Two continuing themes here at iSteve.com are that
1. Liberals think they are better than the average person because:
- They believe everybody is equal
- They have higher IQs.
2. The members of
Illustrating these two points nicely, a reader points to this bit from the Concord Monitor about Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who chairs the important Senate committee on Foreign Relations:
When Joe Biden was running for president in 1987, he held an event in
Beyond the irritated nature of Biden's response, his answer was incorrect: Newspaper reports at the time showed that in his final year of law school, Biden was ranked 76th in his class of 85. Biden eventually dropped out of the 1988 presidential race amid charges of plagiarism. His
Biden is hardly along among Presidential candidates. John McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the
The point is not that book smarts are utterly crucial to being President, but that we have an enormous country, so why can't we find some multitalented people -- who have both the personality to get elected and the intelligence to do the job -- to be President? Is that too much to ask?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
59 comments:
Yeah, we've got a huge country. We produce lots of scientists and new inventions.
The problem isn't that there's a lack of 150 IQ nerds willing to be president. Not only would they do a lousy job, most of them aren't even interested. Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel and declined. (Being Jewish isn't the point here, I'm getting to the point.)
The problem is that the country is so bloody anti-intellectual that the sort of fellow with a 130 IQ who spends his free time reading about international affairs tends to get crap thrown at him in high school and hence never develops the charisma to become a leader.
America likes affable football-team types even if they're stone dumb or, as in the case of Bush, anti-intellectual to the point that it interferes with the job . It's sort of like picking your doctor by personality even if he can't remember what drug to give for a high blood pressure. There's more to medicine than that, but you do have to know physiology and pharmacology to be a competent doctor. Similarly, the President doesn't have to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites ahead of time, but he has to care enough to read up on it when he tries to invade a country that has both of them.
Say what you will about the Brits at least they respect people who do their homework. Tony Blair was kissing Bush's ass, but that was for other reasons (get in good with a superpower that has a cultural affinity with you anyway).
The hideous nature of American politics makes it very hard to convince quality people to engage in it. The not-so-bright ones seem to be the ones drawn to it.
Steve -- IQ is over-rated in selecting Presidents.
Far more predictive of success in Presidential Administrations is the ability to staff a well-run campaign, and the ability to identify and deliver key political accomplishments.
High IQ Presidents like Hoover, Carter, were disasters. Organizationally savvy Presidents like Eisenhower and FDR were generally successful.
Instead of IQ we should be selecting for ... wisdom. I.E. demonstrated competence in running large organizations efficiently and delivering a few key political goals.
By these standards, Rudy and Romney are the least bad, all the others non-starters.
None of the Dems has run anything, merely been Senators, First Ladies, or Congressmen. Fred was an actor, lobbyist-lawyer, lawyer, and Senator. No managerial experience. McCain acted fairly heroically as a POW, that's about it, other than being a Senator.
Rudy, while prone to cronyism and bad judgment about underlings, has had a fairly effective record in making NYC far more livable. Romney ran both the SLC Olympics after they'd fallen into crisis, and was reasonably effective as MA Gov, though he wasn't really tested much and tended to go along with the Dems there, tapped a corporate network to bail him out in the SLC Olympics.
I don't know if our system is all that bad. It's true we miss out on a Washington, or a Lincoln nowadays. We also don't get a Buchanon, or a Taft, or a Martin Van Buren either. We'll probably never get another Nixon either.
I'll give up the extreme good outcomes for eliminating the extreme bad ones.
SFG -- You could not be more wrong. Americans LOVE smart people (and Football in particular is full of them, it's a very complex game filled with guys like Bill Walsh or Mike Shanahan).
Americans HATE condescending members of the Academy with no practical experience. Eisenhower (commanded Allied Western Front, managed Monty and Patton, beat Rommel) had a lot more practical experience than Stevenson, despite Stevenson's airs of erudition. Besides a Corporal in al-Anbar Province will have more practical experience in getting local sheiks to ally with Americans instead of AQ-I, building schools, arbitrating disputes between rival sheiks, etc.
Bush is hardly stupid, his problem is he believes heart and soul in Wilsonianism, it's a religious belief for him and the evidence won't matter.
Bottom line this is a nation that respects those bicycle mechanics Orville and Wilbur over the Smithsonian and Harvard tenured professors who had millions in government funds but couldn't get an airplane to work [because the Wright Brothers did their own independent observations and found that the academic wisdom was all wrong -- the German Prof who's work informed all other attempts was dead wrong.]
I'll give up the extreme good outcomes for eliminating the extreme bad ones.
Carter, two Bushes, and Bill Clinton aren't two extreme bad outcomes? If they aren't, who is?
The problem with high IQ people - especially these days - is that they grow up in neighborhoods with lots of other high IQ people (except the maids and gardeners), attend schools with lots of other high IQ people, and go to work in jobs with lots of high IQ people.
What's the average IQ at Google? Or Microsoft? Or Goldman Sachs?
They develop nothing but contempt for the people they'll be governing, and they haven't any comprehension of how a government program will work in a world full of average people.
Americans HATE condescending members of the Academy with no practical experience. Eisenhower (commanded Allied Western Front, managed Monty and Patton, beat Rommel) had a lot more practical experience than Stevenson, despite Stevenson's airs of erudition.
Generals have a fair amount of real world experience - and a lot of experience working with average joes (particularly the patriotic kind). The problem is that we'll never have another Eisenhower until we have another Roosevelt, because we need good politicians to give good generals the support they need. No general will get credit for a half-assed war like Vietnam or Iraq. And he can't win it without political backup.
Bush is hardly stupid, his problem is he believes heart and soul in Wilsonianism, it's a religious belief for him and the evidence won't matter.
