Presidential IQ
Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, recently published a study on the intelligence of American presidents in the journal Political Psychology (volume 27, 2006, pp. 511-26). Four IQ estimates were presented for each Chief Executive. The fourth and apparently most up-to-date category, “ages 18-26, corrected for data reliability,” attracted considerable newspaper and magazine interest. In this assessment, all of the presidents scored at least 130, placing them in the top 2.2% of the population. The presidents with the highest IQs were: John Quincy Adams (175), Thomas Jefferson (160), John F. Kennedy (159.8), Bill Clinton (159), Jimmy Carter (156.8), Woodrow Wilson (155.2), Theodore Roosevelt (153), Chester A. Arthur (152.3), and Abraham Lincoln (150).
The lowest IQ belonged to Ulysses S. Grant (130). And just above him, to the delight of the Left, was President George W. Bush (138.5) Simonton discusses Bush at length, noting that the full range of IQ estimates put the president between 111 and 138.5, placing him only above Warren G. Harding on three of the four estimates.
Simonton tells us that the scores are based on accounts of early developments in the lives of the presidents, early published works, an openness to experience, and such traits as inventiveness, curiosity, charisma, and sophistication. The sources include unidentified biographies written by historians and political scientists and the surveys of presidential leadership taken by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and others. Simonton and the other psychologists cited apparently failed to wrestle directly with the often highly revealing primary sources that biographers of every president must encounter. And no one seems to have made the vital distinction in the quality of scholarship between, say, Matthew Josephson and Ari Hoogenboom. To the psychologists, apparently, a biography is a biography, and a poll is a poll.
This study is an example of an academic field known as historiometry. Simonton and social scientist Charles Murray are advocates of this effort to apply a quantitative method of statistical analysis for retrospective data. (Note Murray’s mammoth and highly controversial volume Human Accomplishment.)
I’m a biographer of two of the top nine presidents on Simonton’s list and am highly familiar with the histories of the other seven. In my judgment, this study has little if any value. Let’s take JFK and Chester A. Arthur as examples.
Kennedy was actually given an IQ test before entering Choate. His score was 119. (His assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, once scored 118.) There is no evidence to support the claim that his score should have been more than 40 points higher. As I described in detail in A Question Of Character, Kennedy’s academic achievements were modest and respectable, his published writing and speeches were largely done by others (no study of Kennedy is worthwhile that downplays the role of Ted Sorensen), and his celebrated wit was the often the result of clever political planning. The image of JFK as a charming and cerebral superman was the product of a well financed and carefully thought out plan devised and led by unscrupulous and ambitious Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father. In truth, JFK would have been happy to spend his life as a playboy. That choice became unavailable when his older brother, who had been groomed by his father for the presidency, was killed in World War II. In 1946, the burden fell on the oldest remaining Kennedy male, a sickly and often feckless womanizer. The Kennedy Administration had its successes and failures, but there is little reason to ascribe a brilliance to the president that was invisible during his earlier years.
Chester Alan Arthur was largely unknown before my Gentleman Boss was published in 1975. The discovery of many valuable primary sources gave us a clear look at the president for the first time. Among the most interesting facts that emerged involved his service during the Civil War, his direct involvement in the spoils system, and the bizarre way in which he was elevated to the GOP presidential ticket in 1880. His concealed and fatal illness while in the White House also came to light.
While Arthur was a college graduate, and was widely considered to be a gentleman, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that his IQ was extraordinary. That a psychologist can rank his intelligence 2.3 points ahead of Lincoln’s suggests access to a treasure of primary sources from and about Arthur that does not exist.
This historian thinks it impossible to assign IQ numbers to historical figures. If there is sufficient evidence (as there usually is in the case of American presidents), we can call people from the past extremely intelligent. Adams, Wilson, TR, Jefferson, and Lincoln were clearly well above average intellectually. But let us not pretend that we can rank them by tenths of a percentage point or declare that a man in one era stands well above another from a different time and place.
My educated guess is that this recent study was designed in part to denigrate the intelligence of the current occupant of the White House. It is quite common for both sides in the Culture War to dismiss the opposition as ignorant and stupid, and here we apparently see yet another such effort in the guise of scholarship. Simonton noted that Bush’s “Openness” rating, a factor in gauging intelligence, was zero, whereas Carter received a score of 77.0 out of a possible 100 and Clinton and Kennedy were each awarded 82.0. Try to read the ludicrous justification for these numbers on pp. 520-22 with a straight face. The author concludes that “Bush’s intellect may be more a liability than an asset with respect to his performance as the nation’s chief executive. His strengths most likely lie elsewhere.”
Let us not pretend to be able to calculate the intelligence of historical figures with even reasonable certainty. Let us not confuse the policy decisions of presidents in complex historical settings with intelligence. And let us redouble our commitment as scholars to be fair and impartial.