BushIQ

 

A hoax email is in circulation claiming that a reputable “institute” has determined that President Bush has the lowest IQ of all recent US presidents. Here is one version of this hoax, written by someone with more imagination than integrity.

Last week, the Lovenstein Institute, Scranton, Pennsylvania, published a report of their study of the IQ of President George W. Bush.

 

In this report, twelve presidents, Roosevelt to Bush, were all evaluated on their scholarly achievements, writings, ability to speak with clarity, and several other factors which were then scored on an IQ test. The study showed the IQs of each president (within three percentage points) as:

 

   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, 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.

 

Bush’s low ratings were due to his difficulty in commanding the English language, his limited vocabulary, his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The 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 before George W. Bush had written at least one book, and most had written articles during their careers. Not Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said.

 

The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, includes historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists, 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.

No evidence of either a “Dr. Lovenstein, or an institute bearing his name, exists in Scranton, Pennsylvania or anywhere else. There's no evidence of a "Professor Patricia F. Dilliams either.