Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 12:35:19 EDT
Subject: [h-bd] IQ: Bush vs. Gore
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Steve Sailer here:


We've been over this ground before in H-Bd, but if you'd care to offer any 
responses that I could quote (with attribution) in a UPI news story, please 
read the questions below. -- Steve Sailer


First, the known numbers:
Al Gore:
SAT: Verbal 625; Math 730 = 1355 (old style)
Advanced tests:  Physics 488  Chem 519  English 705  History 701
IQ scores were 133,  134 at the two ends of Prep School.  (134 is 98.8th 
percentile)
Class Rank at St. Alban's 25/51; grades mostly not that good although did
get a cum laude at Harvard.  


George W. Bush
SAT score: Verbal = 566, Math = 640, total = 1206 (old style)
Charles Murray estimates IQ from SAT score as around 126 (95.8th percentile


Bill Bradley (defeated by Gore in Democratic primaries)
SAT Verbal = 485. Math is unknown.


John McCain (defeated by Bush in Republican primaries)
Fifth from bottom of his Naval Academy class, due, he says, to bad behavior 
and bad grades in math and science.




Questions (please answer whatever you feel like). 


1. Gore is generally stereotyped as inhumanly brilliant, Bush as a genial 
dimwit. Do these test scores support those cliches?


2. It is universally believed that Bush could not get into Yale without his 
family connections. What are the odds that Gore would not have gotten into 
Harvard without his father's pull?


3. Where would you estimate these two men's IQ's would fall relative to other 
Presidents?


4. Is there much correlation between a high IQ and a successful Presidency?


5. Is there a minimum cutoff for IQ for the Presidency, below which it would 
be difficult to function?


6. Does the constant derision of Bush's IQ by liberals imply that they now 
accept that IQ plays a highly important role, as suggested by such 
researchers as Arthur Jensen and Charles Murray?


7. What do you see implied about the structure of the two men's intellects, 
their strength's and weaknesses in specific areas.


8. Do you think the much celebrated Bill Bradley's surprisingly low Verbal 
SAT score helps explain his unexpectedly lackluster performance against Gore?


9. In one of his science fiction novels, Robert Heinlein suggested that 
leaders shouldn't have IQ's more than 30 points higher than the average of 
their followers. How true is this rule of thumb? Is it relevant to 
Presidential politics?


10. Bush doesn't mention it a lot since he doesn't like to call attention to 
the fact that he spent the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard, but 
he qualified as a jet fighter pilot. If you've seen data on fighter pilots, 
what is their typical IQ range? What kind of intellectual demands does the 
job make?


Any other thoughts, especially questions that I should be asking but haven't, 
please add in here.


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