Jonathan V. Last had a good article a few weeks ago in The Weekly Standard demonstrating the size of the President's ego.
For example, he highlights this quote from a 2008 Ryan Lizza profile of Obama:
Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
If true, Obama should have hired better speechwriters, policy directors, and political directors ASAP.
Two points:
Does Obama have a sense of humor about his egomania? For example,
Just a few weeks ago, Obama was giving a speech when the actual presidential seal fell from the rostrum. “That’s all right,” he quipped. “All of you know who I am.”
Now, that's not a bad ad-lib. I'm sometimes surprised by Obama's wit because Dreams from My Father is so self-serious. Still, I'm left wondering about whether Obama makes many second order jokes about his ego? (I don't watch TV news so I can't say.) Or does he take himself that seriously? You can't expect a President to be humble, but you can hope he'll be self-aware about his ego. Some of Obama's more egregious lines in Last's compendium could be taken as Obama mocking his own ego, but I haven't noticed that he does that. But I could be wrong.
The second point is that Obama's Smartest-Guy-in-the-Room syndrome is directly related to his being constantly seen by his admirers (including his Admirer-in-Chief, the President) as the Living Refutation of The Bell Curve. It's not a coincidence that just about the only exercise in national journalism Obama indulged in during the 1990s was to deliver on NPR in 1994 a commentary on The Bell Curve.
Much of David Remnick's hagiography The Bridge, for instance, consists of smart Jewish people raving about how smart Obama is. He was the one they'd been waiting for to hold up as an example of a smart black guy, which, in turn, in the "He who says A must say B, C, and D" reasoning that dominates American intellectual life today, could be read to also imply the really important lesson of all this: that Jews aren't naturally smarter on average (so put away those pitchforks).
I know this web of subliminal logic seems ridiculous when exposed to the light of day, but that's how a lot of important people feel.
The problem with all this investment in Obama's smartness as more than just a personal characteristic is that for any of minions to say to him, "No, Mr. President, you don't understand" or "Let me try to explain that more simply" is not just a personal and political insult, but is also a racial insult.
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Today about 50% of ashkenazi kids are
charedim (ultra orthodox religious) and they don't take those tests .
From the israeli kids who do take those test :
30% are arabs.
30% are mixed ashkenazi mizrachi/spharadi kids .
Those two above numbers i know for sure.....
The rest of the kids are pure ashkenazi and pure mizrachi/spharadi.
Pure mizrachi people have more birth rate then pure ashkenazi (that are not charedim), so i say that :
25% of the tests takers are pure mizrachi\sphardi kids.
15% of the tests takers are pure ashkenazi kids .
In that case (that pure ashkenazi kids are just 15% of the tests takers) the pure ashkenazi kids are less then 100% among the elite 5% .
How many sub-saharan africans/blacks numerically are +3SD in IQ in the world? +4 SD? It helps provide a baseline for how smart Obama could be. I find the idea that Obama is only +1 SD is preposterous, kind of a pander to help a relatively large fraction of white people feel smarter than him. I think he's probably in a cohort of the 100,000 smartest black people in the world or so (or about the smartest 1% of the smartest 1% of the black global population of about 1 billion.
How smart is this group?
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
"ISTR that Obama accomplished something kind of impressive between 2006-2008, as well. Something even harder to pull off than being editor of the law review or graduating cum laude from Harvard."
What's so impressive about it? An idiot can be elected President -- remember G. W. Bush?
The ISTR website's About page is as vacuous, pompous and effective as the Obama(TM) POTUS: bureaucrats paying other globalized bureaucrats to tell them how to give away other people's money.
If this is not a joke, how is this the major ouevre of our sun king's major?
What affirmative-action narrative? Outside of HBD blogs, I don't see anyone suggesting Obama is just an affirmative action token; most of the media (liberal and conservative) describe him as brilliant. He has no need to release his test scores because they are meaningless to most Americans who already regard his Harvard degree as sufficient proof of genius.
