Althouse: "Hillary may have a higher IQ than Bill and objectively be smarter, but man when it comes to optics and basic politics, she's pretty dumb."

March 17, 2015

"Hillary may have a higher IQ than Bill and objectively be smarter, but man when it comes to optics and basic politics, she's pretty dumb."

A tweet from Liz Mair — quoted in the earlier post about Scott Walker's hiring her as a strategist — prompted me to write this poll:

If you can't see the buttons to vote, go here.

73 comments:

cubanbob said...: None of the above. They both are clever grifters in different but complementary ways.; 3/17/15, 11:58 AM
Mrs. X said...: No 'vote' button is visible on my computer.; 3/17/15, 12:02 PM
clint said...: How are we supposed to know this?

When have we ever seen them work on pattern recognition or memorization in public?; 3/17/15, 12:05 PM
buwaya said...: Bill Clinton has the more prestigious educational history, having completed his whole education on scholarships, having been chosen as a Rhodes scholar, etc.
Both of them have Yale JD's.
Hilary did publish a law review article, which he hasn't.
On the other hand, he is a very talented off-the-cuff speaker and was his own election strategist. She hasn't shown any particular skill in these, or in any other endeavor for that matter.
I have to conclude that he is the brains of the operation.; 3/17/15, 12:06 PM
traditionalguy said...: The winner by a head is Billy Jeff. He learned how to think with both of his heads at the same time for a long time.

But for a tiebreaker Huma says Hillary tastes better.; 3/17/15, 12:07 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Which one of these three passed the bar on first try (i) Barack, (ii) Hillary, or (iii) Michelle. I have not included Bill (Rhodes Scholar) because of course he passed. He is and was smarter than the other three combined.; 3/17/15, 12:08 PM
Tank said...: Bill, of course.

But, I'm really intrigued by the 26% (currently) that picked, "The entire topic of IQ is too stupid or offensive to talk about. "

The topic of intelligence, as related to Presidents, is too stupid or offensive to talk about? It is?; 3/17/15, 12:12 PM
From Inwood said...: This kind of stuff is what is known as, & I hate to get technical here, nonsense.

BTW, why do Hil supporters robitically aver that she is "brilliant"?; 3/17/15, 12:12 PM
Mrs. X said...: If there were a button, I'd vote for Bill who is, in the immortal words of an Althouse commenter, both sympathetic and a predator.; 3/17/15, 12:13 PM
traditionalguy said...: But your poll left out Meade. He is the smartest man alive.; 3/17/15, 12:14 PM
Fernandinande said...: "A combination of charm and low cunning."; 3/17/15, 12:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Of course, Bill & Hill are both fairly bright and intelligent. But I would say their values are corrupted. Bill, I'm sure, doesn't believe in much of anything except his own political (exceptional)viability. I have seen WJC in person twice and he is amazingly good at working a crowd, but its more like an improvised performance or an act.Since his presidency, their greed has assumed huge proportions. Yes, the Clintons are deeply corrupted.; 3/17/15, 12:20 PM
tim maguire said...: How about Liz Muir's IQ? This strikes me as a very poor way to get started in her job.; 3/17/15, 12:22 PM
Sal said...: Hillary is super smart except in areas that pertain to her chosen profession.; 3/17/15, 12:23 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Billy by a long chalk. Hillary has never struck me as intelligent at all. Sly and manipulative, yes, but so are plenty of people who are dumber than dogshit.; 3/17/15, 12:24 PM
tim maguire said...: Tank said...The topic of intelligence, as related to Presidents, is too stupid or offensive to talk about? It is?

I didn't vote, that's how I would if I did. There's no evidence that a smarter president is a better president. Such talk just muddies the water.; 3/17/15, 12:24 PM
rhhardin said...: Bill is smarter than Hillary.

Hillary's lies are lies that would fool her. This runs at about a 95 IQ level.; 3/17/15, 12:26 PM
lgv said...: I'm not sure practical wisdom is the right description, but I understand the point. He's not that smart, but a skilled communicator and persuader. He's more of a people person. I heard it referred to as empathy. Bills may be real or pretend, whereas Hillary seems to have zero empathy for her audience.; 3/17/15, 12:27 PM
MadisonMan said...: A better question: Who is better at taking IQ tests?; 3/17/15, 12:30 PM
Revenant said...: I'm casting my vote for "I don't know, and what's more I don't give a rat's ass."; 3/17/15, 12:31 PM
Martha said...: Bill is clearly an exceptional talent but undisciplined.
Hillary is a plugger, the workhorse who grinds away.
She is smart enough but no genius.
I knew her at Wellesley where she stood out because of her aggressiveness (and shrillness) in a school filled with docile polite bright upper class women.; 3/17/15, 12:32 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: I voted for the "IQ is offensive" button.