When all this is over, won't we all want to get inside Bush's head? Getting inside Clinton's head was easy - he liked to get laid. That pretty much drove everything he did. But Bush? What motivates him? Or is there really not that much there?
i think you can be too smart to be a good president. the president has to relate to the mainstream on a regular basis, and a very smart person cannot do that. who were the smartest presidents in the last 100 years? nixon, carter, and clinton are decent candidates. nixon and carter were not good at the job.
another thing to look at is the salary of the job. check out this interesting data from wikipedia. it shows the date the salary was set, the amount in dollars at the time, and the amount in 2007 dollars. amounts are in thousands of dollars:
1789 25 566
1873 50 865
1909 75 1714
1949 100 875
1969 200 1135
2001 400 471
you can see that the job has never paid less. that has to be having an effect on things. it's incredible that the pay was still only 200,000 on through the 90s.
Obama is very smart, although Steve can't stand him. From reading his first book he has some wisdom too (Steve gave it an excruciatingly one-sided reading through the prism of his race hangups).
Wisdom is more complex than management experience. Giuliani has some serious temperment (and temper!) issues that make me genuinely scared of the idea of his as the world's most powerful man. Romney doesn't, but he has a certain management consultant bloodlessness that makes me wonder if he'd mistake Powerpoint for the real world.
MQ
Hoover was actually very good at running organizations. He made a fortune in the private sector before going into government and was among the most gaga for central planning in the days of Wilson and WW1. It was part of the problem that he had been so successful engineering companies that he thought he could do the same for the country under the Great Depression. Rex Tugwell admitted that the whole New Deal was basically just what Hoover had already done (and the Democrats rightly attacked him for when FDR first came to power) writ large.
In case I hadn't made this evident elsewhere, I don't consider FDR to have been a good president. Destroying food when many are going hungry? Arresting a farmer for growing wheat on his own property for his own consumption? How idiotic can you get?
Mark --
Compared to Buchanon (let the nation drift into civil war), or say Wilson (disastrous management of the post-war Peace settlement led to WWII) or say, Herbert Hoover who's actions made the Depression worse.
None of these guys provoked a near global nuclear war with the Soviets to prove their macho quotient. None of them have seriously damaged the nation.
What motivates Bush? Exactly what he says, his religious faith. He actually believes that all people are the same, are basically good, and want to be liberated from tyranny. He's been explicit about WHY he does what he does.
I don't think being "too smart" is a handicap, but it's not going to overcome actual wisdom/experience in how organizations work and how to deliver a few key achievements to your followers.
Carter was hardly stupid, so also Clinton. But neither had great experience in the middle, to see how large orgs frustrate the people at top due to org dynamics, and neither clearly identified goals they would deliver to backers.
you can see that the job has never paid less. that has to be having an effect on things. it's incredible that the pay was still only 200,000 on through the 90s. - jody
Pay is irrelevant. This is the President of the United States we're talking about - these guys raise hundreds of millions just to get elected, and sometimes spend a few million of their own on the way there.
And even if the pay while in office sucks, one merely needs to look at the economic performance of both Clinton and Gore to realize that it can be more than made up for after leaving office. Bill CLinton is estimated to be worth $50 million, all made after 2000 AD, and Al Gore is worth anywhere between $50-100 million.
Much of that, clearly, is payback for favors done while in office.
Those two frauds found new ways to exploit loopholes in finance laws while they were in office, and now they're doing it post-office, too.
The problem with finding good politicans: you have to have not only smarts, but all the right connections. You have to have name recognition. You have to promise crucial electoral blocks pretty much anything they want, and make entirely contradictory promises to different people. You have to be willing to kiss people's arses. You have to work the corporate elite behind the scenes (and they're more demanding than most). You have to raise endless sums of money ($1 million a day between now and next November for the winning candidate). You also have to have few if any skeletons in your closet, and keep them very well hidden.
In other words you have to be smart, conniving, unimaginably ambitious, and yet still seem like just one of the guys (or gals). Decent men don't win these races. Nice men finish last because they're not willing to do what it takes to finish first.
I'm wondering if this will change in a couple of years. Average senator graduated from college in the 1960s, just as the Ivy league was transforming from a finishing school for the east coast elite to national schools selecting students based on intelligence. Hence, one could graduate from Harvard and then Yale Law school without being particularly smart. Even Kerry and Bush were just before the trend. They probably couldn't have gotten in 5 years later.
So, I wonder if the next generation of politicians will be graduating from the Ivy League. If so, that would almost guarantee an IQ at least 1 SD above average, probably 2.
Another thing is that politics that it is hard to suceed. It's hard to get in, hard to stay in, hard to raise money, hard to keep your legacy. There are very, very few wealthy, well-respected, satisfied retired politicians. Whereas there a lots of wealthy, well-respected, satisfied CEOs, lawyers, doctors, judges, professors, etc. It just doesn't seem worth it.
There seems to be a disconnect between Rudy's SAT and his graduating magna cum laude at NYU law school. Might want to check it out. I don't recall them giving out high grades at Big Public U law school, but maybe NYU was different back in 1968.
Didnt read the comments...
But the transparent reason is whoever is smart (whether thats 100% IQ or 50% IQ whatever) doesnt get into politics.
For eg. If you were to look at Harvard, you'd think all High IQ people were leftist communists. But most arent - they just dont stick around Harvard - for long anyway.
taThis is a conservative blog, and yet no one is suggesting that we have LESS GOVERNMENT so that a higher number of areas of life are once again governed not by bureaucrats but by high-IQ and/or street wise and/or naturally-savvy-in-management CIVILIANS.
BTW Anon 7:51 PM:
...a Corporal in al-Anbar Province will have more practical experience in getting local sheiks to ally with Americans...
This reeks of the kind of condescending attitude that lies behind the unwillingness to learn about places where the US seems to get a kick out of messing up things.
