The transcript shows that Kerry's freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.
Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade. In addition to Kerry's four D's in his freshman year, he received one D in his sophomore year. He did not fail any courses.
I told you he wasn't smart way back last August. I got a lot of flak for that, so let me just laugh a little over this one. And for old time's sake, here's a link to the classic Guardian article that asked the question: "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush?"
I'm sure their SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead.Well, ha ha ha.
And shame on all the people who imagined they were perceiving brilliance in the man! Movie rental idea of the day: "Being There."
UPDATE: Soxblog, linked at the beginning of my August post, is also enjoying being vindicated.
ANOTHER UPDATE: This post is getting an awful lot of comments! You know what I think? I think everybody misses the old days of the presidential campaign. It was fun, wasn't it, back then, going over all the little things about the candidates? Nothing today is so consistently bloggable. I was glad when it was finally over and there was the new challenge of finding diverse things to blog about every day. But this post was a chance to relive the good old days of blogging about the campaign.
Posts
47 comments:
I remember reading during the 2000 campaign that Bush had higher SAT scores than Gore. But that brings up the question of which, if either of them, took his own SAT test.
Eric: It's new information, which we were deprived of at the time, and I care because people slammed me back then, when I made my inferences at the time when the question of Kerry's intelligence was relevant and relied on as a big argument by his proponents.
And, Eric, he's not smarter than Bush. That's the whole point. People imagined he was smarter, so this is an opportunity to learn something that might be useful to you in the future about how to perceive and analyze the available information.
And the information remains relevant as long as people keep saying Bush is dumb. The response can be, but the other guy was dumber.
Eric: Law school admissions is not just about picking the smartest people. Actually, undergraduate grades are important in admissions in part because they show qualities other than raw intelligence. They show something about character and willingness to work hard and organize oneself!
We also rely on LSAT scores. I don't think we've ever learned what Kerry's LSAT score was. I'd like to know. I think the LSAT is more of an intelligence test than undergraduate grades.
Obviously, there are many indicia of intelligence. My August posts I've linked to examine that at length. I looked at numerous indicia of Kerry's intelligence and said I thought people were wrong judging him to be super-smart. Today's news about his grades is evidence I was right about that. It's not absolute prove but it's some probative evidence.
What I gather from your comment is that you're insulted that we're talking about intelligence as if it mattered. But Kerry supporters then and Bush-haters now made/make a huge deal about it. So be consistent.
Lee: Good points.
Lots of college students, especially freshmen, have emotional and/or substance abuse problems. It's pretty abysmal to get four Ds. I actually don't think it's at all likely that Kerry is as dumb as that makes him look.
And by the way, I don't think Bush is that smart, and clearly, he knows it. But he has a special sort of clarity -- and I know it's something that drives a lot of people up the wall. He's made it work for him.
I think perhaps the smartest people would not be able to function as a President. There's some specialized capacity for handling information that is required, and people rightly worried that Kerry didn't have it. All that nuance stuff. It was worrisome!
Bush is crazy like a fox, a Prince Hal ("Yet herein shall I imitate the sun/Who doth permit the base contagious clouds/To cover up his beauty from the world/Until he please again to be himself . . .")
As for the late, unlamented candidate Kerry, 'nuff said . . . Who remembers Samuel Tilden or John W. Davis?
Frankly, Bush and Kerry went through is pretty much unexceptional, at least in my experience. See, I can empathize with both of them ( at least a bit... )
As a freshamn, I was away from the stucture of home for the first time, unknown freedom of choice and action for the first time, and I made a ton of mistakes. Lost my scholarship, had some priority problems.
I joined the Air Force out of school because I didn't really have any other ideas (went through Officer Training)
Got out of the Air Force and moved to Las Vegas very much adrift. I worked in casinos for 4 years before I got serious.
Went back to grad school, got a degree, met my future wife, got a real job, just had our first baby.
Could we all have made better choices when we were teen age college students? Of course. Hindsight is 20/20 or even 20/15.
Then again, we like to think that we are lead by the best and brightest (and are convinced the the other guy is a dishonest crook), so we get into a lot of speculative character discussion.
Both Pres. Bush, and Sen. Kerry come from priveldged famlies, but did accomplish a lot on their own, once they found their own path. Maybe the path wasn't straight, and had some difficulties, but both are very admirable in their own way.
Eric and Lee:
No, of course grades and SAT's don't determine intelligence. But the knock on Bush for the past 6 or so years has been that he's dumb and only got into Yale because of daddy's connections and see, aha!, he even got C's at Yale, which proves it! The same people also said that Kerry was a smart guy. Well, clearly Kerry had the same grades as Bush, so your evidence for Bush's stupidity is not so strong as it would condemn Kerry as well.