Isn't that a bit circular, at least in effect? Truth is, loads of people take SATs and such seriously.
And if he really is such a swingin-dick Devil-may-care alpha, and the scores are consistent, he'd need a reason to refuse to release his scores, not a reason to release them; releasing them would be the default position.
High test scores would only win him credit with a very tiny percentage of right-wing bloggers who still wouldn't vote for him.
Nah. It would give the torch-bearers of his genius something concrete to rub in their enemies' faces. Obviously 'bammy cares enough to inveigh against Murray, so something isn't adding up IMO. Why would a race man refuse to strike a blow for his race?
ISTR that Obama accomplished something kind of impressive between 2006-2008, as well. Something even harder to pull off than being editor of the law review or graduating cum laude from Harvard.
I seem to remember lots of cultural/media AA on that one. Unprecedented levels, really.
Obama's political trajectory has been pretty well planned. Obama must be high IQ to have risen this high.
There is a lot of white liberal guilt, but only Obama (and Deval Patrick) understood how to channel it to victory. Obama also did a pretty good job of wheeling and dealing with Chicago's Arab moneymen, black groups, local Jews, law school colleagues, Ayers-like radicals, and liberal activists without saying/doing too much of controversy. Smart guy.
Give credit where credit is due. With the impressive academic and technical credentials on both side of his family, I'd be surprised if Obama was not a bright guy.
Hopefully Anonymous: I think he's probably in a cohort of the 100,000 smartest black people in the world or so (or about the smartest 1% of the smartest 1% of the black global population of about 1 billion. How smart is this group?
Some questions have answers which most folks might not enjoy pondering.
I seriously doubt that in the entire world there is a pure-bred black [no Caucasian admixture, no Pacific-Rim Asian admixture, no Brahmin admixture], of African ancestry, who has an IQ at or above 140.
And remember that Obama, with his IQ of 115 [maybe 120?], is half-white, and a not-all-that-distant cousin of Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh.
I imagine that we could go a good [hypothetical] 10,000 years before we saw a true Fields Medal winner or a true Nobel Physics Prize winner who was even so much as mulattto.
Obama's political trajectory has been pretty well planned. Obama must be high IQ to have risen this high.
Why do you assume Obama did much of this planning?
There's much evidence that Obama was on the path to self-destruct during critical career-launching years at Punahou, Clairmont and Columbia. There's also overwhelming evidence of Obama being quickly pulled up the ranks with bars reset to historic lows for him alone by powerful elites. These elites and many others so desperately wanted to impose a fantasy narrative on his life which his books obliged them.
Besides, beyond a SD or two from the mean (prob 110-125 in the US today) of the masses, IQ seems to harm more than help potential leaders. Perhaps this, like many individuals who grind their way to an MD or JD, is your idea of "high IQ" or "genius".
We have consistent quantitive data that puts a ceiling on Obama's IQ at 120-125 (PSAT/non-NationalMerit and SAT/Claremont College). Everything else is speculation.
But how do you know he took the PSAT or that every single person with high scores on the PSAT gets these awards? And how do you know for sure Obama didn't get these awards?
"I seriously doubt that in the entire world there is a pure-bred black...of African ancestry, who has an IQ at or above 140."
If Ronald McNair and Super Soaker Lonnie Johnson have IQs under 140, what does that make yours?
Besides, beyond a SD or two from the mean (prob 110-125 in the US today) of the masses, IQ seems to harm more than help potential leaders
There's no evidence that too much IQ is ever harmful in any field. IQ is the mental ability to adapt & problem solve so it's difficult to imagine how that could ever be a liability.
"We have consistent quantitative data that puts a ceiling on Obama's IQ at 120-125 (PSAT/non-NationalMerit and SAT/Claremont College). Everything else is speculation."
But how do you know he took the PSAT or that every single person with high scores on the PSAT gets these awards? And how do you know for sure Obama didn't get these awards?