You also seem to be saying one thing while demonstrating the other in attitude. You say Americans love smart people, and by smart you mean people who can SCORE to use street language. Well, this is anti-intellectualism. You don't seem to understand that for centuries an institution like the Catholic church was also manned by people like those in the academe. They are the ones who managed to invent practically what is known as art and science these days. So the Wright brother proved on German academic wrong. Big deal. Pretty much every trail-blazer did that. The common characteristic of people who are smart isn't being great jocks with brains or being good at scoring. That's the American version of "practical." You know, the version that has absolutely no patience, and wants everything and want it now.
Yesterday, somebody forwarded me this from Daniel Larison. Take a look, and note the people who stand for conservative whom he says he naively believe in and got disillusioned with. This is the same crowd that thinks exactly like you: jocks always and forever; if they're smart, so much the better; the bloody sheiks (i.e. "camel jockeys" and "sandniggers") aren't worth more than a corporal.
Being wise men and governing for the ages (to modify a phrase by an IBM wiseman who advised brilliantly on writing better software programs -- the phrase being "writing code for the ages") requires the absolute absence of this success-hungry blindness to the reality of the world.
It's no wonder the Brits did a much better job at it, with their infinite patience and absolute disdain for messing up things for the sake of jockey "inventions." The world has a way of sinisterly punishing those obsessed with cave-men passions -- winning at whatever cost.
The funniest form of humiliation is being able to craft F-35 and yet being bogged down by camel jockeys in Iraq. The ultimate result of falling prey to jockey passions. (Yes, I know, if only they were all in one place... etc., right?)
Good luck with wrecking your republic. You obviously want it bad, and want it now.
JD
MQ,
"Obama is very smart". Why? Because the MSM say so? Or because he developed a new Computer Chip, or a new Fuel Cell Engine, or a new Alloy, or a new analytical solution to the Navier-Stokes-Equations?
I think Obama is just the US version of Mandela. An average talented person being hyped because he is running for high political office in a country which is race-obsessed. Oh, and he happens to be "black". Basically another media creation by a media which is obsessed with race and instinctively supports anyone who will stick it to The Man.
"...book smarts are utterly crucial to being President, but that we have an enormous country, so why can't we find some multitalented people -- who have both the personality to get elected and the intelligence to do the job -- to be President? Is that too much to ask?
This being the criteria, one candidate clearly dominates:
Mitt Romney.
Steve's plaint:
"why can't we find some multitalented people -- who have both the personality to get elected and the intelligence to do the job -- to be President?"
Two words:
Ron. Paul.
"It's no wonder the Brits did a much better job at it, with their infinite patience and absolute disdain for messing up things..."
Where is the British Empire now?
Where are the colonies now? What is their condition? How were they lost?
Yeah, the Brits are great. That's why we had to pull their balls out of the fire in WWII.
I don't think having a high IQ is at all negative as far as being president. I think the problem is that the process of getting ELECTED president is very heavily weighted towards personality, in particular drivenness and social networking. Those qualities aren't related to IQ, so it's only natural that the people who come out on top in the election process have average IQs.
The low IQ of successful politicians proves my point I've made a lot in my blog about how high IQ doesn't lead to high income or professional success.
Still, it's strange how Rudy got into NYU Law School, one of the best law schools in the country.
To put it a little more formally, the maintained hypothesis is that smarter people would make better presidents.
Is there any evidence to suggest that this is true?
Its not completely clear that there is any aspect of the President's job which requires intelligence above marginally retarded.
I am actually somewhat serious. It is not a realistic possibility that a President with any level of IQ is going to understand the choices that he or she is required to make. Brilliant people who dedicate their lives to understanding policy still don't know the answers.
One individual with huge demands on his or her time is not going to understand the issues. The President's primary job is to
A) Communicate with the populace and the rest of the world.
B) Make final moral choices based on the trade-offs presented by the staff.
As Bush perhaps ineloquently says, his job is to be the decider. Not the analyzer.
Clinton, Obama and Romney are pretty smart. Edwards is not dumb but his wife has been known as the brains since they were in law school.
I don't know why people consider Newt such an intellectual. He has a PhD in a field that doesn't exactly require genius to attain one and he didn't quite take the academic world by storm. More intellectual than W., yes--but nothing exceptional.
"...why can't we find some multitalented people...?"
Because *we* aren't looking, because *we* don't have any say in the matter.
"you'd think all High IQ people were leftist communists."
Unquestionably, the highest IQ people in America are to the left. I'm pretty sure you can find statistics on this. High IQ people are less religious, too. Why is this? I'm not sure, but I'd guess it's because conservatism skews toward "common sense"/experience/emotion/belief and liberalism tilts the other way (questioning premises, re-engineering society). High IQ people are more likely to gravitate to areas that use their reasoning ability, and the desire to preserve extant culture doesn't require powerful analytical thinking. Conservatism is often about the limits of rationality (in terms of culture, society and religion) with the exception of free market economics, which was/is dominated by high IQ Jews rather than a representative sample of American conservatives. Traditionalism just doesn't naturally lend itself to intellectual explication.
And I'd guess communists/anarchists (though rare at any level) have by far the highest IQ of any political ideology in this country. Just like libertarians would have higher IQs than Republicans and Greens higher IQs than Democrats (controlling for race/income). It's not hard to figure out how this works: mainstream political parties don't necessarily require thought. Plenty of people don't think abstractly about politics, they just vote Republican because they're vaguely conservative (grew up in a conservative/religious family and went into business) or Democratic because they're vaguely liberal (grew up in an ethnic/labor culture, coastal professional, etc.). To be a libertarian or a Green generally means you've put some legitimate thought into political ideology. To be an anarchist requires true commitment to abstract political theory and intellectual history.
So, I wonder if the next generation of politicians will be graduating from the Ivy League. If so, that would almost guarantee an IQ at least 1 SD above average, probably 2.
But remember, at the same time, 45% of the upcoming population will have an IQ at least 1 SD below the [old] average:
Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities
So you'll have very high-IQ politicians [think Rahm Emanuel, or Charles Shumer] pandering to extremely low-IQ voting blocks.