But that's because--as a practicing lawyer for many years--I was, on many occasions, surrounded by educated fools. In fact I'd warrant that Ms. Althouse as a law professor, could make the same objective evaluation of her colleagues.

We are told, on scant evidence, that Barack Hussein Obama was the brightest individual to be named President of the United States since Thomas Jefferson. (A claim obviously made by some of those educated fools.)

There are too many different types of intelligence to focus on just IQ. In many areas of intelligence Hillary and Bill (for that matter) are dumber than a bag of hammers. That goes in spades for Barack.

Give me street smarts, some ability to understand and empathize with people, an analytical mind, a modicum of understanding and education in economics, history, and political science--and you'll have a decent President.

Let me count the ways that Hillary, Bill, and Barack fail that test.

Degrees, whether earned, or in Barack's case "given", up the ying yang do not a wise man--or decent President--make.; 3/17/15, 12:37 PM
tim maguire said...: From Inwood said...BTW, why do Hil supporters robitically aver that she is "brilliant"?

It's a conceit among liberals, the cult of the intelligentsia, that good people are smart, smart people are good, bad people are dumb, dumb people are bad.

They say she's brilliant because there is no other way to justify their support for her. Like Democrats in 2008 going on and on about the sublime, almost radiant, intelligence that is Barack Obama. Never mind that he never said or did anything particularly smart, he just was. Because he must be.; 3/17/15, 12:41 PM
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...: The same people who think the topic of IQ is offensive spend the other half of their day calling conservatives stupid.; 3/17/15, 12:47 PM
Meade said...: traditionalguy said...
"But your poll left out Meade. He is the smartest man alive."

F--king A, tradguy! But man, when it comes to optics and basic politics, [I'm] pretty dumb.; 3/17/15, 12:50 PM
Rusty said...: Judging by their behavior both barely have double digit IQs.; 3/17/15, 12:57 PM
Rick in Oregon (ex-Chicagoan) said...: When Bill speaks, I can understand him (not that I like what he has to say!) When Hillary speaks I hear lot of double talk and garbage like "Corporations don't create jobs"
Hillary seems to have a low IQ when speaking. May her IQ only kicks in at other times.; 3/17/15, 1:00 PM
Balfegor said...: I think Bill Clinton probably has a higher IQ, but that his high IQ is also basically irrelevant to his political success. True, he was, much more so than Bush II or Obama, intellectually engaged with the details of policy, but I'm not sure that his intellectual engagement made policies better (though, to his credit, they also didn't make them worse as far as I can tell). And I don't think real engagement with policy details matters much to voters, as evidenced by their decision to put Bush II and Obama in the presidency after him.

Clinton's brains didn't win him political success -- it was a mix of charm and low peasant cunning. Of which his wife has neither.; 3/17/15, 1:03 PM
jimbino said...: I don't consider a person intelligent or well-educated who isn't schooled in STEM and who can't speak English and a second language.

Margaret Thatcher was close to perfect and Angela Merkel, physicist and fluent in several languages, certainly is.

We haven't had a decent president or SCOTUS justice for decades.; 3/17/15, 1:05 PM
jr565 said...: I thnink he outclasses her on all kinds on intelligence.; 3/17/15, 1:08 PM
hombre said...: IQ is sort of out of vogue with professing egalitarian lefties. Looking back, it seems to me that people who scored higher on those test were demonstrably more intelligent than those who scored lower.I guess that's why.

Eliminate the evidence.; 3/17/15, 1:15 PM
Brando said...: I couldn't begin to imagine what their respective IQs are, or which is "smarter" on most subjects. I don't doubt that either is smart when it comes to retaining knowledge, reasoning and analyzing concepts. I figure they couldn't have achieved what they did if they were both total idiots.

