Is John McCain Smart Enough?

[Brainster]

This perception first began to be voiced in the 1950s, when Eisenhower was running against Stephenson for president. It was widely suggested that Stephenson lost the presidency because hew was too much of an "egghead", talking over people's heads.

Never mind that he flunked out of Harvard Law. Or that Gore flunked out of both law and divinity school, while Bush got an MBA from Harvard. Or that Bush had better grades at Yale than did John Kerry.

Of the last three Republican presidents, two can barely form a coherent sentence and the third was observed to make up his own facts very frequently. Dolts? Certainly not. Neither were they the most brilliant presidents we've ever had. Nixon, on the other hand, really was brilliant, in a Machiavellian sort of way.

I'm surprised you didn't include Ford.

Democrats tend to be populists and a lot of their constituency tend to be poor. Republicans do better with the higher income brackets, and there is a strong correlation between this and college education. So it seems that this statistic is more an artifact of wealth than of education. Yet it seems to be Republicans who rail against "pointy-headed intellectuals" and "effete snobs". For example, some like to insult teachers and lawyers.

I'm not insulting them, and your point is valid that college graduates may be more likely to become Republicans because of their own self-interest.

 

[boloboffin]

That's a fantastic slide right there. Can't argue with that at all.

 

[I Ratant]

That's a fantastic slide right there. Can't argue with that at all.

.
Do the losses in Vietnam show up there?
Shooting wars tend to add to the number of planes lost.
McCain would be a battle loss, not a accident.

 

[boloboffin]

There does seem to be a bump there in the late 1960's and early 1970's, yes.

 

[Tricky]

Never mind that he flunked out of Harvard Law. Or that Gore flunked out of both law and divinity school, while Bush got an MBA from Harvard.

I won't mind it at all, since none of it is true. Stevenson did fail some courses at Harvard where he had been pressured to attend by his father, but did not "flunk out".

Gore did not flunk out of divinity school, he attended on a one-year scholarship then transferred and left to focus on journalism. He left law school to run (successfully) for Congress. He also spent some of what would have been his college years in Viet Nam.

You really need to choose your research team better.

I'm surprised you didn't include Ford.

Should I have? My impression was that he was quite intelligent. I voted for him over Carter. I was very sorry (both immediately and later) when Reagan beat him for the GOP nomination in '76. You see, I understood that the Saturday Night Live routines were just comedy.

I'm not insulting them, and your point is valid that college graduates may be more likely to become Republicans because of their own self-interest.

Yes, the correlation between income and voting patterns is well documented, as is the correlation between income and higher education. Nevertheless, the GOP presidents since Ford have not impressed many people with their intelligence. It might have been otherwise if Dole had been elected. McCain is a good bit better than any of the three too, but still no great mind.

 

[moon1969]

John McCain is obsessed about Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Same way that George W. Bush was obsessed about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Why can"t McCain understand that there are other solutions to Iran? And so what if Iran had nukes? They are not stupid enough to use those nukes against Israel. Iran is trying to destroy Israel by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. So John McCain will need diplomacy. McCain better show more respect to Ahmadinejad. McCain is not smart enough to stop Iran from supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.

 

[Sefarst]

My experience with lawyers is that a very high percentage of them are corporate lawyers (My mom-in-law is one). These guys don't get a lot of attention and indeed many of them never see the inside of a courthouse, but every big company has a whole bank of them. I know that we have the popular image of lawyers as ambulance-chasers (or concerned about the rights of the downtrodden, if you prefer that meme), but in reality, there are lots and lots of them that work for wealthy people or corporations. I don't believe that there is much basis for assuming that lawyers will favor Democrats.

But even among corporate lawyers, they make their money by navigating government regulation. Generally, Republicans tend to lean more in the direction of deregulation while Democrats tend to enact more regulation and government intervention. Even if my client doesn't benefit from the regulation, the fact that the regulation exists gives me a job.

 

[CFLarsen]

As long as he is smarter than Dubya...

 

[Darth Rotor]

There does seem to be a bump there in the late 1960's and early 1970's, yes.

Mishaps tend to occur in bunches, and causal factors have been know to cluster together as well. Whether or not the increased risk exposure was due to massively increased flight training to fill the Viet Nam war's manning requirements had an impact on pushing the human factors (there's a war on, gotta do X, Y, or Z in a training sortie) I cannot recall. What I do know is that helicopters appeared in large numbers first in the 1960's, and shipboard use of them increased substantially in that time period. A lot of them were single engine. (Not so anymore. I lost three engines in my day, but as I always had two, no big deal. ) Over the water, that's a one way ticket to a lost aircraft. Over land, often you can walk away from it and not lose the aircraft.

FWIW

DR

 

[CFLarsen]

Mishaps tend to occur in bunches, and causal factors have been know to cluster together as well.

Evidence?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Evidence?

You are welcomed to contact the Naval Safety Center for any public release briefings they have on the topic. I don't need to, I spent a career inundated by their output.

After about twenty five years of aviation safety training, education, and management, some of the things they were trying to teach me stuck.

DR