In general, I think that's what they call "Oligarchy".
Unquestionably, the highest IQ people in America are to the left. I'm pretty sure you can find statistics on this.
Conservatism exalts experience, sentiment, and tradition; liberalism exalts central control, idealism, and engaging in mental gymnastics.
The nature of society these days is that high IQ people get very little experience dealing with the real world. Instead they spend time cordoned off in high IQ zones, doing little that anyone from 200 years ago would recognize as work. It's quite possibly the most sanitized, sheltered upbringing one can have.
Their contact with "average" people is actually with below average people engaged in service occupations.
So, yes, I would bet that people in the top 0.5% skew left - I would also wager, however, that the average IQ of conservatives is somewhat higher than liberals.
And I'd guess communists/anarchists (though rare at any level) have by far the highest IQ of any political ideology in this country.
That may have been true 70-80 years ago, but I doubt it's still true today. The highest IQ is probably among standard liberals/leftists. It just goes to show how silly and shallow political trends can be.
So you'll have very high-IQ politicians [think Rahm Emanuel, or Charles Shumer] pandering to extremely low-IQ voting blocks.
Schumer, if I recall, scored 1600 on his SAT and entered college a year or two early. Rahm Emanual comes from a very successful family: I believe one brother is a bioethicist, the other a famous talent agent.
But having seen Schumer in action, does anyone really believe we'd be better off with 535 Chuck Schumer's in Congress? I think I'd prefer 535 Robert Byrds.
...High IQ people are more likely to gravitate to areas that use their reasoning ability, and the desire to preserve extant culture doesn't require powerful analytical thinking...
To be an anarchist requires true commitment to abstract political theory and intellectual history.
How does the anarchist's "true commitment" differ, from, say, the Christian's "desire to preserve"?
Conservatism is often about the limits of rationality (in terms of culture, society and religion) with the exception of free market economics, which was/is dominated by high IQ Jews rather than a representative sample of American conservatives.
You might be interested in this recent graphic:
The Wealthiest Americans Ever
My gut feeling [as an armchair student of US History] is that traditionally Americans supported "free markets" because they believed in freedom - i.e. they were devoted to the "free" aspect of "free markets".
But with the rise of [Leftist] Nihilism in the [late 19th and] 20th century, and the decline in morality [i.e. religion] in the educated classes, you start to see the emergence of tycoons who are attracted to the "market" aspect of "free markets", because the market gives them access to money, which in turn gives them access to political power.
Ergo the phenomenon of the Marxist financial tycoon, in the mold of a George Soros, a Steven Spielberg, a Jon Corzine, or a Warren Buffett, who views the "free market" as a means to a much more sinister end.
Sort of a new generation of real-life James Bond villains, if you will.
Heck, maybe Ian Fleming was just a few generations early in his vision of SPECTRE - he certainly was dead-on in his vision of the rise of the Asian Tigers.
Unquestionably, the highest IQ people in America are to the left. I'm pretty sure you can find statistics on this. High IQ people are less religious, too. Why is this? I'm not sure, but I'd guess it's because conservatism skews toward "common sense"/experience/emotion/belief and liberalism tilts the other way (questioning premises, re-engineering society).
Bwahahahahahaha!
What a laugh.
IF there is a higher correlation between IQ and liberalism than IQ and conservatism, it has nothing to do with the merits of liberalism.
The Long March put the liberals in charge of education, so it would be no surprise to find that they'd succeeded in churning liberals out of their factories.
Liberals are not interested in progression, or free inquiry. Stop drinking liberal Kool-Aid. Liberals are currently enforcing an HBD Dark Age. There are plenty of parallels between the liberal and the inquisitor in terms if conformism, obscurantism, dogmatism, etc.
Get a liberal talking about HBD, race, sex, etc., and take notes on all the taboos, moral posturing, righteous outrage, etc.
I demolish these clowns on a regular basis; they spend too much time in the kiddie pool. It's conservatives who give me a run. It's conservatives who meet me with arguments (sometimes), and liberals who meet me with sentiments (always).
First off, Ron Paul is crank Conspiracist who looks for Jews and Bush to explain 9/11. A "Truther" and no more worthy of consideration than kook Kucinich or Gravel.
The world just mostly sucks, with choices between bad and worse. No magic wand or silver bullet -- the attraction of cranks like Paul for people is probably predicated on the comfortable, materialist, and consumerist affluence that shields people from reality. Sometimes you get cancer like Steve or Paul Tsongas. Sometimes you beat it and sometimes you don't. Let's be happy Steve beat the cancer.
Next JD, "intellectualism" at it's worst results in credentialism which is another word for elitism. I would guess that the fundamental difference between myself and you is that I don't see a concentration of talent in wealthy East Coast elites. Despite their family connections. A corporal in Al-Anbar province may not only be as smart if not smarter than say, Teddy Kennedy, he is also likely to develop far more effective habits as a result of his service.
He'll have a wide acquaintance of all sorts of people, not only Sheiks, terrorists, poor Arabs, Sunnis, Shias, and foreign fighters but more importantly an up-close inspection of what works and doesn't in organizations.
This CANNOT BE TAUGHT: only by having people responsible to you for work product and in turn being responsible to others can you identify common organizational bottlenecks.
The problem with McNamara and LBJ both was that neither had served in such positions. Neither was a stupid man, but had no idea of how the enemy was organized, his strengths and weaknesses, and how the organizational strengths and weaknesses of the US military matched up. How could they when their experience was as a high-powered corporate exec and Legislative leader respectively?
As far as "humiliating" victories by men with AK-47's, IEDs, and RPGs that comment to me seems a massive red flag: placing your identification with America's enemies and schadenfreud over Bush's mis-steps over the interests of America: not getting blown up.
If we are indeed "humiliated" the next step for our enemies is to nuke our cities. Whatever we do enrages Muslims: fatwas over teaching evolution, Morgan Freeman playing God in Evan Almighty, Danish cartoons, the Pope, it doesn't matter.
