> > Academic intelligence does not necessarily equate
> >to leadership ability, to administrative ability, to
> >diplomatic ability, etc. It helps, yes, but it
> >doesn't hurt to "only" score a 1220 on your SAT (I
> >think that's what Bush got...it was in some article
> >I read a while ago...)
>
> "Only"? Hell, I got a 1220 on my SAT and I was and am pretty durn proud of that. Also keep in mind that when the tests were redesigned a few years ago, the average score went up about 200 points from what I've heard. So all the kiddies in one of the other threads who were patting themselves on the back for their 1400s and 1500s would have probably scored a lot closer to what Mr Bush and I did on the older style test I took. I don't know much about the statistics, but I daresay that when Bush took the SAT, 1220 was stastically a much better score than it is today.
>
> -- Dave

Naturally. Hence the quotes around the word "only." ;-P

But yes, 1220, even *today*, is at the high end of average, something I had wanted to mention but evidently forgot to. And as you said, if Bush were given an SAT to take right *now*, he'd score just as well as the rest of /us/.

Perhaps my main point, which I managed to deftly avoid, was that the guy is *not* the moron that the (distinctly anti-Bush) media around here likes to portray him as. The guy's smart. Idiots don't become presidents. (Unless you count Carter. ;-) But even still, I bet that man was a heck of a lot smarter than people give him credit for.) Like Stephen said (I think it was Stephen, anyways), the guy's just a horrible speaker. And in politics, as we all know, it's all about portrayal, not what you've *really* got upstairs, or how you get things done behind closed doors.

The Other Matthew