To Ann:
Kerry was rejected from every other law school he applied to: Yale, Harvard, and BU. His admission to BC Law (of which Father Drinan was dean at the time) mysteriously coincided with Kerry stepping down from a run for Congress to let Drinan run instead. I don't know his LSAT scores, but my understanding is that BU is only a recent addition to the list of good law schools. If he got rejected from there, the LSAT scores can't be that good.
Well, recently Bono said that Bush is smart! (I don't have the interview link). Are you gonna disagree with Bono? Huh?
The value in this new information is that the man goes around ACTING as if he's the smartest man alive. And his supporters make conjecture that he's this brilliant man. It's all conjecture, that's the point.
On second thought, did they even have LSAT's back in 1971? I know that the SAT's were introduced around 1969 or so. Don't know when the LSAT's were introduced.
I just wanted to add that the title of this post would make a great title for a steamy Washingtong DC Spring Break video.
Price: Thanks for the big laugh.
Yevgeny: I took the SAT in 1968, and I don't remember it being anything new.
Kerry spent a lot of time in Europe though and learned French there. It doesn't seem to me that he would do as poorly as even a 77 in French class.
I chalk his poor grades up to either the high chocolate content or high sugar content of the brownies.
Emma Morrow: "boxful of shit"
That made me laugh out loud.
I am tired of the all-liberals-are-highly-intelligent meme. I am also tired of the Bush-is-stupid meme.
Both are absurd, and both reflect negatively on the intelligence of the person who spouts them.
I looked up the history of the SAT. It goes back to 1901. I think the LSAT goes back to the 1940s.
From this we deduce that the Dems prefer to be deceived by appearances.
Terrible decision. Kerry should have released these documents long ago. The bad grades would have probably helped his image.
I've never understood why Democrats stake a claim to superior intelligence.
They seem to have no understanding of the fundamental building block of free will.
How can a party on the wrong side of freedom be right about anything?
And John Kerry was on the wrong side.
"Who cares, move on." (why does that sound so familiar?)
dave s.: add "dot org," and I think you'll have your a.n.s.w.e.r.
I agree that college grades may not show necessarily how "smart" someone is. However, anyone that is "smart" should be able to avoid getting four D's in one semester. That is ridiculous.
Regarding the UW Law School Admissions; when I got accepted back in the early 1990s an admissions counselor told me what my predicted average grade was based on my GPA and LSAT score. Amazingly, when I graduated the prediction was almost right on the mark.
"Kerry's college D's"
Well, since he's lost, I guess he can go back to making those "Senators Gone Wild" videos that they could hawk on late night DC cable TV ..."Senator Pelosi, Senator Kerry on line 2."
BTW, in that photo on Instapundit doesn't Kerry really look like "Lurch" from "The Addams Family?"
Might this not make Nader "Thing?" (Morticia Bush: "Thank you, Thing")
Or at least Fred Gwynne from "The Munsters"
I did lousy in college.
I did great on the LSATs.
I chose not to go to Law school, even though I had been accepted because I was aware that my earlier performance was probably a predictor of my future performance and I couldn't justify wasting that kind of money. Smart on my part.
Kerry and Bush, on the other hand, knew what advanced training they wanted, had the means to get it and went and got it.
Both Bush and Kerry have done pretty well for themselves career- wise, I wouldn't argue that either one was very stupid.
Although. . .
I did crummy on the GMATS. Probably wouldn't have even gotten into Fred's Business School and Bait Shop, no matter what my connections.
Hmmmmmm.
Obviously, Business School types don't recognize raw intelligence.
Richard Lawrence Cohen said, "But that brings up the question of which, if either of them, took his own SAT test."
As long as Cohen has brought up this question for which he has provided no evidence, let's bring up some other questions and proceed without evidence.
Let's bring up the question of why he is trying to smear Bush with zero evidence. Let's bring up the question of why Cohen included Gore when the question of Gore taking his own SAT wasn't mentioned during his failed bid for the presidency. Let's bring up this question: was it just so Cohen could appear even-handed?
Also, since Cohen is Althouse's ex-husband, let's bring up this question: is he just upset that his ex-wife was right?
Eric said
"Who cares?...He's still smarter than Bush."
Uh, you care, Eric, or you wouldn't have felt the need to state that Kerry's "still" smarter.
Hats off to you for calling that one early on. And notsurprising ... that was one dumb D-level campaign he ran. I will add this, however: Here was a charisma deficient doofus, with no discernible platform or well-reasoned positions, a campaign based almost entirely on four months in Vietnam three decades ago, an annoying wife, "supporters" who could barely generate a soupcon of enthusiasm (as your description of the Madison Springsteen concert illustrated), running against a man who was, in his won words and in actual fact, a "wartime President," and he still got 49 percent of the popular vote. I mention this in reference to your column complaining about "Joan of Arcadia" and their anti-Bush joke, in the face of Bush's "decisive victory." I think if your charisma and intelligence-challenged opponent gets almost half the vote, the word 'decisive' is decisively not the proper adjective to place in front of victory.