Obama went to Punahou, THE elite prep school in Hawaii. His mother was a PhD academic who personally tutored him and his grandmother, who also help raise Obama, was a bank VP. Obama certainly took the PSAT as part of his standard college prep work at Punahou.
PSAT Everyone scoring in the top 1% in their state is automatically publicly recognized as a Semifinalist and in top 96-99% as A Commended Student. Elite schools like Punahou and the surrounding communities proudly publicize these winners in yearbooks and newspapers.
Hawaii's state SAT averaged 1463 in 2006 for the only ranking quickly found which was the worst of all 50 states. This abysmal performance shows the few elite prep school students like Obama face a very low bar to qualify for the PSAT awards based on scoring in the top 4% or 1% of the 60% of Hawaiian (mainly) public students sitting the PSAT.
Furthermore, Obama would've been also competing for a parallel black-only National Achievement Scholarship Program awarded for being in the top 1% of Hawaiian black PSAT scorers whose names are also publicized. Due to a 15pt lower average IQ and a smaller standard deviation (13 vs 15) of the black vs white IQ distributions, the top 1% of IQ for blacks is above 115 IQ which describes 16% of whites. This suggests a max ceiling of 115 IQ for Obama. The lower overall HI state scores may be offset by higher IQ blacks in HI due to military testing selection effects.
The black-white gap increases non-linearly as the IQ cutoff increases. For example, at the 115IQ cutoff above there are 16 in 100 whites but only 1 in 100 blacks. At a genius or near-genius level defined at >=140IQ, there are 380 in 100,000 whites but only 1 in 100,000 blacks. Just 5IQ point higher at >=145 IQ, there are 675 in 500,000 whites but only 1 in 500,000 blacks. It become increasingly absurd to argue that Obama's (or anyone's) IQ strays much higher than demonstrated ceiling (like 115IQ for Obama).
Even if heavily scripted, prepped, teleprompted and exposed to only friendly MSM, Obama has demonstrated verbal fluency. The most generous explanation is that Obama has an unusually large gap between low math/quantitative reasoning skills and higher verbal ability resulting in lower overall scores.
Again, an overall 115IQ with good verbal skills is probably smart enough for a CEO or POTUS, but Obama is utterly detached from reality and all sense of proportion to think he is the smartest guy in the room as are those who worship him for his "genius".
Interesting detective work, cats are cool. But is the national merrit scholarship based exclusively on PSAT scores. Is it possible that Obama had high PSAT scores, but wasn't recognized because of bad grades?
Also, you said National Merrit winners are proudly proclaimed in the yearbook, but are National Achievement Scholarship winners also proclaimed in the yearbook? If not, how can you be sure Obama didn't win this easier award and is this too only based on test scores?
The black SD seems to varry depending on the test but I suspect it's higher on the PSAT than on other g loaded standardized tests.
Also it's hard to believe Obama would have scored that low in math. His kindergarten teacher remembers him as having sharp math skills, plus his father and half-broth both obtained impressive degrees in math related subjects.
Harvard law magnas seem to me to be +4SD or higher IQ as a cohort.
But how many +4SD folks had undistinguished PSAT performances?
0? 1,000 people? I'm curious.
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
Is it possible that Obama had high PSAT scores, but wasn't recognized because of bad grades?
IIRC, no, NMS is based solely on the PSAT.
Also it's hard to believe Obama would have scored that low in math. His kindergarten teacher remembers him as having sharp math skills, plus his father and half-broth both obtained impressive degrees in math related subjects.
Agreed. Lots of people think he's a genius so that settles that.
Harvard law magnas seem to me to be +4SD or higher IQ as a cohort.
That's absurd. The average IQ at Harvard is 130 (+2 SD):
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html
You would get a higher average if you based their IQ's on SAT/LSAT scores but this would be a biased measure because they were SELECTED based on SAT scores, so the SAT would give an inflated average because the SAT would tend to be the highest score Harvard students ever achieved. Any group that is selected based on one IQ test will regress to the mean when tested on another IQ test, which is why you NEVER use the IQ test a group was selected with to estimate the groups' average IQ.
