Friday, June 04, 2004

Presidential IQ's

So these guys at the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania were somehow able to "administer" an IQ test to every President since FDR. Here are their findings:

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)
099 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)

I guess normally I wouldn't care. There's lots of left wing organizations out there trying to discredit Bush. What's odd here is that this "study" has been embraced by Doug Stephans, a moderate nationally-syndicated radio host. While he did qualify the results by saying he thought George W. should be a little higher on the list, he -and especially his cohost- really didn't see much of a problem with Clinton having an IQ of 182. Let's put the 182 IQ into perspective, shall we? According to this site that would put Clinton in the 99.9999977 to 99.999985 percentile. That means Clinton is between the 7th and 50th smartest person in the country. No doubt Clinton is extremely sharp, but this is just ridiculous. In addition, JFK who also has an outlandishly high IQ according to the site, actually had a very average IQ. At least that's what every site says.

I thought the Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania would at least try to project themselves as being non-partisan. Not so. Look at their site, it's blatantly left wing and makes no apologies.

Why on earth would a mainstream news outlet pick up something like this IQ list is beyond me.

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