smartest of Reagan, Quayle, Palin, George W Bush

Gipper, sadly

vote shrub!

Quayle had the least interesting things to say, but he was a penny ante hack, not a fool.

i'm pretty sure Quayle was a foole

This is the kind of poll it's best for me to avoid, like 'pick your own gruesome, painful death'.

we're talking about intelligence, not wisdom

Bush may be an ideologue, but he's not a total moron

yeah i think it's shrub

i wouldn't be surprised if Bush had the highest IQ on that list.

The stupidity of Ronald Reagan.

There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling." Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.)

One could go on. I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.

Shrub more evil than stupid

Shrub wins my mom's (admittedly uppity elitist) Google Scholar test.

I think Quayle might be smarter than Bush until you look at videos of Bush as Texas Gov where he looks pretty fucking sharp.

Thinking about the safety of the American people has made him stupider.

let's rank

Palin > Reagan > Quayle > Bush

reagan was the most brilliant in his own way

who is dumbest - the amiable golf pro and bad speller, the guy with alzheimer's who baked in the sun the longest, or Sarah Palin?

OH THAT RONNIE.

Smart enough to play stupid xpost

this has to be reagan, if you're counting the pre-senility years, which i think you have to

Bush seemed so sharp in these debates…

No way is George W. smarter than Reagan was.

Bush in 1994:

ha, is that Alan Keyes? He's the sharp one there.

Bush in 1994 comes across as someone who isn't a very confident speaker but worked to get his talking points in order. Probably avg intelligence. Where is this evidence of Reagan's brilliance – Nancy's astrologer?

i dont know about sharp, but Bush was an amiable and appealling public speaker as Gov.

There was a great article about his "transformation" in the Atlantic a few years back, probably by James Fallows.

Where is this evidence of Reagan's brilliance – Nancy's astrologer?

He made the press corps laugh.

Reagan was smart enough to give the people exactly what they wanted in terms of the image of a president. the rest of these guys are bozos by comparison.

B@bock called the L.A. public "dumbed down and poorly educated,"

the gabbneb test

Yale/HBS >> DePauw/IU Law >>>>>>> University of Hawaii (couple weeks)/Hawaii Pacific University (rest of semester)/North Idaho College (1 year)/University of Idaho (1 year)/Matanuska-Susitna College (1 semester)/University of Idaho (3 semesters) ~ Eureka College

I am not my brother btw

maybe he's right

Verbal intelligence is only one form of intelligence, though perhaps a somewhat measurable reference point. Between George W. and Reagan, you have a guy who can barely speak grammatical English vs. a gifted orator who could also improvise and be witty off-the-cuff. Lest you think that all credit should go to Reagan's speechwriters, read some of his Presidential debate transcripts. Here he goes up against Carter, a man whose intellect is seldom questioned. The difference from W. is stark:

1980 Presidential debate transcript:
http://www.debates.org/pages/trans80b.html

what's most interesting to me about that video above is that he sounds so different. a more relaxed texas slow kinda accent....i can see why they thought he'd be a great presidential candidate!

fwiw for the purposes of this poll I feel compelled to consider "intelligence" as "capacity for successfully selling bullshit to the American people", and as such by that measure Reagan wins handily.

I don't entirely disagree w/my brother about LA either, it just seems kind of irrelevant. I don't get why you dropped it.

x-post

yeah, i heard he made a living as an actor or something

http://partisanreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/fred-thompson-725939.jpg

genius; can string many complete sentences together

except Thompson is a failure as a politician...? as usual your point escapes me.

it's a response to o.nate, not you, Shakey. my ref to your bro was merely a fun illustration of the point that Ronnie did not come out of the brightest milieu.

best somnambulist: Taft or Thompson?

haha before i got to the poster name i thought "the gabbneb test" was somebody doing a zing

Reagan could write stirring declarative sentences on his own, so the star could write his own scripts (he wrote all his radio addresses and the entirety of his first SOTU).

