The term Moron was coined by H. Goddard, and has somewhat changed over the
years from initial IQ range of 51-70 to the current designation 50-69. It is
sometimes used to describe adults whose 'mental-age' is 8-12 years, though
this is an ad hoc description and not a clinical definition.
Here below is an article and combo-appreciation of the relative intelligence
quotients of Democratic and Republican Presidents of the United States of
America.
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In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton,
Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence
quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute
has published its research to the education community on each new president,
which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.
According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents
over the past 50 years, from F.D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated
based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without
aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other
psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of
intelligence ranking.
The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to
within five percentage points:
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)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)
The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of
115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W.
Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.
The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President
Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated
the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than
Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176.
Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush,
his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English
language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words
for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents)*, his lack
of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body
of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report
documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings,
including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.
"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their
belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or
early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no
published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to
arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his
unscripted public speaking."
The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high
caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human
behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein,
world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a
world-respected psychiatrist.
This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001 and released on July 9,
2001 to subscribing member universities and organizations within the
education community
Editor's Note: This is purported to be an Urban Myth, but President MORON is
still a MORON.
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1) Although this review seems generally accurate, its conclusion is
technically incorrect, since the President in question exceeds the range for
moron.
2) *Anyone interested in quantity of elected words in volunteered speech,
now and then, and in relation to either professions or academic distinction,
write me. It is of particular note that words known is a quite different
factor from words voluntarily used. Distinctions of words known tend to vary
with academic distinction or serious studies, rather than with professions
[though combining in medical doctors for most known except for professional
bibliophiles]. Words used voluntarily are not so differentiated, and at
least one hypothesis posits volunteered speech to be as little as 800 to
1,500 words across all occupations and academic dignities - and in fact, no
different that country use in the C13th!
3) *It is amusing, and perhaps insturctive, that I once wrote to Dr. Rupert
Sheldrake to ask him about a parrot N'Kisi, which had I thought gained 700
words. Dr. S told me that it achieved 1,000 words of speech, cogently
sequenced into sentences, and 'in context' rather than randomly produced.
The parrot also had an aquisition rate for words the same as a human infant
for the first three years. At 1,000 words it stopped gaining new ones, and
made do, like so many people, with the ones it had
4) IQ does not seem to have a direct correlative with chess ability, since
the prime locus of IQ tests have been right-brained sequential processing
[as math, and sentence construction], and lacks any /un-cued/ measurement of
pattern recognition, which is the corresponding factor attributed by de
Groot to mastery at chess play.
Phil Innes