But when it comes to political savvy, hands down Bill has it and Hillary doesn't. Had it not been for Bill, she may have gone on to a judgeship, or been a law partner in Chicago or Washington, but politics is just not something she has aptitude for or a genuine interest in. Bill, I'm told, knows how to work a crowd and can read tea leaves well enough to know when to fish and when to cut bait. Hillary, at best, tries to copy that but it's clear she doesn't have those instincts and didn't really learn that much from the experience.; 3/17/15, 1:23 PM
Paddy O said...: I think the assumption shows how many people correlate intelligence with intellectualism. Both Clinton and GWB are very intelligent but neither are intellectuals, they don't project themselves primarily as thinkers. People who are themselves not as smart tend to require cues of supposed intelligence: intellectual demeanor, academic credentials, reserved approach. Some of the smartest people don't need to put on the show.; 3/17/15, 1:23 PM
Paddy O said...: Hillary is more the hard worker type of intellectual, not brilliant, but willing to put the time in. Sort of a less friendly Leslie Knope.

Bill is smart enough that he can get away with a lot more distractions (sometimes); 3/17/15, 1:25 PM
damikesc said...: Where is the proof of this high IQ?

She seems to be a doddering old woman who is barely able to function.; 3/17/15, 1:26 PM
mccullough said...: Bill is smarter than Hillary and Obama is smarter than Bill.

I have no idea what any of their IQs are but Obama has owned Bill Clinton; 3/17/15, 1:29 PM
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...: There are plenty of "intellectuals" who are not very smart. Read a collection of essays from edge.org called "This Idea Must Die."

Incidentally, IQ was one of them, because sometimes people have, you know, "high social intelligence," meaning, of course, the right opinions.

"Free Will" another idea that must die, on account of the illusion of freedom gets in the way of so much beneficial social engineering.

Don't get me started.; 3/17/15, 1:32 PM
Wilbur said...: Bill is the greatest retail politician I've ever seen. He is unsurpassed at conveying sincerity and empathy. And he has a formidable intellect, certainly when it comes to discussing public policy.

But to suggest he's flawed is to understate by lightyears.; 3/17/15, 1:56 PM
David said...: Hillary went to Wellesley and Yale Law. She was an "honors" graduate at Wellesley but not Phi Beta Kappa or cum laude. In other words she was more or less an average student at an above average college. (She was however a highly impactful personality on campus.) She was also not a high academic success at Yale, but seems to have done well.

In other words, she's smart enough but nothing brilliant. She's surely smart enough to be President, but big time smarts is not the highest qualification for the Presidency. She has made some very dumb decisions, as all smart people do, but hers seem more dumb and more frequent than one might wish for a president. And of course the integrity thing.; 3/17/15, 1:59 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I'm guessing they're about the same. I think the IQs of married people generally are.; 3/17/15, 2:13 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Freeman Hunt, there is indeed a high correlation coefficient between married people.

I keep seeing "Liz Mair" and thinking "Liz Phair". Have these two been seen together?; 3/17/15, 2:17 PM
David said...: Since smart people are constantly making dumb decisions, is anyone really smart?

Another reason to favor collective decision making by a democratic and/or collaborative process than executive and judicial individual actions.; 3/17/15, 2:17 PM
David said...: Wilbur said...
Bill is the greatest retail politician I've ever seen.

Measured by results, there are very few great politicians. Bill Clinton is not one of them.; 3/17/15, 2:19 PM
Anonymous said...: In old-style Dungeons and Dragons we talked about the two distinct traits of "intelligence" and "wisdom."; 3/17/15, 2:23 PM
Eric said...: Bill. Likely it's not even close. And for the idea that Obama owns Bill, that's silly.; 3/17/15, 2:24 PM
tim maguire said...: I once thought it would take decades to recover from the damage wrought by Bill Clinton. 8 months later he was irrelevant.

An Obama presidency may not stop mattering quite so quickly, but it (and he) will stop mattering much faster than most of us suspect.; 3/17/15, 2:24 PM
n.n said...: It sounds like she is distancing herself from the Clinton faction. There has been an ongoing reorganization of left-wing factions since Obama's faction sabotaged Clinton's presidential campaign and divested of former left-wing leaders.; 3/17/15, 2:31 PM
Rumpletweezer said...: Are any of them smart enough that you would let them tell you what to do in your personal life?; 3/17/15, 2:50 PM
Quaestor said...: Definitely Bill. Why? Because he's unprincipled enough to condemn racists and imperialists in whatever vehement terms are required by his audience, yet accept a racist imperialist's money when it's offered, and he's foxy enough to keep the hypocrisy tightly bound within the realm of ah shucks...

Hillary is just as unprincipled, but her reaction to embarrassing optics is to back into a corner and hiss.; 3/17/15, 3:03 PM
Quaestor said...: In old-style Dungeons and Dragons we talked about the two distinct traits of "intelligence" and "wisdom."

