IQ battle: Bush vs. Kerry

Steve Sailor researches deep into the theory that Kerry is smarter than the Bush. He uncovers some interesting results. While he doesn't adamantly prove that Bush is smarter than Kerry, he certainly points to there being no evidence that Kerry is smarter than Bush. The final concluding paragraphs are especially interesting.

The subtle difference between Bush and Kerry in two words: Bush is competitive and Kerry is ambitious.

Bush, by nature and by upbringing in the hyper-rivalrous Bush-Walker clan, is driven by a need to win.

If he'd been born into a family where his father owned the biggest junkyard in town, he'd be scrapping to own the biggest junkyards in two towns. By chance, he happened to be born into a family where to earn top honors requires him to win not one, but two Presidential elections. This helps explain the President's striking lack of interest in the content of his job—being President is just a means to an end (of beating his Dad).

For Kerry, in contrast, being President is the end, the goal of the last 45 years of his life. He came from a family background where this burning ambition to be President was unlikely but hardly unthinkable, just unusual. At prep school, his naked flame of ambition made him a bit of an outsider among the sons of the hyper-rich who strove for nonchalance.

In Vietnam, Kerry was certainly brave, and relatively few men on his boat ended up hating him (which is an above average performance for an officer in Vietnam). But he was always a glory hog. In the Senate, he has mostly seemed to bide his time, being liberal enough to get re-elected in Massachusetts, but keeping a low enough profile that the GOP couldn't hang the "Massachusetts Liberal" moniker on him as effectively as they did on Michael Dukakis.

Kerry has generally tried to portray himself as an intellectual, which has been a successful strategy for him in college-crowded Massachusetts.

In contrast, 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.

Soon we shall see whether Kerry can beat him by trying to outsmart him.

Obviously he didn't. Does America vote for the dumber president? Are we afraid or unwilling to have someone intellectually superior to ourselves?

And for a really wild theory: Does Bush know all this and purposely does nothing to refute any low intelligence perceptions of himself?