THE SMART PRESIDENT
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History reports that Taft proved more successful as an administrator than as a politician. And he felt naturally critical of his own abilities, which only hindered him further. He had little talent for leadership. Plus, he often failed to take initiative.
He responded indecisively, and thus produced few accomplishments during his term as president. As president, Taft typically ate a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, and mounds of pancakes for breakfast. Such an unhealthily large breakfast reportedly left him sluggish for most of the morning. Jackson is a favorite of President Trump. Jackson received little formal schooling. But he still made an impact.
During his two terms, Congress passed only one major law at his behest. He also vetoed 12 bills, more than his six predecessors combined. Jackson played a role in forcing the relocation of Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi, a major source of modern criticism. He failed to take a stand on slavery. James Buchanan numbers among the dumbest presidents. He proved no match for a nation on the brink of civil war. Buchanan felt morally opposed to slavery. But he also believed the U.
As president, he tried to maintain peace between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. However, Buchanan has become notorious for failing to take a stand on either side of the issue of slavery.
2. The immediacy factor.
Strong presidential leadership might have prevented civil war. Yet Buchanan remained passive.
In fact, historians cite his passivity as a major contributing factor to the advent of the Civil War. Buchanan remains the only U.
His niece, Harriet Lane, assumed the social duties of First Lady while he held office. Zachary Taylor did his best to hold the nation together. Zachary Taylor, who preceded Buchanan, also tried to hold the nation together despite the major rift between the north and the south. Nonetheless, the Miller Center posits that had Taylor lived to run for a second term, we might not have had a Compromise of or even a Civil War. If Taylor had survived, would he have been able to stamp out the most burning issue that faced the nation in — the expansion of slavery westward? Nobody remembers Taylor as a great president.
And most historians think he was too non-political to enact much change. This president never attended school as a child, and later learned math from his wife. He believed it was a guaranteed right to own slaves.
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Andrew Johnson, whom Simonton ranks as one of the dumbest presidents, believed strongly in the Constitution and thought that it guaranteed the right to own slaves. He continued to believe in the right to slave ownership. But he advocated for the preservation of the Union as southern leaders began to call for secession. However, Johnson proved unable to compromise and incapable of dealing with congressional challenges.
These Are the Smartest and Dumbest U.S. Presidents and How Donald Trump Compares
Johnson assumed office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson never attended school. He was apprenticed to a tailor by his early teens. So his wife helped him improve his reading and writing skills, and she tutored him in math. This president became the most popular in the history of modern polling.
Bush was mocked for his intelligence throughout his presidency. Bush served from to So your reaction to seeing him on the list of the dumbest presidents probably depends on your politics. In response to those attacks, Bush declared a global war on terrorism. Bush entered office as one of only a few presidents to lose the popular vote. He was one of the worst presidents in history.
Harding makes the top three dumbest presidents in U. His cabinet members and other government officials became involved in criminal activities that overshadowed his short-lived presidency. He avoided issues as much as possible. And he had no message to communicate to Congress or to the American people. This man, though technically one of the dumbest presidents, studied law under Thomas Jefferson.
His IQ may have been relatively low, but he was highly qualified. It is also consistent with findings from research that has directly tested the idea that IQ is a threshold variable. In a project known as the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, Vanderbilt psychologists David Lubinski, Camilla Benbow, and their colleagues found that, even among a sample of intellectually gifted people, a higher level of cognitive ability in childhood forecasted great accomplishment later in life, both in school and beyond.
In another study, using four data sets with sample sizes in the thousands, a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota psychologist Paul Sackett investigated the relationship between cognitive ability and both academic and work performance. In all cases, the relationship was positive and linear—the higher the level of cognitive ability, the better the performance. There is also evidence that IQ is an important predictor of acquiring expertise in specific domains.
For example, in a study of 90 Austrian tournament chess players, the psychologist Roland Grabner and his colleagues found that IQ correlated positively with tournament chess rating. As it happens, over half of U.
Does It Matter If the President Is Smart? - POLITICO Magazine
The job of president of the United States calls on a wide range of knowledge, skills, and abilities. The president must acquire vast amounts of knowledge about a dizzying array of topics, consider competing points-of-view and ideas in making decisions, and solve complex problems of all sorts. Many other factors matter, including experience, personality, motivation, interpersonal skill, and perhaps above all else, luck. Yet, what science tells us is that a high level of intellectual ability translates into a measureable advantage in the Oval Office.
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I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and credits — only needed credits. And I would be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours. A few days later, after it turned out these boasts were essentially untrue, Biden withdrew from the presidential race. There may be a more useful question to ask: Does it matter how smart the president is? But Woodrow Wilson had a distinguished career as an academic specializing in the study of American government, and yet he proved impotent in his effort to get the U. Senate to ratify the League of Nations treaty.
His intelligence did not extend to ordinary human decency, either; his blatant racism led to the resegregation of much of the federal government. Few presidents were as comfortable with the details of public policy as Jimmy Carter, but his understanding of the broader aspects of the job—persuading the public, for example—was far less impressive.