"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
"Hawke" wrote in message
...

I'm not sure that's true. While some folks over rate their intelligence
there are plenty that under rate themselves or don't really know how
smart
they are. In Bush's case he comes across as not being that bright, which
may
be why so many average people think he's one of them, and why they think
they are as smart as he is.

For what little it's worth, my own impression is that he's quite smart,
but,
as one pundit put it, he's "an incurious man."

I doubt if his supporters think he's just of average intelligence. What
they
like about his clumsy rhetoric and mispronunciations is that he disvalues
the same things they disvalue: the personal behaviors that they associate
with an elite education from an exclusive (meaning "excluding," to them)
institution (Andover, Yale, and Harvard). They resent those behaviors and
institutions and they hold negative connotations of people who have elite
educations, if they presume to speak and write like they have one. It's
clear that Bush never bought into the program. That's what they like.

Yale graduate, Harvard Business School graduate. Won two presidential
elections. Works for me. Kerry ran on being smart. Bush was smart
enough not to do that.

Well, at least that is an argument that has some merit as far as proving
Bush is a smart guy. Even though there is no correlation between winning
elections and intelligence. However, consider that without being a Yale
legacy he could never have qualified on his own merit to go to that
school.

No question. From the limited evidence that people will talk about, he
apparently had poor recommendations from Andover. The Ivy League in those
days put the legacy issue first -- especially if your parents had achieved
some degree of notoriety.

--
Ed Huntress

From the available metrics, Bush has an IQ of about 120, above average for
regular schmucks but not exactly stellar for the leader of the free world,
particularly combined with his aversion to serious reading/analysis and his
dry drunk personality.