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Bush v. Kerry IQ


Duncan

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More fuel for the fire I suppose. I bet Badnarik has them both beat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign/24points.html

Secret Weapon for Bush?

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: October 24, 2004

To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.

That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of presidential I.Q.'s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer estimated from Mr. Bush's SAT score (1206) that his I.Q. was in the mid-120's, about 10 points lower than Al Gore's.

Mr. Kerry's SAT score is not known, but now Mr. Sailer has done a comparison of the intelligence tests in the candidates' military records. They are not formal I.Q. tests, but Mr. Sailer says they are similar enough to make reasonable extrapolations.

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.

Many Americans still believe a report that began circulating on the Internet three years ago, and was quoted in "Doonesbury," that Mr. Bush's I.Q. was 91, the lowest of any modern American president. But that report from the non-existent Lovenstein Institute turned out to be a hoax.

You might expect Kerry campaign officials, who have worried that their candidate's intellectual image turns off voters, to quickly rush out a commercial trumpeting these new results, but for some reason they seem to be resisting the temptation.

Upon hearing of their candidate's score, Michael Meehan, a spokesman for the senator, said merely: "The true test is not where you start out in life, but what you do with those God-given talents. John Kerry's 40 years of public service puts him in the top percentile on that measure."

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Originally posted by Predicto

I call bullsh*t. No one can have a 1206 IQ score.

snicker. Does anyone else see the irony?

Even now that's it changed to read correctly, it's still funny.

It WAS possible to have a score not ending in zero until the mid 70s (maybe a bit earlier).

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By the way, I do not claim to think that GWB is not smart. Although I oppose his reelection, I think that he is very smart, as is every person to sit in the oval office in the last 50 years at least.

PS - and I do not acknowledge SAT scores as a true sign of intelligence. If they were, I would be some sort of major genius, because I kicked the SATs butt. However, my total lack of accomplishment since I took the SATs reveals that the SAT score was basically a sham, and I'm just another schlub.

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Backs up what i've been saying for years. Being a good speaker doesn't equal intelligence. It's easy to butcher words when you get nervous doing speeches. I've done it more times than I care to discuss, yet I knew people in highschool who barely passed yet they could smooth talk their way out of anything. Some people are just like that.

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Guest Gichin13

I have seen this article and "analysis" posted a few times. This is pretty bogus analysis ...

So is the analysis that attempts to state the Democratic presidents all have high IQs and the Republican presidents low ones that is floating around the net these days.

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Originally posted by Hitman56

1206 seems a bit low for Yale. I got 1275 and couldn't even get into UNC.

Damn you, connections!!

Friend of mine got accepted to UNC after getting something like 1030 on his sat's, but this was after going to VCU for a year. Plus his dad graduated from UNC.

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All that the SAT's are supposed to show is that someone has the potential to succeed in college. They are not a bona-fide test of intelligence. Secondly, obviously, Bush's connections has something to do with his admission at Yale, but at that time there were far fewer people applying to college. Still being a member of the good ole boys has always, and probably will always give one a step up in the world.

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Originally posted by iheartskins

All that the SAT's are supposed to show is that someone has the potential to succeed in college. They are not a bona-fide test of intelligence. Secondly, obviously, Bush's connections has something to do with his admission at Yale, but at that time there were far fewer people applying to college. Still being a member of the good ole boys has always, and probably will always give one a step up in the world.

Back in the mid-60s, connections were everything in Ivy League admissions, everything. Bush got in to Yale because of his connections, and so did Kerry. Don't kid yourselves.

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Originally posted by Gichin13

I have seen this article and "analysis" posted a few times. This is pretty bogus analysis ...

So is the analysis that attempts to state the Democratic presidents all have high IQs and the Republican presidents low ones that is floating around the net these days.

I imagine the IQ tests the two took in the military are public record. Don't you think the unofficial news division of the Kerry campaign looked up the facts on this one before it graced their website?

You claim its bogus. Prove it.

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Originally posted by Predicto

Back in the mid-60s, connections were everything in Ivy League admissions, everything. Bush got in to Yale because of his connections, and so did Kerry. Don't kid yourselves.

I am not kidding myself. My stepdad went to a prep school up in New Hampshire and then on to Yale (C of '58). So did about a third of his class. The other two thirds were equally split between Princeton and Harvard. I was never contesting that connections were crucial, only that at that time it was much easier to admit people based on legacy/connections at that time because there were so many fewer people applying to college in general.

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Originally posted by Hitman56

1206 seems a bit low for Yale. I got 1275 and couldn't even get into UNC.

Damn you, connections!!

The scoring of SAT's has been manipulated a bit over the years. While I am not sure of the actual magnitude of difference, scores today are somewhat inflated and don't compare on a point for point basis with scores of old. So, a 1206 in that era was in effect "higher" than your 1275.

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When Kerry was asked he said how would anyone know his records were not available for people to see...

Doesnt that go against him saying all his records were out there?

They are both part of the good ole boy system of the 70's...

Neither are stupid and both know exactly what they say when they say it...

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Originally posted by Stu

The scoring of SAT's has been manipulated a bit over the years. While I am not sure of the actual magnitude of difference, scores today are somewhat inflated and don't compare on a point for point basis with scores of old. So, a 1206 in that era was in effect "higher" than your 1275.

I thought "recentering" was an adjustment made to better reflect the current society's intelligence? Just like the IQ has ratings associated with scores (i.e. 100 is average or something), I think the SAT has some concept of that as well- if you score a 500 on either test, your performance is considered "average" - the recentering they do every so often is the adjustment of that average as years pass.

In other words, the SATs (and IQ tests for the same reason, I'd imagine) are probably not very comparable across multiple years, and they aren't meant to be. They (presumably/supposedly) measure your intelligence against your peers only.

source about the 500=average:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/scores/understanding.html

relevant quote:

For example, if you scored close to the mean or average-about 500 on SAT verbal and 500 on SAT math-admission staff would know that you scored as well as about half of the students who took the test.

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