What we need are leaders able to recognize these dangers and craft solutions to them. Which would seem to me to require experience over abstract reasoning skills.
SFG: The problem is that the country is so bloody anti-intellectual that the sort of fellow with a 130 IQ who spends his free time reading about international affairs tends to get crap thrown at him in high school and hence never develops the charisma to become a leader.
Mark: The nature of society these days is that high IQ people get very little experience dealing with the real world. Instead they spend time cordoned off in high IQ zones, doing little that anyone from 200 years ago would recognize as work. It's quite possibly the most sanitized, sheltered upbringing one can have.
I stumbled upon this exchange at the Lucianne thread about today's WSJ Heinlein piece:
Rakasha: No discussion of Heinlein is complete without this well known quote, which has become part of our homeschool philosophy: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."
veritas: Please -- don't leave out the last line: "Specialization is for insects."
We're about 75-100 years removed now from the final generations of very intelligent, very world-wise, hyper-masculine leaders [I'm thinking primarily of Theodore Roosevelt & Winston Churchill, both of whom were prolific writers], and it's been equally long since we've had a truly masculine voice in the Arts & Letters, like a Rudyard Kipling.
My guess would be that Christina Hoff Summers probably has about as good an insight into this phenomenon as anyone else.
On the other hand, both Adams & Jefferson agreed on this very point almost 200 years ago:
In December 1819, John Adams, an old adversary who had become a friendly correspondent, wrote the following to Jefferson: "Will you tell me how to prevent riches from being the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?"
Benjamin Franklin was probably the greatest pure-iq genius (and polymath) America ever produced, and while never President was certainly a leader. It probably helped that he had almost no formal education. Same goes for Lincoln.
Among current presidential candidates, Hillary appears to have a good mind. So does James Webb.
"'Obama is very smart'. Why? Because the MSM say so? Or because he developed a new Computer Chip, or a new Fuel Cell Engine, or a new Alloy, or a new analytical solution to the Navier-Stokes-Equations?"
Obama may have used AA to get into Harvard Law School, but he graduated Magna. Grading at HLS is strictly curved (law school grades are not like undergraduate grades) and the competition is real.
That doesn't make him a genius, but it means he's at least pretty smart.
Actually, opponents of affirmative action should talk about law schools because they make some important truths known. It's actually become a bit of an embarrassment because minorities are at the bottom of every single law school class (because of AA and the real grading system). Schools have to have "diversity" spots on law reviews because they'd otherwise have no minorities. Law firms get criticized for having too few minorities, so they hire less qualified blacks because the truly elite law firms wouldn't be able to find minorities with equivalent credentials. That is, black law school graduates are using affirmative action to get law firm jobs (even if it's the private sector and not called 'affirmative action')...even though they got into top law schools due to affirmative action (check the LSAT/GPA splits)...even though they came from universities they got into with the help of affirmative action...even though some came from private high schools they got into because of AA.
So if you're going from prep school to college to law school to a job and helped by affirmative action at every step of the way...when does it go from leveling the field to being an advantage? Why do 25-year-old black law school graduates need an AA boost after 7 years of Ivy League education?
"Ron Paul is crank Conspiracist who looks for Jews and Bush to explain 9/11."
Every word of this is false. You are a troll. Back to Freeper Land with you.
Calling somebody a "troll" is like saying, "We disagree."
We're about 75-100 years removed now from the final generations of very intelligent, very world-wise, hyper-masculine leaders [I'm thinking primarily of Theodore Roosevelt & Winston Churchill, both of whom were prolific writers], and it's been equally long since we've had a truly masculine voice in the Arts & Letters, like a Rudyard Kipling.
Oops - I meant to add that: I suppose you could argue about whether Ronald Reagan actually led this sort of life [or whether it was more a case of him portraying that life in the movies], but surely his childhood & formative years were heavily influenced by these kinds of men.
And Reagan is turning out to have been a surprisingly prolific writer - certainly vis-a-vis what was once thought of him.
Joe Biden is not only stupid, but almost obnoxiously so. He has a dangerous combination of stupidity and arrogance.
"Pay is irrelevant."
how is pay irrelevant? maybe the low pay keeps greedy high IQ people away and sends them into the private sector, limiting the amount of damage they could do as president.
the money that candidates raise is not money they raised for themselves. that's money they're collecting from dozens of groups who want their agendas advanced.
few candidates for 08 could start a business and have it generating 100 million dollars a year, or whatever amount of money they are going to raise between now and the 08 election.
the pay is not irrelevant. less relevant now than before, but not irrelevant. if the president was paid 2 million dollars a year in cold hard cash, there would be more smart people going for it.
In the absence of knowing his SAT and LSAT scores, my estimation of how smart Obama is rests heavily on whether not just Harvard Law, but also the Harvard Law Review, uses affirmative action in chosing it's members.
If not, he's damn smart. If so, he's pretty smart but not necessarily smarter than e.g. Bush or Kerry (neither of whom are dummies but neither of whom are really all that brilliant either - both way less smart than e.g. Steve for example, I think.
Say what you will about the Brits at least they respect people who do their homework. Tony Blair was kissing Bush's ass, but that was for other reasons (get in good with a superpower that has a cultural affinity with you anyway).
...
If Tony's so smart, how come he jumped into Eyerack with Chimpy Jr.? Oh I see: doing so has been so-o-o good for Blighty and for Tony's reputation. He sure did do his homework, umm-hmmm.
"In the absence of knowing his SAT and LSAT scores, my estimation of how smart Obama is rests heavily on whether not just Harvard Law, but also the Harvard Law Review, uses affirmative action in chosing it's members."
HLS LR does have AA.
But, as I said, Obama graduated Magna. That means he probably had the grades for LR.
Ch. Schumer who is one conniving bastard in my book--->>
After scoring a perfect 1600 on his SAT test, Schumer went off to Harvard and stayed there through law school. Returning home, he decided to skip the bar
Groan...