So on a neutral IQ test, Harvard students score 130. Harvard Law might average a little higher 135 on a neutral test (not the LSAT which was used to select them). Now within Harvard law where the IQ range is restricted, the correlation between IQ and grades is only moderate, so those with top grades would average only a little higher than the class average of 135. Maybe 140, but half of all magna students would score WAY below 140, especially if they obtained their grades through preferential grading or easy courses.
But how many +4SD folks had undistinguished PSAT performances?
Well if they had undistinguished PSATs, then they're not +4 SD as defined by the PSAT. Now if you're asking how many people score really high on one IQ test and than score mediocre on another; this is quite common because each IQ test is only a proxy for g and different tests emphasize different strenghs and weaknesses, allowing people to cherry pick their all time best test performance and claim it as their IQ. However a person's true IQ is best reflected by aggregating all the tests they ever take since measurement error and test specific skills average out.
National Merit Semifinalists and Commended Students are based solely upon the state percentile PSAT rank and there is no application process apart from sitting the exam. Non-monetary National Achievement Scholarships awards are also based solely upon the PSAT score, state percentile and being African-American (applications seem to be required to get cash awards).
National Achievement Scholarship winners and their principles are directly notified of awards. It's virtually impossible that a high distinction even mediocre public schools publicize would not also be publicized by Ivy League-seeking Obama, his academic mother and bank VP grandmother and his status conscious elite prep school. Also, black winners of PSAT-based awards who become famous like Obama are especially promoted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program to corporate sponsors and the public.
The black SD seems to varry depending on the test but I suspect it's higher on the PSAT than on other g loaded standardized tests.
IQ distributions and SD have been relatively consistent over long periods of time I understand. Do you have links that suggest otherwise? Why do you think the SD would be larger on the PSAT?
In Kindergarten there is not much math, especially 40yrs ago when it was probably recognizing and writing the numbers to 10. No credence can be given to his Kindergarten teacher's opinion here. Best to stick to the limited, yet consistent hard data we know.
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Obama's father and one half-brother had some math chops, but most of his relations are intellectually unimpressive. Like Obama, even the math ability of his two most impressive relatives was probably much exaggerated. They benefited from the most drastic affirmative action used in mathematical fields where blacks were/are the least competitive.
The most intellectually impressive, likable and grounded relation of Obama seems to be his half brother Mark Ndesandjo by Obama's father and his 3rd wife - a Jewish-Lithuanian American woman he met at Harvard.
Mark graduated Brown with a BS in Physics and Stanford with a MS in physics (often erroneously reported as a PhD). However, at top research institutes like Stanford in theoretical fields like physics, a MS is almost always a consolation prize given to candidates who are unable to meet the high standards of a PhD.
Similarly, Barack Obama Sr. also seems to have left Harvard with only the MS consolidation instead of the much more impressive PhD that would make him an expert in the field - his natural goal in order to become a high-level government official in Kenya.
In suggesting that Obama may have an unusually greater disparity between lower math and quantitative reasoning skills and higher verbal scores, I was trying to acknowledge what seem to be Obama's higher verbal skills. The alternative interpretation is that his math/verbal skill are similar, but that he had major uncredited help writing the few public works ascribed to him.
Good breakdown. If it's true that 1 in 500,000 blacks are 145+ IQ, isn't that still a domestic population of about 60 blacks and a global population of about 1200? I think it' plausible Obama could be in that group (who are the smarter blacks? do they number 1200 (or even 60)?)
Since Obama is half-Northern European and half-Kenyan, he probably falls on a hybrid IQ Gaussian distribution curve centered at IQ=92.5 with SD 14.
However, although anything is possible, it's exceedingly unlikely that Obama is much greater than the max 115IQ derived from his PSAT and similar estimated SAT based upon his Clairmont College class profile.
It's possible, just overwhelmingly unlikely given a ceiling of 115IQ
It would be relatively impressive for a President to have either the math literacy of Obama's half-brother or Father, and I'd think well beyond what one needs to be a National Merit Scholar.
