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1. On presidential dumbness
On Friday, during a rambling statement defending his innocence following a felony conviction less than 24 hours earlier, former president Donald Trump said this about President Joe Biden: “He's the dumbest president we have ever had.”
It was, of course, just a tossed-off line by Trump — another way to insult the man he wants to unseat from the White House this fall.
But it got me to thinking: Who actually was the dumbest president? Is there any consensus? And how would one even go about determining that fact?
Surprisingly (at least to me!), people have tried to figure out our dumbest (and smartest) presidents before!
In 2006, a professor at UC-Davis named Dean Simonton attempted to estimate the IQ’s of all 42 of the men who had been president up to that point. (You can read how he tried to scientifically do that — in detail — here.)
Here’s what he came up with (the final number on the right is the estimated IQ score):
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