I really wonder if there was some golden age when politicians were smart and Americans believed in freedom. My personal conviction was that businessmen in the eighteenth century were just as venal as today, and the Enlightenment philosophers who believed in reason and freedom were backed up by businessmen who didn't want to pay taxes to the Church and the royalty. And bureaucrats have always liked power.
Jefferson was a smart guy but a lousy President, same as Carter. I'd argue Clinton did a fairly good job, but I'm a liberal and hence not all that worried about blowjobs in the Oval Office. I'd actually argue Nixon handled the office pretty well; he got us out of Vietnam, more or less.
Yeah, this is a conservative blog, but plenty of liberals read it, which is what makes it fun; you can actually find people you disagree with who will argue with you, unlike most of the echo chambers on the net. Not to say I haven't become a little more paleo-connish; I've actually switched sides on immigration since I started reading.
Just because an anti-intellectual guy makes a lousy president doesn't mean an intellectual will make a good one. I guess I'm trying to say we place such a premium on a politician being a regular guy that we ignore the fact that he might have to have some traits that aren't exactly All-American, like being willing to study the stuff you need to be leader of the free world. Yes, it's not rocket science, but you can't just follow your gut and your faith and hope to do well.
There are actually two questions here:
a. Is high IQ important for being a successful president?
b. Is high IQ important for getting to be president?
IMO, (b) is the more interesting question, since if there's little advantage for a 145 IQ person over a 115 IQ person in getting to the white house, you can expect far more 115 IQ people to end up as president, because there *are* far more 115 IQ people.
I wonder how much of making it to the white house amounts to surviving attrition--thousands of weird random events a day that can derail you. Misspeak in the wrong way in public, have some damning skeleton fall out of your closet, be governor of a state during the time when natural disasters or global economic trends or state politics produce a mess, and you're out. Lose one close election too many, so that you don't ever quite make it to presidential scale success, and you're out. If Clinton had lost his last election for Governor, or Bush had lost his, probably neither would have been ever president.
So, maybe once you qualify for the job (I think most national politicians are lawyers), and aren't so dumb you can't sound good in an interview or on C-SPAN, you're in a random process in which IQ gives only very limited help. For example, suppose your road to the white house involves getting elected governor, and then re-elected twice, and having a good record to point to. Once you've eliminated the obvious screwups and scandals, your success is largely based on stuff outside your control. The US auto industry melts down, and your good governance in the state of Michigan means nothing--people are miserable and you're out.
This would explain the reason for presidents not being super high IQ types. The process that selects for them requires enough intelligence to not do dumb things, but then there's a huge amount of luck that can't be controlled, for which intelligence helps not at all. So we get people who are brighter than average, but not too many people who are brilliant. (There are occasionally scientists, and reasonably often doctors, in politics. But they're pretty rare, since that extra IQ probably doesn't help them all that much.)
What the whole debate points to is that it is possible to overplay IQ as a factor. Does IQ correlate with interpersonal skills? Does it correlate with ambition? Does it correlate with simple physical stamina? Or what about memory - is that connected to IQ?
IQ matters a lot more in some careers than in others. I'm not going out on a limb to suggest that it might matter more to a chessplayer than to a potential president.
And once again, Jody: no, the oay doesn't matter. It doesn't. It may matter to someone considering running for congress, or perhaps even governor, so maybe there's a bottleneck there, but presidential pay is all but irrelevant.
mepo: I wonder how much of making it to the white house amounts to surviving attrition--thousands of weird random events a day that can derail you... So, maybe once you qualify for the job (I think most national politicians are lawyers), and aren't so dumb you can't sound good in an interview or on C-SPAN, you're in a random process in which IQ gives only very limited help... Once you've eliminated the obvious screwups and scandals, your success is largely based on stuff outside your control... The process that selects for them requires enough intelligence to not do dumb things, but then there's a huge amount of luck that can't be controlled, for which intelligence helps not at all...
You might enjoy this guy:
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, First Edition
[Second Edition, Hardback]
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover)
Oddly enough, one of the commentators on The Black Swan asserted that "In July, Taleb will debate Charles Murray (author of -what else?- the Bell Curve). I'll let you know who wins".
Hadn't heard about that.
I really wonder if there was some golden age when politicians were smart and Americans believed in freedom. My personal conviction was that businessmen in the eighteenth century were just as venal as today, and the Enlightenment philosophers who believed in reason and freedom were backed up by businessmen who didn't want to pay taxes to the Church and the royalty. And bureaucrats have always liked power.
That might do a pretty good job of explaining "Old" Europe [catch any random episode of Showtime's The Tudors if you want to see some really appalling behavior on the part of the English speaking peoples - by the way, did you know that "Saint" Thomas More was the progenitor of the very idea of an Utopia?], And that the Leninists built a monument to him in Moscow?], but I honestly think that America was once a different kind of place than that - that there was once a time when Americans were, by and large, just a little more decent than they seem to be nowadays.
Of course, human history would tend to indicate that the kinds of epochs in which the caliber of men who founded this nation could be found gathered, all in the same place, at the very same time, are quite rare indeed.
And I'd also point out that this recent run of profoundly mediocre intellects in the White House would tend to indicate that we just haven't had all that many existential crises* in the last 40 or 50 years whose resolutions would require a supreme intellect at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[*Well, there are existential crises lurking in the background, but they're of a radically different nature these days than they used to be.]
Anon 12:20 PM, you really are a Freeper specimen, aren't you?
I'm just reading in amazement your "chain" of logic (assuming there's any logic in it).