"he still got 49 percent of the popular vote"
I think Kerry can thank the media for that. They were more than happy to carry the water for him during the campaign.
Relevant example: Constant assertions in the media that Kerry was smarter than Bush, and that his muddled position statements were just the nuanced products of a brilliant mind.
Last year I showed that Kerry's score on the Officer Qualification Test he took when he joined the Navy was no better and probably slightly worse than the score George W. Bush made when he took Air Force's equivalent test.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm
When Tom Brokaw asked Kerry about my study, which John Tierney wrote about in the NYT, Kerry told him, "I must have been drinking the night before I took that military aptitude test.”
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_12_06/feature.html
Thanks for the correction. 48 percent does make more sense, given the electoral breakdown.
Ann,
Isn't it funny to watch Liberals claim intellectual superiority based upon grades, SAT scores, etc... then question the value of the tests themselves when the results dispute their claim.
"Don't confuse me with the facts! I know what I think already!"
Heh heh.
ummm, how do debate wins or losses weigh in the final decision of who the winner is at the end of the day?
nothing?
ok, that's what i thought, and don't any Kerry voters try to tell me i think otherwise.
at least there's hope for us 'C' students to marry wealthy and win a seat in Senate. we really do not have to accomplish anything in the end.
Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead. Yet, at this point in the campaign, Bush deserves an A or a high B -- instead of a gentleman's C -- when it comes to neutralizing Kerry's knowledge advantage.
This from the infamous Howell Raines WPost article
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37225-2004Aug26.html)
first blush reaction, BRAWhahahahahaha
I call this Karma.
Peapies,
>
Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush?
>
Me, for one.
To provide somewhat more detail: I got a 1530 on my SAT. I graduated with honor from Princeton. I have spent 15 years living in Texas and voting gleefully against the doofus Bush at literally every opportunity. I have had a lifelong and passionate interest in logic. I have never at any time registered as a Republican and have no intention ever of doing so.
And by the time that bloody campaign was over, I found myself voting for the Shrub, disgustedly ruining my perfect anti-W voting record, due to my conviction that John Kerry was about as capable of putting together a coherent thought as is your average Chihuahua rat-dog.
Look, people who can think clearly, can speak clearly. It's a simple rule. It's an inviolable rule. And trying to figure out what John Kerry thought about any subject under the sun proved impossible, and by the time the campaign was over it was clear that you couldn't figure out what Kerry thought because thought was an activity in which Kerry was simply incapable of engaging.
Do you have any comprehension of what a terrible, disastrously awful, utterly incompetent campaign Kerry ran? Do you realize how easy Bush should have been to beat?
If you tell me how the Democratic Party managed to go back-to-back with Al Gore and John Kerry as their Presidential candidates, then I'll tell you how even the Shrub has found it possible to win one Presidential election after another.
I hope you and the Swift Boat Liars are also feeling vidicated about all the praise these same lying pieces of propaganda said about his military record!? Get some perspective! No one rans ads about his grades--but false, misleading and deceptive ads were run about his military record. Further, the same un-American tactics were used against SEn Mc Cain. Vindicating the use of the outright lies--must make all Bush supporters very proud indeed.
FP
Faithful Progressive: Did you go back and read my August post that I linked to? Apparently not! Here's what I said about that:
As to the question whether Kerry was really a war hero or some sort of war villain, the other and much nastier question that is being asked today, I will only note that if these charges were true, why didn't they come out back when Kerry was conspicuously opposing the Vietnam war and relying on his hero reputation for credibility? The motivation to discredit him was quite strong then. It seems awfully late to be bringing out this material. You may think that all the carping about Bush's military records justifies bashing Kerry's military record, but a key difference between the two attacks is that there wasn't a similiar motivation to attack Bush's record closer in time to the events in question. I think the absence of an earlier challenge of Kerry's record is quite probative. In any case, the attack on Kerry's military record is very ugly and is dragging the political debate to a repulsively low level.
You owe me an apology for lumping me in with other people you don't like! You think you're promoting honesty? Try starting by making the most basic at knowing who you're accusing before starting in with your rant. You didn't even bother to read the post at the link. Pathetic!!!
Ann:
Ok, I apologize-- to some extent. This is important: "In any case, the attack on Kerry's military record is very ugly and is dragging the political debate to a repulsively low level." But the gleeful dirt on D's is the headline from yesterday? Gimme a break! Perspective is what I asked for: Why are undergraduate grades more important than "Vindicating the use of the outright lies"--which is what really came out with Kerry's latest release of records?
