Is Bush intelligent?

Question

He obviously speaks like a buffoon, even with all of his handlers and all of these many years in politics. Like it or not, he wouldn't be such a poor speaker if he had smarts.

If you think he is smart, please provide amy kind of proof. Good Luck

If not, post your favorite Bushism....

I love those

EDIT:
Its amazing to me that when backed into a corner, Bush supporters bring up Kerry.

I never mentioned anything about Kerry. Do you have to bring him up to make Bush seem smart?

As far as the test score go on the Military tests, those are multiple choice and I'm sure were taken with help.

Name something where dad couldn't have helped him.

Answer 1

Bush once said Africa is a great nation.

Also...he claims to having an "ecka-leck-tic reading list" ...whatever that means. Also he said he has read "three Shakespeares" Shakespeares?

Answer 2

Bush was not a great speaker but he was quite intelligent. Much more so than people give him credit for. He never bragged about his achievements but preferred to allow people to underestimate him.

At a minimum I hope you will test your own assumptions and thinking about our former President. I offer a few questions to help that process.
•Upon what do you base your view of President Bush’s intellect? How much is it shaped by the conventional wisdom about him? How much by verbal miscues highlighted by the press?
•Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he’s from Texas or because of his accent? Because he’s an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?
•This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent.” Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?

And finally, if you base your view of President Bush’s intellect on a public image and caricature shaped by late night comedians, op-ed writers, TV pundits, and Twitter, is that a smart thing for you to do?

Answer 3

Let's imagine I'm selling you a car.

I show you the car, open the hood, give you a quick rundown. You take it for a short test drive, and it runs well enough. I show you some paperwork about how it had some minor work done, some receipts, all the inspection notices, and it meets your approval. So you purchase the car as is, without a chance of returning it.

Then it dies on you an hour later.

You then return to me and complain that I sold you a lemon. But I tell you that i didn't, that you saw all my paperwork and how was i supposed to know that the car was a lemon? Everything pointed to it being a solidly working vehicle, and you saw that. And it's true, it did work well.

Privately you fume, because you saw everything I showed you, and it all made sense. Dumb luck, I guess.

You then take the car into a shop to get it fixed, and the mechanic recognizes it, and begins to tell you about all the major work that was done to it and how he never would have bought this piece of crap. You ask him if you're sure. He says 'Hell yeah, this car had no business being on the road.' You ask to see the paperwork - and there it is, all the information you wish you had when you bought it, all conveniently withheld.

So you confront me with all this paperwork but I tell you the truth again and say that you had all the information in *my possession*, and that there was unmistakable evidence that the car was in solid working condition, and that the decision was ultimately yours to make.

But with this mountain of receipts from the mechanic, you prove that I didn't do my research about how it shouldn't be on the road and that I only showed you the information that supported my theory that the car was working.

I tell you again that you had no qualms before, and that's what counts which clearly means that you spoke the truth then as did I.

And that, my friend, is the whole Bush strategy over the Iraq war. Making YOU look like an idiot. Bravo, George bravo. Not so dumb after all, huh?

Answer 4

I think he acts stupid because he is hostile to intellectuals, most of whom are liberal. He plays it dumb to rub academia's nose in it. He's saying: I may be an ignorant good ol' boy from Texas, but look who's President! Nah nah nah nah nah nah.

He's either acting dumb, or suffering from some subtle form of brain damage. His ability to articulate his thoughts varies a lot, probably depending on a number of factors including his mood, his audience, the subject at hand, how tired he is, and so on.

There is abundant evidence from test scores at least that he is fairly bright

SAT scores were pretty good as I recall if not high for an ivy leaguer, especially a rich ivy leaguer. Note that he probably made no particular effort to do well on the SAT. I doubt that he put much effort into it. Still I think he scored around 550 on the verbal and 630 on the quantitative.

As noted by somebody else, the military test showed a very high IQ, espcially compared to most people who go into the military.
He can fly a jet, or could once. Fairly well too, I think. Probably requires some smarts (?).

He has won every election he's been in except the first. In the first election his opponent portrayed him as an Ivy League intellectual elitist! As you may know, after he lost that election he vowed never again to be "out bubba-ed". That's one reason for the bubba bit.

So I don't think he is stupid, but he sure does act like it. As a practical matter, though, if you act stupid and your policies are stupid, does it make any difference if you are not really stupid deep down inside?

I forgot about the Masters degree from Harvard. He might have had some help with that, still, you gotta admit it's pretty impressive. See how open-minded I am. I'm a liberal. I can't stand Bush.

Answer 5

Well he smoked Gore and Kerry on the standardized test scores.

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.


Okay ignore the part about Kerry then and just concentrate on the 95th percentile part.

Answer 6

I don't think our Idiot King is intelligent (obviously). I do think, however, that his family connections have helped him along, even in spite of his failures.

It is the George HW Bush connection, for example, that helped him become elected as governor of Texasss; and later, with HW's help, Prince Bandar from Saudi Arabia helped to fashion our little baboon into the full-fledged Idiot King.

Yet another example of how our Saudi "friends" have screwed Americans.

(By the way: I.Q. is not a definitive measure of intelligence, per se It merely records a "quotient," that is, the capacity. Whether one uses that capacity is an entirely different matter.)

Answer 7

He's at least as smart as your bourgeois poster boy John Kerry...Bush actually had a slightly higher GPA than Kerry at a friggin' Ivy League school.

I suspect you're still in community college studying air conditioner/refrigeration repair.

BTW, for all you community collegers out there...Bourgeois means "uppity".

EDIT: If you study your history, the vast majority of U.S. Presidents were from privileged backgrounds...that's one of the downfalls of our system. Take the liberal poster boy, JFK. American Royalty.

You just hate him because he's a good ol' boy with a Texas swagger, you superficial twit. All you "Southern-Haters" make me sick. Southerners BUILT this country and keep it running today.

Here's an example of his intelligence: Single-handedly taking down one of the world's worst dictators after multiple "resolutions" by the impotent U.N. What a bunch of wimps.

Answer 8

President George W. Bush is the smartest man in the Republican party now that Jeffords has left.

Famous quotes:
"My son George is a dirty dog", Barbara Bush.

Answer 9

He's much smarter than we think, always joking about his grammatical errors and mis-used words. He's savvy, he is probably 3-4 steps ahead of anyone around him, especially when he invited the Dems to a meeting. Much smarter than JFK, LBJ and JEC combined and has more character than those 3 Dem presidents.

Answer 10

Why ask such a stupid question, of course he is not. And i am not just saying that because i hate Americans he really is stupid even by your standards.