* You call Ron Paul -- who probably belongs more in the Constitution party -- a "crackpot;"
* you label having a deeper knowledge of what you're dealing with "intellectualism," which quickly becomes "elitism" in your universe so that you can identify it with gasbas Ted Kennedy (as if I had his ilk in mind; you've ever heard names like Sir Richard Burton? Not a man who just used his "family connections" to bullshit about "towelheads");
* then you extoll the practical use of the corporal (as if I've said corporals are useless in doing this kinda leg-work);
* after which you play Sherlock on my use of the word "humiliation," and sense some shadenfreude to discover where my "real" loyalties lie (?), (had I loved America, I would have said it is a great success story advancing towards a climax by the hour, right? You know, my mom speaks like that; when I criticize her drapes, she cries telling me that I don't love her);
* then you give the usual "whatever we do infuriates Muzzies anyway" FoxNews line -- so I guess if America had stayed out of Eye-rack, that, too, would have infuriated them, yes? Oh, sorry, the whole Iraq affair started with the Kuwait thing, and America was ONLY helping her friends, I presume. (Now there is a rich opportunity for you to discover that I'm actually a liberal.)
etc. etc.
Look, as I said, if this is your vision, then heck, be my guest, go ahead and wreck America. (Shadefreude, right? You've got to have your license for psychoanalysis.)
If you really are representative of America, she really won't last this century. Pity it all has come to this.
JD
Steve,
It is factually false that Ron Paul blames 9/11 on Jews.
It is so flagrantly against what the man has said that it is a deliberate distortion, i.e. a lie.
People who post clear lies in an attempt to influence a discussion are trolls. Lying is not a matter of "disagreement."
... but I honestly think that America was once a different kind of place than that - that there was once a time when Americans were, by and large, just a little more decent than they seem to be nowadays.
America used to be whiter and more Protestant.
but I honestly think that America was once a different kind of place than that - that there was once a time when Americans were, by and large, just a little more decent than they seem to be nowadays.
Every measurable stat on decency that we have from charitable contributions to child molestation to bribery is falling and has been falling for well over 100 years.
There is anecdotal evidence that it has been falling since the Middle Ages. There is some evidence that in Renaissance Italy being murdered was one of the leading causes of death.
There was also a time when "taking candy from strangers" was truly dangerous, now the odds of your kid being molested are so low that child molesters make headlines.
Whets more likely is that before you were a child and your parents shielded you from indecency.
The reason for all of this is fairly straightforward. We are richer. When people get richer they buy more of the things that they want. One of those is decency.
A better way of saying it is that decency is improving. Bribery, child molestation and murder are falling but charitable contributions are up
Every measurable stat on decency that we have from charitable contributions to child molestation to bribery is falling and has been falling for well over 100 years
Oh yes, the Onward March of Progress. I won't bring up the most obvious objections to this unsupported assertion, I'll just refer to an interview I heard on NPR maybe ten years ago.
The interview was with a woman who, as a tennager, had ridden the rails as a hobo along with her also teenage sister during the Great Depression. They were always-or maybe it was almost always- the only females in a boxcar. The interviewer asked whether they were ever subjected to any sexual advances. The reply was NEVER. I really doubt that that would be the case today.
There is some evidence that in Renaissance Italy being murdered was one of the leading causes of death.
Probably because the "medical praticioners" of the day didn't wash their hands and there were, of course, no antibiotics. A simple wound, therefore, could lead to death. That's not saying that things weren't a little rowdy in Renaissance Italy.
A study from 2002 contends that murder rates would be up to five times higher if it weren't for recent(post-Vietnam) advances in trauma care.
Karl Smith Every measurable stat on decency that we have from charitable contributions to child molestation to bribery is falling and has been falling for well over 100 years.
There is anecdotal evidence that it has been falling since the Middle Ages. There is some evidence that in Renaissance Italy being murdered was one of the leading causes of death.
There was also a time when "taking candy from strangers" was truly dangerous, now the odds of your kid being molested are so low that child molesters make headlines.
A few thoughts off the top of my head.
First off, judging from your profile, I think we're neighbors [literally].
Second - I'm not sure where this might lead, but if you're really serious about what you just wrote, then there might not be much point in our discussing any of this.
Third - and this is a serious request: If you know of any history of 17th-, 18th-, or 19th-century American organized crime [and no, trying to skirt the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Tea Act doesn't constitute "organized" crime], which predates the late-19th century arrival of the Irish Catholics, the Sicilians, and the Jews, then I'd love to know about it. I've have been reading about American history my entire life, and I have never heard of such a phenomenon.
Along those lines: If you know of any - ANY! - American business [or financial] tycoon of the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries, who sought to use his wealth to visit Leninist socialism upon the American people [in the fashion that George Soros intends], then I'd love to know who that person was.
Personally, I know of no such character in the pre-20th century history of the United States - a tycoon who, say, actively supported someone like a Robespierre in the 18th century. You might be able to argue that William Randolph Hearst helped to push us into the war with Spain, in 1898, but I don't think anyone would claim that Hearst did it because he wanted us to lose such a war. In the early 20th century, you begin to see the emergence of monomaniacal totalitarians, like Emma Goldman, but she certainly didn't have access to the kind of wealth that Soros does.
Now I could talk statistics with you from now until the cows come home, but even setting aside the 1.5 million children we've been murdering surgically every year since Row, and the 8 million or more that we've been murdering chemically every year since Griswold, this is what the [nominal] American murder rate looks like after the Miranda decision in 1966:
YEAR/POPULATION/% AGED 15 TO 24/MURDERS/MURDERS PER MILLION
1960 179,323,175 13.7 9,110 50.8
1961 182,992,000 13.8 8,740 47.8
1962 185,771,000 14.5 8,530 45.9
1963 188,483,000 15.0 8,640 45.8
1964 191,141,000 15.4 9,360 49.0
1965 193,526,000 15.9 9,960 51.5
1966 195,576,000 16.4 11,040 56.4
1967 197,457,000 16.8 12,240 62.0
1968 199,399,000 17.0 13,800 69.2
1969 201,385,000 17.5 14,760 73.3
1970 203,235,298 18.0 16,000 78.7
1971 206,212,000 18.4 17,780 86.2
1972 208,230,000 18.5 18,670 89.7
1973 209,851,000 18.7 19,640 93.6
1974 211,392,000 18.9 20,710 98.0
1975 213,124,000 19.1 20,510 96.2
1976 214,659,000 19.3 18,780 87.5
1977 216,332,000 19.4 19,120 88.4
1978 218,059,000 19.5 19,560 89.7
1979 220,099,000 19.4 21,460 97.5
1980 225,349,264 18.9 23,040 102.2
SOURCES:
uscrime.htm
XL Spreadsheet: 02HS0003.xls
Note that I've included the percentage of all Americans in the murderous age range of 15-24, so that you can't claim that the post-Miranda surge in murder was due to the Baby Boom.