ALL BUSH SUPPORTERS owe every veteran an apology for the way their candidate has repeatedly lied about the military records of political opponents, and his own record. To be gleeful over freshman D's in the face of this much more important issue that was settled yesterday illustrates the ethical flabbiness of the right. Cheap shots and lies are the way your party sustains itself--whether it's the ugly Rush right, the Fox fudgers or even those more or less well-meaning folks like you who fall into it from a lack of perspective.
FP
Mod&proud:
And it was ok for the Bush handlers to lie about Sen. Mc Cain, too? Ha, ha, ha--isn't it funny stuff to do push polling that he had lost his marbles in a POW camp? Ha, ha, ha--isn't it delightful that the same people who went on TV lying about Kerry had given him numerous commendations? The Bush campaign was caught in a very ugle lie yesterday--and to me that isn't funny. But of course what's really crucial is Kerry's freshman grades--to me that's pathetic.
FP
I got better grades my frehsman year in French than Kerry did and I didnt' spend summers in France... I didn't get any D's either...
With Kerry, it was all about style and impressions.. the complete opposite of Bush. Kerry had to try and convince everyone that he was some deep thinker...
MOOSE PUCKEY!!!
His long winded perorations were so devoid of content they were laughable..
Thank GOD we have FOUR MORE YEARS of common sense, vision and strength.
During the campaign, Rush said--why won't he sign Form 180, blah,blah blah--so he does and suddenly the really important question is not kerry's military records, where he had been SMEARED for months, but his freshman grades at Yale!! To me that is disgusting, and AA's post played her part in this disgusting bait and switch!!! Apparently that's the way the world should work.
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | June 7, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.
But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him....
FP
over and out
To the poster who suggest that with grade inflation, both Kerry and Bush would now be straight A students, I must respectfully disagree. Back then, getting into Yale as a legacy or the like, as both did, was quite common.
But today, most of these schools have gotten hyper-competitive. As a rough guess, Bush's SAT scores were probably 100 to 150 below the mean at Yale right now. Probably ditto with Kerry and Gore (at Harvard).
In other words, they would struggle to get even the C's and D's they got back then. Probably to no avail.
And this may really be the story behind their bad grades - that those top tier schools were already starting the transition from family connections to meritocracy that has, for the most part, run its course now. They were at the tail end of wide spread legacy admissions at elite universities.
Yes, they did have LSATs back then - I took them for the first time sometime in late 1971 (for a 1972 graduation). I aced them, as I do almost all standardized tests (740 on the, then, 800 pt. scale). But didn't get into a law school due to grades (that were no where near as bad as either Kerry's or Bush's).
The one time in my life that I did not do well on a standardized test was the GMAT, where I scored over a 100 pts lower than my LSATs. So, needless to say, I got my MBA before my JD.
To the poster who suggested that hard work was always better than brains, I would suggest that instead it really depends on the job. Some jobs are handled better by those who just plain work hard. And others can't be handled adequately unless you have the brains.
Obviously, being a politician running for president is in the former category.
But both of my careers, programmer and patent attorney, lend themselves to smart over working hard - not that you don't have to do the later sometimes. But you will never be able to, for example, debug a large scale operating system on pure hard work. It needs a lot of brains to visualize the timing windows. And it is very hard writing patents for inventors a lot smarter than you are. So, if you don't have the IQ of a PhD (not really that hard, as it turns out - their median IQ is almost identical with that of MDs and JDs), probably even higher, you are going to be stuck writing patents on tape-on eyle lashes instead of microprocessors (which, IMHO, is much more fun).
Buma: Go back and read my August post and then come back and make a comment that fits on the blog you think you have a place commenting on.
It can be very misleading to look at a couple of grades and then infer intellect from that.
My college transcript, for instance, shows mediocre-to-abysmal grades on the first page. I dropped out twice and flunked out once. The second page, which covers my last two years, shows me on the honor roll every semester. I then went on to score straight 800s on my GRE.
So look at the beginning of my transcript, and I look a complete screwup. Look at the end, and I look like a star. The truth is somewhere inbetween, I think.
Let's try to judge Kerry & Bush on everything we know about them, and not on the basis of a couple of grades, 'kay?
one thing is certain. the sat is not an intelligence test. too gimicky. test strategies and coaching make too much difference in the scoring. considering that bush went to prep school and probably had an abundance of help in getting ready for the test, i would say his results should be ignored. if bush has a decent iq, he would have released all of his tests -- lsat, gmat, etc. these would prove a consistency that would pretty well prove his brains on standardized tests. obviously, the scores were low or he would have released them to counter all the stupidity claims. that military test results dont appear to be very good, either. ultimately, i dont need a test score to know that bush has limited intellectual ability. just listen to him. by the way my scores on tests weren't so hot either, so i am not on a high horse for those who car: act -- 27; lsat 600; gre 660v,570q. one thing i can say, tho, is i did not study for any of them and only took them once.
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