genius; can string many complete sentences together

Reagan did a lot more than complete his sentences. Read the debate transcripts. He was a good debater.

i read a smidgen of the transcripts and they sounded like a guy trying to sound like jimmy stewart in mr. smith goes to washington

haha before i got to the poster name i thought "the gabbneb test" was somebody doing a zing

maybe it was?

the gabbneb test

Yale/HBS >> DePauw/IU Law >>>>>>> University of Hawaii (couple weeks)/Hawaii Pacific University (rest of semester)/North Idaho College (1 year)/University of Idaho (1 year)/Matanuska-Susitna College (1 semester)/University of Idaho (3 semesters) ~ Eureka College

― gabbneb, Friday, September 12, 2008 12:45 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

suggest ban

Criticizing the guy for going to Eureka College is pretty silly. The world was a very different place in 1928, when Reagan started college. It just shows you that Reagan was the son of a shoe salesman, not the grandson of a senator and son of an oil company president and Yale man. So Reagan was student body president at Eureka, and W. was head cheerleader at Phillips Academy. I'll take Reagan's record of accomplishment.

gabb as a credentials snob SHOCKA.

my answer: reagan -> dubya -> quayle -> palin. i don't think that ANY of them are really dumb (though all were pretty ignorant).

The world was a very different place in 1928

yes, i considered this, but perhaps didn't weigh it too heavily

who are the other well-known graduates of Eureka College, past or present?

it's hard call to differentiate the canniness + wild idiocy complexes of reagan and W. i think reagan had more crazy beliefs about himself and w has more crazy beliefs about the world

who are the other well-known graduates of Eureka College, past or present?

your mom

Eisbaer-Palin '08 - Viva Ressentiment!

no, that is not where my Mom went to college, Mr. Que

Also, Eureka College is affiliated with Disciples of Christ, the Christian sect that Reagan's mother belonged to - so I imagine there was some parental pressure involved.

maybe the other Disciples of Christ are insufficiently engaged with The World to have made their mark like fellow alumnus and frat bro Reagan

xp

LBJ was a graduate of Southwest Texas State Teachers' College. truman didn't even have a college degree. either of them would have been more than a match for any of reagan/bush/quayle/palin.

Watching Palin's speech last week I think she must be the clevererest because it said virtually nothing and yet was apparently a tour de force that has got the republican's back in the race.

she didn't really write it though, correct?

LBJ also attended Georgetown law School and worked in Congress for more than 25 years

Truman didn't go to college for money reasons, but spent 2 years in law school

Palin just delivered that speech. She had no hand in writing it.

he also served at the state level for 12 years and in the Senate for 10

Obama has spoken of admiration for Reagan's political accomplishments (for which he caught a lot of flak from liberals). I doubt we'll hear a Republican or Democratic presidential candidate speak that way about W. Actually, it would probably be a canny move for Obama to try and explicitly reach for the Reagan mantle at this point in the race.

the only people who care about reagan anymore are right wing weirdos who want to put him on the dime.

Definitely not true.

the only people who care about reagan anymore are right wing weirdos who want to put him on the dime.

― "goole" (goole), Friday, September 12, 2008 5:45 PM (2 minutes ago)

Have you paid attention to the media at all in the last four years?

it's well and good to behave in a vaguely reaganesque manner and let the david broders of the world connect the dots but doing so "explicitly" is more trouble than it's worth

I don't know - a few carefully worded compliments about Reagan in the debates could be smart for Obama.

Intelligence comes in several flavors. I'll go with Reagan. Not that he was some beacon of brilliance, but he was very effective and his success was not entirely due to his handlers.

GW Bush is easy to underestimate because his flaws outweigh his strengths, which are numerous. Palin is too new to judge, but she looks to be an operator, even if her knowledge and experience are pretty much shallow and provincial. She uses the tools she has to good effect.

