with US Senator Patty Murray, D-WA
shaking hands with VP Biden, 2011
… but I’m sane enough to know I would never want the job!
This afternoon I was wondering how smart our Presidents have been, IQ-wise. So I went online to find out.
In a surprise twist, it turns out that my IQ (145.1) is higher than most of our 44 chief executives! Go ahead: knock me over with a feather.
According to US News, “The average IQ score in the general population is 100; about 118 for a college graduate. All the U.S. presidents have [had] higher IQs than that.” According to Daniel Blake , Christian Post Contributor, “110 to 119 is considered “Superior Intelligence” and 120 to 129 is considered “Very Superior Intelligence.” A score of 130 to 139 is considered “Gifted,” and 140 or above is considered “Genius or Near Genius.”
Only John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton had/have higher IQs than I do. Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter and I share the same number (145.1). Every other President has/had a lower IQ than I do. I’m flabbergasted! (What a great word, flabbergasted. I need to look up where it came from.)
Can you guess who the five lowest-IQ Presidents were? One of them was President during your lifetime even if you were born in the year 2000. Yeppers. W. He came in at an estimated IQ of 124, six IQ points lower than his daddy, the first President Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
Here’s the list of the five lowest-IQ Presidents, in descending order: Andrew Johnson, George.W Bush, Warren G. Harding, James Monroe, and Ulysses S. Grant. (Here’s the URL to the entire list: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/05/27/poindexter-in-chief-presidential-iqs-and-success-in-the-oval-office).
President Obama’s IQ has been estimated (professionally, not my pundits) to be somewhere between 138 and 145. That seems about right to me.
So tonight I’m feeling mighty special. Don’t worry. I’ll get over it by morning. The recent Thumbtack award and Alignable’s recent profile of/interview with me makes me feel better than my IQ does.
A high IQ can be a double-edged sword. I can’t get enough mental stimulation most days to satisfy me. Small talk frustrates me. I want to talk about big things, important things, life-changing things. My mind is nearly always on overdrive–on some kind of quest to discern or discover something it senses is just out of reach. It makes for a fascinating life, but I often feel separate from almost everyone else–on the outside looking in, and I rarely find a sufficiently-large tribe of kindred spirits to feel truly understood and comfortable among. I look for readers, seekers, self-actualized individuals… you know, the outliers, the “weird” people.
People LIKE you!
I wear a shirt that reads “Blessed are the weird people–the writers, artists, dreamers and outsiders–for they force us to see the world differently.”
I’m an eternal optimist. I think it’s my IQ that undergirds the optimism. I see possibility everywhere–and a happy ending no matter what, as long as we focus on and head toward the outcomes we want instead of the ones we dread or fear. It’s a known fact that if a driver sees a dangerous obstacle in the roadway ahead and tries to avoid it by focusing on it, he inevitably hits it. It’s when he sees the obstacle and focuses his attention on the escape route that leads away from the obstacle that he avoids hitting it.
My brain is nearly always looking for the route that leads to the happiest ending.
