If there was a game show like are you smarter than a fifth grader, but instead it is are you smarter than previous President George Bush Jr. and twice impeached previous President Trump is the first contestant would Trump win? So basically who is smarter the 43rd or 45th?

  • Crack0n7uesday
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    11 months ago

    An IQ test, Bush is a pretty smart dude despite his portrayal in modern media, he would probably win.

    • khannie
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      11 months ago

      Dubya was definitely way smarter than the media portrayed him at the time. He did very well in the debate against Gore.

      I read that the whole “fool me once” gaffe was down to him not wanting to be have a sound bite of him saying “shame on me”, copped it mid sentence then tried to cobble his way out of it. Not sure how true or accurate that is but it is at least plausible.

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        11 months ago

        I believe it. I also love that phrase and now consider it the official Texas version.

    • mad_asshatter
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      11 months ago

      This.

      Bush is extremely intelligent, and thrives on (loves that) people think he’s a dummy.

      The “God told me” shit was horribly dumb, though.

      • Crack0n7uesday
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        11 months ago

        He ran on the whole “I’m the guy you meet up with at the local bar after a long day of hard work” campaign. He was electable because he seemed relatable (I know he went to Yale and had a childhood we could only dream of, but to the average American at the time he was your neighbor, that was his campaign and it was genius).

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I think this is going extreme the other way. He is not as stupid as he seemed but I would not say he is extremely intelligent. That being said there is a big difference between harvard and University of Pennsylvania and there is a big difference between stem majors and business majors. Being a pilot is no easy task either. It is way easier to accomplish these things of course with money and connections. So while he is not as stupid as he is caricatured as (much like ford is not as clumsy as he is made out to be) I would be surprised if he is much above average in intelligence. Im not sure what you even call things like decorm or whatnot. I mean the guy gave the german prime minister a shoulder message out of the blue.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I tend to favour Hanlon’s Razor. It makes much more sense that this dumbass old rich guy stumbled his way into the whitehouse by saying just the right combination of old rich guy nonsense that got American conservatives excited. Tons of powerful people took advantage of him for tons of different reasons. It’s why he was never consistent on anything. He’d be pro- something and then meet with someone in a backroom and suddenly be anti- that thing. His cabinet was full of Dick Cheneys.

      If you look at Trump through the lens of “dumb spoiled rich guy who didn’t really want the job anymore as soon as he realized how much work it actually was”, everything he does makes perfect sense. He was a useful idiot for the wealthy elites to do their regulatory capture. Basically Reagan all over again. They even used the same campaign slogan.

      • Today
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        11 months ago

        I had to google Hanlon’s razor. For Trump I’ll go with a combo of malice (revenge) and stupidity. For the rest it’s greed and narcissism. From wiki- Douglas W. Hubbard quoted Hanlon’s razor and added “a clumsier but more accurate corollary …: ‘Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.’”

  • marcos
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    11 months ago

    Well… Are you going to do the work of digging through whatever those two speak to determine if their answers are right, if they are answers, or if they mean anything at all?

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    The better question is; would the next GOP President be able to win Are You Smarter Than Former President Trump, or will the downward trend continue?