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Are politicians unintelligent?

Are politician unintelligent?


  • Total voters
    25
Watch this... then answer...


That was the first thought that came to mind when i saw this poll. I think the lesson is, we don't elect our politicans based on their intelligence.
 
Politicians are people just like everyone else. Some are more intelligent than others. I would guess though that the majority of politicians on the federal level are above average in terms of how smart they are (or at least how educated they are).
 
I think the median politician is probably still in the top 5% of intelligent people in this country.

It's easy to forget that even though someone is good at pandering or happens to disagree with you, they can still be smart as all ****. There are some legitimately brilliant people in Congress.
 
I always like to see Ivy League grads on the campaign trail wearing plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up. They give plain talk speeches, kiss babies, and shake everyone's hand that they possibly can. In the entertainment biz it's called 'working the crowd'. It actually requires a lot of skill. It's a skill that unintelligent people probably couldn't muster.

So I voted no, they are not unintelligent.
 
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What do you think? And before going for the obvious answer, have a think about it, do you genuinely think one can become a politician and not be intelligent?

Not necessarily as individuals, but the networks supporting them have distributive intelligence.

Ideological appeal is essential. Problem solving and higher reasoning can be delegated to secretaries and strategists.
 
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Compared to what appears to be the average american, I guess not. Compared to, say, the Founding Fathers, about 95% of them are idiots. I hate the anti-intellectualism trend in modern politics.
 
Compared to what appears to be the average american, I guess not. Compared to, say, the Founding Fathers, about 95% of them are idiots. I hate the anti-intellectualism trend in modern politics.

What exactly are you basing this on? I know it's cool to pretend that the founding fathers were these mythological demigods, but they were just politicians too. It's not like they had some supernatural form of intelligence that no longer exists.
 
Some are some aren't.
To suggest otherwise is to generalize.
If most of them are unintelligent? No, don't think so, I think most are above your average intelligence, but it's not like I've went out and researched the topic right?
 
What exactly are you basing this on? I know it's cool to pretend that the founding fathers were these mythological demigods, but they were just politicians too. It's not like they had some supernatural form of intelligence that no longer exists.

Yes but one of them was Ben Franklin, he has invented the lightning rod, which is still used all around the world to this day.
What did your currently existing politician invent?
 




some of them are, some of them aren't...as you can tell by the videos I have supplied you with.
 
Every elected official should go through testing of knowledge and intelligence. Testing on finance, math skills, US government, world governments, history, negotiations, business operations.... etc. This is while running for office. The test scores would be available to view for everyone.
 
You mean IDIOTS. :)
 
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Every elected official should go through testing of knowledge and intelligence. Testing on finance, math skills, US government, world governments, history, negotiations, business operations.... etc. This is while running for office. The test scores would be available to view for everyone.

What a waste of time and redundant. The whole campaigning process is essentially the time where the public/media get to prod the candidates for portions of these issues, when they pop up. For instance, a problem with being tested on history is that some things seem more relevant than others at a given point in time, meanwhile the test would not address that moment in American or World History.
 
Yes but one of them was Ben Franklin, he has invented the lightning rod, which is still used all around the world to this day.
What did your currently existing politician invent?

Many, if not a majority or vast majority, of politicians in congress, throughout our history, were lawyers. Well, one Senator I studied was one hell of an expert in welfare and social security policy for decades before creating and modifying legislation for the entire welfare state in addition to igniting the debate on the issue-even to this day. As he noticed in 1965, professionalization of reform dictates that your professionals become instrumental in becoming experts in a field, but use their influence as an outsider to elected office. Think of the nuclear theorists and other scientists who became instrumental in significantly affecting the political opinions of the public with regard to nuclear weapons and its impact on foreign policy.
 
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They are smart enough to get power but not smart enough to solve anything.
 
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