Now if you have statistics which show that there has been some sort of a decline in sex crimes, kindly keep in mind that the decrminalization of sodomy, the decrminalization of pornography, the effective decriminalization of prostitution [I don't think escort services are prosecuted anymore unless they run afoul of the IRS - and we're getting lots of reports that sex slavery is surging in many ethnic American communities], and the lowering of the age of consent [a la Tony Blair] only serve to define our deviancy down to levels that would embarrass the citizenry of Gomorrah.
Again, I've got more statistics than you could throw an afternoon at, or even a week, but, on the other hand, if you want the anecdotal, then spend a few hours here:
The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
And then try to tell me, with a straight face, that the Detroit, MI, of 2007, is a better, more "decent" place than was the Detroit, MI, of 1927, 1917, or even 1907.
For that matter, tell me about all those times in the 1950's when Grace Kelley, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis were photographed running around town without their knickers on. Here, I'll google them for you:
Grace Kelley Commando
Olivia de Havilland Commando
Bette Davis Commando
Or maybe you could recount all the fart jokes, hair jism, and bulldyke fisting in "Mary Poppins", or "The Sound of Music"?
Or maybe you could tell me about all those home invasions in the America of my childhood, wherein the [adopted] sons of Madison Avenue tycoons burst into peoples' homes, raped their wives and daughters, tied them up, poured gasoline on them, and set them ablaze?
Or maybe you could tell me about how, say, Harry Truman never owned a house nor even a car during the 14 years he was the [on again/off again] governor of Arkansas, and how he arrived in Washington essentially penniless [owning neither a house nor even a car], and how, after eight years in the presidency, he was suddenly worth $50 million, and how along the way he found time to pardon cocaine dealers, terrorists, terrorist financiers, and Rabbinical thieves, all so that kindly old Bess Truman could ascend to the Senatrixship from the great state of New York?
Yeah, that thing about medieval murder rates was a bit odd.
Yes, there are reasons to suppose we've become less prone to murder, but there are factors in the opposite direction too:
In no particular order:
1. Today:
a) wealthier
b) forensics
c) education
d) law's long arm
2. Then:
a) swift mob justice
b) God will judge
c) far less mobility & anonymity
They seem to even out, if you want to be kind to modernity.
the wily marmot: A study from 2002 contends that murder rates would be up to five times higher if it weren't for recent(post-Vietnam) advances in trauma care.
Wow - that's a fascinating study.
Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50000 and as many as 115000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15000 to 20000...
The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure.
The team also described the dramatic overall decrease in trauma mortality in the second half of the 20th century.
The period of greatest change came between 1972 and 1977, on the heels of the US involvement in the Vietnam war, which triggered big advances in trauma care.
By the way, this is what the [nominal] American murder rate looks like after the Miranda decision in 1966; note that I've included the percentage of all Americans in the murderous age range of 15-24, so that you can't claim that the post-Miranda surge in murder was due to the Baby Boom:
YEAR/POPULATION/% AGED 15 TO 24/MURDERS/MURDERS PER MILLION
1960 179,323,175 13.7 9,110 50.8
1961 182,992,000 13.8 8,740 47.8
1962 185,771,000 14.5 8,530 45.9
1963 188,483,000 15.0 8,640 45.8
1964 191,141,000 15.4 9,360 49.0
1965 193,526,000 15.9 9,960 51.5
1966 195,576,000 16.4 11,040 56.4
1967 197,457,000 16.8 12,240 62.0
1968 199,399,000 17.0 13,800 69.2
1969 201,385,000 17.5 14,760 73.3
1970 203,235,298 18.0 16,000 78.7
1971 206,212,000 18.4 17,780 86.2
1972 208,230,000 18.5 18,670 89.7
1973 209,851,000 18.7 19,640 93.6
1974 211,392,000 18.9 20,710 98.0
1975 213,124,000 19.1 20,510 96.2
1976 214,659,000 19.3 18,780 87.5
1977 216,332,000 19.4 19,120 88.4
1978 218,059,000 19.5 19,560 89.7
1979 220,099,000 19.4 21,460 97.5
1980 225,349,264 18.9 23,040 102.2
SOURCES:
uscrime.htm
XL Spreadsheet: 02HS0003.xls
Note too, that the murders in the United States tend to level off after 1980, in line with their observation that the great advances in trauma care occurred during the 1970's.
Weird - medical advances came so fast in that era that they limited the damage done by the Warren Court to a mere doubling of the murder rate, rather than, say, a quintupling or a "decupling".
A study from 2002 contends that murder rates would be up to five times higher if it weren't for recent(post-Vietnam) advances in trauma care.
Good stuff. And this certainly confounds the measurement process. Though as an economist I would ask the extent to which this is endogenous.
That is, in 1960 I wouldn't shoot someone unless I intended to kill them. Now with better medical care I might shoot someone simply because they pissed me off, knowing that they would likely survive.
That is guns replaced knives which replaced fists as the cost of using more sophisticated weapons fell.
However, the intent to kill rate may still be falling overall. Yes, we all know there was big boost in crime associated with the reduction in criminal penalties and the rise of the crack wars during the 1960s - 1980s.
Post a Comment