Before, of course; adults rarely take IQ tests, though it would be interesting to know his GMAT scores [actually, those were only another 5 years later]. The two known scores are his SATs and his military tests. As Sailer (last link) always says,
the only election Bush ever lost was a 1978 Congressional race in the Texas Panhandle, where his opponent made fun of Bush for having degrees from Yale and Harvard.
Bush resolved never to get out-dumbed again.
ETA: my impression, probably from [the video James Andrix cites below], is that Bush sounded much more coherent during the gubernatorial elections than during the presidential ones, which would rule out a direct effect of alcohol.
That’s an interesting video. I’d heard of his great performance during gubernatorial debates before, but never seen the evidence myself. One thing to be cautious about here is confirmation bias, like how the clips were selected...
The other thing is, the original theory I heard this evidence raised to defend was that Bush was intentionally appearing dumb in order to get elected, which went along with another use for appearing dumb in international strategic contexts so that long term strategic power grabs could be written off as being caused by any number of other things. For Iraq, someone might think “He just wanted to finish what his dad started” and stop thinking right there, because they expect no deeper motives.
The video you linked to suggests that its not a poker face, but is instead a medical condition.
I think we should be able to figure out the difference based on the post-presidential verbal performance—if he gets better, then he was probably faking for strategic reasons (and doesn’t care if people know it by now), but if he gets worse, then its more likely to be a long term medical condition.
The guy who runs Stratfor (“Economic, political and military strategic forecasting”) opined that the main reason for the invasion of Iraq was to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop funding religious schools that produce most of the Islamic extremists, direct military action against Saudi Arabia having been viewed as too costly.
I think that’s basically a category error. Yes, you need to know who is making decisions before you can assess why they made them, but it certainly doesn’t answer the question of why they made the decisions.
Also, I don’t see any puppet strings. Why talk about PNAC, rather than Team B? Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (but not Cheney) were paranoid decades ago.
By talking about the PNAC, I mean both that the war was caused by influential member individuals of the PNAC, as well as because of the idealistic cause behind the PNAC—continued American hegemony. The Iraq War was a failed attempt at continuing American hegemony into the 21st century.
I’m wondering if Bush’s IQ was measured before or after his years of alcohol abuse...
Before, of course; adults rarely take IQ tests, though it would be interesting to know his GMAT scores [actually, those were only another 5 years later]. The two known scores are his SATs and his military tests. As Sailer (last link) always says,
ETA: my impression, probably from [the video James Andrix cites below], is that Bush sounded much more coherent during the gubernatorial elections than during the presidential ones, which would rule out a direct effect of alcohol.
I’ve also heard that Bush is a better speaker in his native Texas accent / dialect (which he didn’t use when campaigning nationally).
I don’t think that’s true:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw4Bhmm22xo
That’s an interesting video. I’d heard of his great performance during gubernatorial debates before, but never seen the evidence myself. One thing to be cautious about here is confirmation bias, like how the clips were selected...
The other thing is, the original theory I heard this evidence raised to defend was that Bush was intentionally appearing dumb in order to get elected, which went along with another use for appearing dumb in international strategic contexts so that long term strategic power grabs could be written off as being caused by any number of other things. For Iraq, someone might think “He just wanted to finish what his dad started” and stop thinking right there, because they expect no deeper motives.
The video you linked to suggests that its not a poker face, but is instead a medical condition.
I think we should be able to figure out the difference based on the post-presidential verbal performance—if he gets better, then he was probably faking for strategic reasons (and doesn’t care if people know it by now), but if he gets worse, then its more likely to be a long term medical condition.
The guy who runs Stratfor (“Economic, political and military strategic forecasting”) opined that the main reason for the invasion of Iraq was to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop funding religious schools that produce most of the Islamic extremists, direct military action against Saudi Arabia having been viewed as too costly.
I think the main reason for the invasion of Iraq was the unprecedented influence of the Project for the New American Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
I think that’s basically a category error. Yes, you need to know who is making decisions before you can assess why they made them, but it certainly doesn’t answer the question of why they made the decisions.
Also, I don’t see any puppet strings. Why talk about PNAC, rather than Team B? Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (but not Cheney) were paranoid decades ago.
Could it have been the convergence of three factors: money to be made from a war, Iraq weakened by sanctions, and the shock of 9/11?
By talking about the PNAC, I mean both that the war was caused by influential member individuals of the PNAC, as well as because of the idealistic cause behind the PNAC—continued American hegemony. The Iraq War was a failed attempt at continuing American hegemony into the 21st century.