I like that D&D analogy. In creating a character there were two vital traits, intelligence and charisma, which as I recall, were were determined by rolls of a twenty-sided die. Applying the analogy Bill rolled a 14 for intelligence and an 18 for charisma. Hillary rolled a 15 and a 3 respectively.; 3/17/15, 3:27 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: Hillary is probably somewhat smarter than Robert Durst...unfortunately.

Bill is a great deal smarter than Robert Durst - and more educated actually, having inherited the distilled wisdom of generations of con men from Hot Springs, Arkansas and there's more - but he almost outsmarted himself one time, when he exiled Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky to the same office!

And, really, having Joshua L. Steiner lie to his diary was really quite stupid.

His coverups are overly complicated.; 3/17/15, 3:30 PM
grackle said...: But your poll left out Meade. He is the smartest man alive.

Perhaps. But certainly the luckiest.; 3/17/15, 3:33 PM
Paul said...: Pity the IQ test does not look to see if you have common sense.

See Bill has lots of that while Hillary has none.

Hence Bill could survive his mistakes without having to do overt stuff like hide the White Water Documents, raid Vince Foster's office, get fingerprints all over the FBI files she read, Benghazi, emails, etc...

Bill had the horse sense to anticipate the problems (except a blue dress) and overcome all of them.; 3/17/15, 3:41 PM
The Godfather said...: You're smart enough, Hillary."; 3/17/15, 4:32 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: Hillary Clinton is a much better actress than Bill Clinton.; 3/17/15, 4:42 PM
Beldar said...: I question the premise.; 3/17/15, 4:51 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Sorry about the malfunctioning poll... pollcode.com doesn't seem to work too well anymore.

I put up a link to the page where you can vote and see the results. The answer I picked is winning by a mile.; 3/17/15, 6:07 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I voted with the majority - Bill!!

What must be remembered is that she was really pre-Baby Boom, or at best, a very early Boomer. Which is to say that those schools got much, much harder to get into later. I think that we can probably say the same thing about most of the top tier politicians of that age who went to Ivy League schools (GW Bush, AlGore, Kerry, both Clintons, etc.) - most of them wouldn't make the waiting lists today, absent significant financial contributions to the schools by their families.

Hillary! can't be that smart. Just the idea that she could run her own email server, in order to control accountability when she was Secretary of State, and then run for President, is pretty brain dead. And, then to say that she did it because she couldn't figure out how to use more than one phone is ludicrous, esp. since most of the country is probably smarter than she in that regard. Of course she was going to get caught.; 3/17/15, 6:32 PM
Michael said...: I'm not convinced she is smarter by any means, she seems a very conventional brain, but in any case, I stick by a line I've been saying for 15 years: without Bill, she'd have been a reasonably competent undersecretary of Health and Human Services under President Babbitt, and we'd never have heard of her.; 3/17/15, 6:34 PM
Big Mike said...: Objectively speaking, Hillary Clinton is dumber than dirt. Her book, It Takes a Village, was utterly sophomoric. I can't be bothered to read her latest drivel.; 3/17/15, 6:40 PM
Michael K said...: "True, he was, much more so than Bush II or Obama, intellectually engaged with the details of policy, but I'm not sure that his intellectual engagement made policies better (though, to his credit, they also didn't make them worse as far as I can tell). "

I agree with this but I also agree with the STEM comment. They are just two different things which is why Silicon Valley votes so stupidly.

I was talking to a guy joining the Navy today who has a BS on Computer Science and we were laughing at Hillary and Bill hiring a SPAM filter company to read all their e-mails on their private server.

He couldn't believe they could be so dumb when I first told him.

Two cultures; one knows about logic and the other knows about politics.; 3/17/15, 6:45 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Can ANYBODY quote ONE intelligent thing Hillary Clinton, Sooper Genius, ever said?; 3/17/15, 6:50 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/17/15, 7:08 PM
Scott said...: While personal impressions are often misleading (at best), I have had the opportunity to interact with Bill, Hillary, and GW, and offer the following observations:

Bill is almost supernaturally charming when he chooses to be, and has a wonderful facility for at least a superficial mastery of a subject if he finds it interesting. Add to that he is a quick study par excellence. Beyond that, however, there is no real depth, and he has a tendency to outrun his superficial (that word again!) grasp of material very, very quickly.

