I understand that Thomas Jefferson was our smartest president. Who was our stupidest? Second stupidest? A related pair of questions: Did Yale not have an admissions department in the 1960s? If it did, doesn’t it owe the country an apology?
I get the feeling you guys are trying to make a point here. But this is no time to be coy. Let’s put the question bluntly: Is George W. Bush the stupidest person ever to serve as U.S. president? If not, who is? And isn’t he a drunk besides? It’s all the fault of those goddamn Republicans on the Supreme Court. Why, I oughta…
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There, there. Let’s take this one step at a time.
Smarts aren’t easy to judge. Greenstein gives John F. Kennedy high marks for brains, but according to biographer Thomas C. Reeves (author of the infamous A Question of Character), Kennedy as a kid scored a less-than-brilliant 119 on the Otis Intelligence Test and graduated 65th out of 110 at Choate. And remember Bill Bradley, who everybody considered brainy but boring? His verbal SAT score, according to Slate: just 485.