Is the argument that Obama has much worse quantitative skills than his father or half-brother?
I don't think anyone is arguing that President Obama likely has the quantitative chops of Ph.D. physicist or econometrician.
I think it's fair to say Obama is covering something related to his quantitative ability: either positively deviant proficiency or the lack thereof. Because it wouldn't be hard for him to signal his quantitative ability if he wanted to (just drop some off the cuff quips signaling quantitative literacy -the closest I've seen to that was his "bubble sort wouldn't be the way to go" quip when he spoke as a candidate at google).
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
Cats are Cool, I'm still not convinced that you can infer Obama's PSAT scores were not high because there's no public record of him winning a National Merrit scholarship or a National Achievement Scholarship. Will Smith is a famous black man who reportedly scored very high on his SATs (Mensa level) and was accepted at MIT. Presumabley Smith would have also scored high on his PSATs given that it's a variant of the SAT, and yet I've never heard of Smith getting a National Merrit Scholarship award or National Achievement Award so I don't think you can draw such strong conclusions about someone's PSAT scores based on the absense of these awards on the public record. I suspect these awards are not given to everyone who has or could have earned them or that they're not anywhere near as publicized as you think.
I do however find it odd that Obama didn't go to a better university straight of high school given that he attended a prestigous high school, had the means and motive to leave his state and could have qualified for affirmative action to any school if he had high test scores.
The reason I suspect that the PSAT/SAT has a higher standard deviation for blacks than other tests is there seems to be more blacks with very high scores than I expected, and also because it's not a "pure" IQ test.
Since Obama is half-Northern European and half-Kenyan, he probably falls on a hybrid IQ Gaussian distribution curve centered at IQ=92.5 with SD 14.
You seem to be averaging the white average IQ of 100 with the African American average IQ of 85 to get the hybrid distribution, but keep in mind that Obama has more black ancestry that the typical hybrid because his father is "pure" black African.
Fwiw, I was a NM semifinalist and I don't recall it being mentioned in the yearbook or elsewhere at my working class highschool. But if Obama's SAT score was anything over 1200 or so I think it would be a lead pipe certainty that he would have been at Stanford or Columbia on the first hop, and that if he had stellar grades at Columia he would have gone to HLS straight away instead of resume-polishing as a community organizer for a few years.
Catperson,
You must not be from the US to have so many misunderstandings of the PSAT/NMS system.
As for the American anon who doesn't recall their NMS status being reported, that seems selective forgetting. All the working class HS in even my anti-intellectual podunk town religiously reported them decades ago. If anon named their school, Google would confirm his HS lists their NMS students.
Certainly anything near the level of a Punahou prep school publicizes this distinction with pride. Even counter-culture, hippy-dippy prep schools like Sidwell Friends has their NMS students publicized. What hyper-competitive, status-seeking elite SWPL is not going to acknowledge their child is gifted or the superiority of their pricey school?
Besides the link showing Obama's elite prep school Punahuo proudly publishes the names their NMS students, this is taken from the NMS FAQ:
NMSC transmits Semifinalist and Scholar news releases by e-mail to several thousand daily and weekly newspapers and to school district public information offices that have requested them.
To clear up another misconception, Will Smith never applied nor was he accepted to MIT. This urban legend was probably started by his press agent to generate some buzz. According to his wiki.
My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in.
Smith's wiki says that he was accepted to a conditional-sounding "pre-engineering program" at MIT without even applying which sounds like his influential mother pulling strings and working the AA system. Will clearly factors in the much lower bar for AA candidates at a top engineering schools like MIT, so his "high SAT" is relative to black students he says MIT "needed".
To Smith's credit, it doesn't sound like Smith himself is over-hyping his SAT or thinks they are central to his identity. Obama also acknowledged he was a pretty lousy student in his book and makes no specific quantitative claims about his intelligence.