Quayle pales in comparison with all these. He was barely passable in the political arena and never shined at any part of his job.

In the NYT magazine story two Sundays ago, Obama distinctly praised some aspects of Reaganomics.

Dubya, Palin, and Quayle couldn't have gotten away with Reagan's greatest bit of oratory.

i lasted 1:40, and could imagine Bush saying nearly every word. sure, Reagan was more generous than he was in that misty Irish way, but i see no evidence of intelligence there.

Yes, but Reagan's the better actor. None of his film performances were better than this, especially when he utters total bullshit ("We don't keep secrets...that's what freedom is."). I kinda admired him when he addressed the children: life is hard, and people die, etc.

Reagan's the better actor

which again is inapposite to the thread

Digressions are more fun.

had to go with the gipper, mostly for the reasons Shakey gave. second might be Palin - but time will tell.

nice to see gabbneb/shakey make the "Reagan is actually dumb coz Hollywood = Los Angeles!" point so resoundingly

new york/san franciscan contempt for socal = yawn

vic, i actually wasn't limiting my Cal 'contempt' to the So, which i love btw

Palin's stupidity hasn't been proven yet in the same way as the others; just her ignorance. she might out-Reagan Ronnie himself just yet. pretty good ...FOR A WOMANG!

between the Reagan library in Simi Valley and the Nixon library in Yorba Linda (neither of which is in LA, thank you) I guess we deserve some singular blame, okay

Just remember that RR was born and grew up in Illinois before college and briefly moved back to Iowa to "make it in radio"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

No surprise.

I couldn't bring myself to vote in this poll.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said that Bush may benefit sometimes from the same sort of perceptions that protected Ronald Reagan: "People always assumed Reagan to be innocent by reason of stupidity, and Bush gets some of that, too," Sabato said. "People really don't think that Bush knew; they assume he simply believed what he was being told by Dick Cheney and other advisors."

Sabato thinks Bush is smarter that that. And in an odd way, it's in Kerry's interest to convince voters that Sabato's right. Recent polling shows Bush's much-vaunted reputation for honesty slipping, and that voters find Kerry -- not Bush -- the more trustworthy candidate. While Bush isn't anywhere near Nixonian levels yet, Sabato says the experience of that era may serve as a cautionary tale for this one. "In 1960, people were already calling him 'Tricky Dick,'" Sabato said. "It always caused you to think whether or not he was telling you the truth. You wouldn't accept anything he said at face value."

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/18/iraq/index1.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/27/uselections2004.comment

http://wonkette.com/228513/ford-carter-a-loser-reagan-a-moron

btw, if you voted for Reagan, how old were you during his admin?

ha. Ford and Carter became great personal friends too.

Quayle is a Principal of Cerberus Capital Management. I don't think there's any question that this is something Palin would not be capable of, nor likely Reagan, and while W is sharp about politics and has an MBA, I'm not sure about him either.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/02/05/bonus_quote_of_the_day_.html

http://img61.exs.cx/img61/690/glowstickcat.gif

Quayle is a Principal of Cerberus Capital Management. I don't think there's any question that this is something Palin would not be capable of, nor likely Reagan, and while W is sharp about politics and has an MBA, I'm not sure about him either.

― and butt (gabbneb), Wednesday, December 17, 2008 1:15 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

And under Quayle's direction, Cerberus saw fit to buy a majority interest in Chrysler. Once a doofus, always a doofus.

yes, i was calling Quayle smart and wise

to be fair, though, almost no-one in finance looks like a genius these days.

Any jackass can become chairman of anything - if they have the right connections.

not 'anything'

ya, like you couldn't become chairman of the moon just through connections.

anyway, Quayle is not chairman of cerberus, but an underling; John Snow is.

I wish there were longer videos of those 2000 GOP debates. The only thing I can get is some Daily Show bullshit and snippets of Allen Keyes from google.....