Is It Important to Have a High IQ to be a Good President?

The term good president is up for interpretation, so for the purpose of this article I’m going to allow the historians and presidential scholars determine what a good President is C-Span released it’s list on Presidents Day of the most popular presidents as compiled by 46 historians, placing Abraham Lincoln in first place and George W. Bush in 36th place out of our 42 past presidents. Here is a list of the top ten along with our more recent presidents and their IQ scores as reported in recent study in the Journal: Political Psychology.

1. Abraham Lincoln -145
2. George Washington – 130
3. FDR -141
4. Teddy Roosevelt -144
5. Harry Truman – 125
6. JFK -156
7. Thomas Jefferson -160
8. Dwight Eisenhower -131
9. Woodrow Wilson -148
10. Ronald Reagan – 128
11. Lyndon Johnson – 125
15. Bill Clinton – 154
18. George H. Bush – 128
22. Gerald Ford – 124
25. Jimmy Carter -149
27. Richard Nixon – 129
36. George W. Bush – 121

It appears that there is little correlation between popularity and intelligence even though the lowest IQ score and lowest in popularity is held by the same president on this list. What we do know is that the popularity numbers will change. Harry Truman, for example had a lower approval rating when he left office then George W. Bush but Harry is now ranked at number 5 in current popularity.

The numbers that I would like to see change on this list is the IQ numbers. The world has become far to complicated to have a person with an average IQ (100 to 125) running the show. There are important decisions being made that are effecting far to many people to have anyone less then a skilled chess player (IQ of 150 to 180) in the position of President of the United States.

Over the past eight years decisions about invading countries, the reductions of qualifications to purchase homes, the structures of financial instruments, and the monitoring of our financial systems have had disastrous global consequences.
We scrutinize our prospective presidents religious beliefs, prior use of drugs, marital status, sexual orientation, prior affiliations and prior experience. We dig into every aspect or their past lives but we don’t investigate their ability to make good decisions; their intelligence. For our own survival let’s make an IQ test a part of the application process for future Presidents of the United States.