Hillary - inhumanly dedicated, and as long as her temper holds, extremely disciplined. When her temper breaks, she loses it, and can become frighteningly unhinged. One of the earlier posters referred to her as 'shrill', and that strikes me as entirely accurate. With that said however, her work ethic is incredible, which makes her seem more capable than she really is. As a minor note, her resentment of Bill (his charm, not his infidelity) is palpable, and she does a very bad job of hiding it.

GW - easily the smartest of the three, though he hides it very well. Somewhere along the line, however, he found a deep sense of peace (his faith perhaps?) and as a result he seems to have lost interest in engaging with a lot of people on that level. As a result, he comes off as not terribly bright in a way that Bill (whose facile charm leads him to almost compulsively light up whatever environment he is in) would never allow himself to do.

I am certainly biased, but while Bill and GW are suitable (though both deeply flawed) presidents, Hillary would be a disaster. If she manages to grow her base beyond post-menopausal women, we could be in very serious trouble.; 3/17/15, 7:08 PM
Zach said...: I'm so old, I remember when all the sycophantic articles were talking about how smart *Bill* was!

That said, if you look at all the presidents since Nixon, Bill's the only one with an overachiever's biography. Even before he was famous, he kept on getting selected for desirable and competitive positions despite lots of superficially similar candidates.

When a poor white boy from Nowhere, Arkansas gets tapped to go to Yale, works for Senator Fullbright, gets a Rhodes Scholarship, etc... All those people must be seeing something.

The job as a law professor in Arkansas is an exception, but it's the exception that proves the rule, since it was clearly a launching ground for a statewide political career.

Obama has Harvard Law Review, which is big, and he got a nice job at the University of Chicago, which is also big. But his high school and undergraduate careers were nothing special, and his career stalled out for a long time after getting the Chicago job. I don't think anybody at the time was looking at the Chicago faculty and picking out Obama as the cream of the crop.

That's a tough standard -- but I think it's clear from the record that people were picking out Bill as the cream of whatever crop he happened to be in for many years before he was famous.; 3/17/15, 7:21 PM
Saint Croix said...: Bill would be smarter if he didn't have a penis. I think he's got a bigger brain than his wife. But his little brain often tells his big brain what to do. It's a big brain, run by a little brain. Plus he often hides his big brain, so if you're not paying attention you might not realize how smart he is. Except for that damn little brain. If he injured his penis in an industrial accident, he'd be super-smart.

Hillary's smart. The problem with Hillary is not how smart she is, but how smart she thinks she is. She thinks she's ten times smarter than she is. It's her arrogance that makes her an idiot. If she had a penis that caused her to fuck up all the time, and a wife who was a nag and a scold, she'd be a way better politician.; 3/17/15, 8:04 PM
Titus said...: Did you see what the bitch said when she was covering the family values Iowa pube speeches? I love her. She pissed off Iowa republicans and farm subsidies.

Who can be mean to Iowa though? It's such a nice state.

She will be gone tomorrow.

tits.; 3/17/15, 8:29 PM
Saint Croix said...: Bill Clinton's little brain is super arrogant. Here's his little brain, ordering him to appear on the cover of Esquire. "Suck it, bitches!" You know that's not actually smart, Bill.

Later on, when his big brain is back in control, he's saying to himself, "What the hell was I thinking?" And Hillary is saying to him, "What the hell were you thinking?" And Bill can't answer her. He can't explain how his little brain had seized control, because then she would lock him up for schizophrenia. But it's a scientifically valid theory, damn it! But he's not going to mention it. All he can do is agree with Hillary, boy that sure was stupid.

Meanwhile his little brain is lying low, waiting for his next opportunity. Bill Clinton's penis is like Lex Luthor, a little bald man who is Up To No Good.; 3/17/15, 8:30 PM
Joe said...: On what basis can we determine Hillary's intelligence since I've never heard her say anything remotely intelligent? Like Obama, people make claims that simply aren't backed up by any objective evidence.; 3/17/15, 9:23 PM
Beldar said...: Although Bill's been forced to surrender his Arkansas law license, and although they both passed that state's exam, I don't recall Bill flunking any bar exams. Hillary flunked the DC bar and never re-took it.

Not conclusive of anything. Just sayin', though.; 3/17/15, 9:28 PM
Unknown said...: This reminds me of a saying I hear from family law attorneys, reminding themselves not to become too emotionally invested in their own client's side of the story: "10s don't marry 2s."; 3/18/15, 8:20 AM
Titus said...: and she's gone; 3/18/15, 10:57 AM
Anonymous said...: Bill & Hill - Faust ain't the half of it.

Excellent thread.; 3/18/15, 2:53 PM