Quote:
Originally Posted by texan2yankee
Jimmy Carter was considered the smartest president by IQ, if I recall, and look where his intelligence got this country. Smarts is a small part of leadership and success.
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Fun discussion, and for the record, I think Obama is in the top ten, but not the top.
My ranking would be (admitting I have a spotty knowledge of the presidents' talents):
1. Jefferson, 2. James Madison, 3. Lincoln, 4. Adams, 5. Woodrow Wilson, 6. Bill Clinton, 7. Richard Nixon, 8. Jimmy Carter, 9. Teddy Roosevelt, 10. Barack Obama.
Admittedly, I am biased towards the founding fathers, as their collective genius and its consequences are manifest. Also, I have no problem admitting flawed men like Nixon and Clinton were jaw-droppingly gifted. Few things are more common than talent poorly applied, or even self-sabotaged. I tell this to my son all the time.
I would guess that all of these men have IQs of over 130 or so, some notable higher. But in any case, they would be in the top 1-2% of the population of the USA at least, and damn smart. I would suspect that the standard should be pretty strict. We should demand very high intelligence of our president, given the complexity of the job.
This could be balanced a bit with a recognition from studies of almost all things that matter in life achievement, that there seems to be a very weak correlation between life success and achievement when IQs exceed about 120 or so. At that point, you are smart, and questions of character, drive, focus, stamina, emotional intelligence, resources, and opportunity tend to overwhelm the effect of pure processing power. Given the complexity of the presidency, I would say it is exceptionally cognitively demanding, requiring the ability to absorb huge amounts of information, and to make decisions with at least minimal awareness of many possible consequences (Bush's Iraq debacle is an example of failing in that). However, even this executive competence is only one dimension of leadership, which is a whole other interesting thing. I think a separate thread on leadership would be interesting.
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