence of the current and former US Presidents.

If the link doesn't work for you, this is an overview of the report:

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 60 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 R. Ford (R)
176 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald W. Reagan (R)
98 George H. W. Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
91 George W. Bush (R)

The six Republican presidents of the past 60 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.
See Bush Résumé

In fairness, I have not read the full report, only the above synopsis. I have not seen the criteria set out for measuring a president's average vocabulary nor have I have read a single published work by any of the current or former US presidents.

On the Lovenstein Institute site they seem to be going for the current administration with all guns blazing. That's okay with me. Governments should be held accountable for what they do and don't do. It is NOT unpatriotic to roast the President or his cabinet. I believe it is unpatriotic not to do these things. It is our right and our duty as members of a democratic society to question the decisions our government makes on our behalf. If leaders live in a culture of praise and lack of accountability, they will rot in their own reflection.