It's doubtful Smith was a NMS since there is no public record of it anywhere. At his Overbrook HS that would be as welcomed news and his school board mom would let the world know. Also, there is no readily-discoverable proof of Smith being in MENSA. He sounds too normal to join even if he did qualify.
Obviously Will Smith and Obama are smarter than average and IQ is not a limiting factor in their chosen careers. They simply are not the geniuses their "IQ-obsessed" liberal groupies ceaselessly make them out to be.
Here is the CV of an artist who took the PSAT and became a National Merit Scholar at Punahou in 1969. This likely proves Punahou Prep was participating in the PSAT/NMS system at least a decade before Obama graduated.
I don't know how long NMS have been heavily publicized they way they are today, but from National Merit Scholarship Corporation website FAQ:
What information does NMSC release to news media?
NMSC distributes public announcements about Semifinalists in the fall and scholarship winners in the spring. The public announcements include background information about the competition with a list of students' names, the names and locations of their high schools, and information about scholarship sponsors.
Is there a list of Finalists in the National Merit® Scholarship Program or the National Achievement® Scholarship Program?
Each high school is notified in early February of their Semifinalists who have advanced to Finalist standing. Decisions regarding public announcements about Finalists are left to the discretion of the high school.
It's nearly universal today for parents, schools and/or local community newspapers to publicize about the NMS students. It's used to rank students, schools and increases increases local real estate prices.
Will Smith was not accepted to MIT and was never listed as a NMS. He only mentioned his "pretty high SAT" scores in context as a black kids applying to an MIT seeking more black students.
While it is widely reported that Smith turned down a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he never applied to MIT, although he was admitted to a "pre-engineering program" there.
According to Smith, "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."
Like Obama, Smith is no doubt a bright guy too. Obama has great self-discipline in managing a cryptic be-anything public image and Smith is a very charismatic entertainer. These traits far outshine their IQ which seem so desperately important for some groupies to puff up.
The NM semifinalist thing was almost 30 years ago, a few years after Obama, so I may be misremembering. I think they did mention it in the morning announcements, since there was one other semifinalist in our class; it had to have been announced in some way for me to know about that. Nothing in the yearbook, but the identity of the students was known to faculty and to other students.
I imagine it would have been a far bigger deal at an elite prep school.
I checked, and the high school does advertise the number of NM commended/semi/finalist test takers now.
But if Obama's SAT score was anything over 1200 or so I think it would be a lead pipe certainty that he would have been at Stanford or Columbia on the first hop, and that if he had stellar grades at Columia he would have gone to HLS straight away instead of resume-polishing as a community organizer for a few years.
Obama was HS class of 1979.
I knew a black guy who was HS class of 1979, and who probably got in the vicinity of a 1000 or an 1100 on the SAT of that era, and he got a full ride to Cornell.
Obama has great self-discipline in managing a cryptic be-anything public image and Smith is a very charismatic entertainer.
Obama didn't even have enough self-discipline to finish his own idiotic autobiography - he had to haul a big box of notecards & audio tapes over to Bill Ayers's house and have Ayers write it all up for him.
My guess is that if you knew the REAL Barack Hussein Obama - not the fantasy served up by David Axelrod's teleprompter scripts - then you would be shocked at how ordinary and common and dull the guy was.
What do folks is the minimum IQ for a very specific achievement magna grad from harvard law.
I find it hard to believe it can be achieved with less than a 140 IQ AND a high conscientious level.
I think this is more relevant than PSAT score, because I think it's a harder intellectual task.
I'm also curious about the scope of Obama's quantitative literacy and competence. He has two 1st degree removed blood relatives with quantitative ability that has to be in the top 1% of the American population, if not an order of magnitude or so higher. On the other hand, I don't see much public evidence of quantitative ability beyond pre-algebra.
So I'm trying to determine if he's hiding math ability or hiding the laxck thereof.
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
What do folks is the minimum IQ for a very specific achievement magna grad from harvard law.
I find it hard to believe it can be achieved with less than a 140 IQ AND a high conscientious level.
I think this is more relevant than PSAT score, because I think it's a harder intellectual task.
That would normally be the case but Obama has been demonstrably helped by a wishful and misled populance and powerful friends to historic and ever-ridiculous degrees as his life progressed.
Some HLS grads have mentioned that blind grading can be subverted when professors take an interest in a particular student. One can use familiar handwriting, distinctive writing styles (certainly Obama's overblown style would stand out) and revealing content to identify favored students. Some radical course selection by Obama could juice the numbers also.
The bar has been lowered for Obama to historically low levels. Find one academic offered tenure-track professorship at UChi or any top school without a single academic article or book. Find one president of the Harvard Law Review who never published a single academic article in their entire career. How about a Nobel Peace Prize for which even Obama acknowledged he didn't accomplish anything to deserve yet happily took home anyway. Had any of these impossible scenarios ever happened before?
Even Obama getting accepted to Harvard Law without even graduating with simple honors in undergrad is highly unlikely even for AA candidates.
Thus the PSAT is important because it is the most unbiased quantitative measure we have of Obama. Unlike Harvard Law, where powerful friends are known to have pulled strings to get an undeserving Obama in and were eager to advance his career, the PSAT shows a baseline native intelligence based upon truly blind grading.
BHO's grades at Harvard probably reflect his consciousnesses and IQ as much as his HLS presidency there which showed him to be lazy and over-hyped.
Again, BHO is no dummy but neither is he the genius groupies wish him to be.
Hardly anyone outside the inner circle knew that FDR couldn't even stand on his own despite his public wartime image of vigor and strength. Few knew that the loving family man JFK married to Jackie O was not-so-secretly shagging everything in sight. It will be interesting what truths, if any, history ultimately reveals about BHO.
"Some HLS grads have mentioned that blind grading can be subverted when professors take an interest in a particular student. One can use familiar handwriting, distinctive writing styles (certainly Obama's overblown style would stand out) and revealing content to identify favored students. Some radical course selection by Obama could juice the numbers also."
I don't think you get how hard it is intellectually to graduate magna from harvard law. Rule-bending at the margins would still require an exceptional main body of performance over 3 years.
Also, given that there are blacks with 140 IQ's (not many, but harvard law pulls from the best) people with Obama-is-125-or-lower-IQ push narratives one would have to address why Obama was favored over some smarter black at harvard law. If being precious is a better status optimization strategy for individual blacks than being competent, I'd think the 140 IQ black would've outsmarted Obama for the precious lane to a Harvard law magna.
It's more plausible to me that Obama blew off the PSAT's than that he was gifted a Harvard Law magna with an IQ below that of hundreds of his black contemporaries.
But his level quantitative competence and literacy is still mysterious to me (to be fair, that applies to a lot of legal administrative elites).
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
I don't think you get how hard it is intellectually to graduate magna from harvard law. Rule-bending at the margins would still require an exceptional main body of performance over 3 years.
The examples listed above are not cases of "rule-bending at the margins". They shattered even the lowest standards associated with the awards and offices offered Obama. Since his days at HLS in particular, many rules broken for Obama have been of epic proportions without historical precedent.
Obama was comically undeserving of the HLR Presidency, UChi tenure offer and Nobel Prize. Nonetheless, Obama has been rapidly pulled upstairs by well-connected and well-meaning elites despite his relatively consistent lack of achievements and under-performance as an prep and undergrad student, community organizer, education reformer, IL state senator and US Senator. The historic 2010 mid-term elections in a time of +95% re-election rates show just how big of a failure Obama's agenda and presidency has been.
To Obama's defense, if nothing is expected of you, you're constantly promoted regardless and real achievement involves a risk and effort why not hang back, do nothing and be a cipher. Unfortunately, a lifetime of this attitude corrodes a soul.
Also, certain goals that Obama had like directing the $100M Annenburg Challenge to improve Chicago public schools or working as a community activitist had all upside and he still failed miserably.
Again, Obama is no dummy but no genius either.
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