Saturday, August 22, 2009

And the winner is... And my vote is....

Glenn Chatfield is the winner.

A little over a week ago, I posted a contest, asking my readers to post their idea on who was the smartest president in recent history. Rather than try to judge the best answer, I held a drawing and Glenn Chatfield won the drawing. Glenn will be the recipient of his choice of an iTunes or Amazon gift card.

Most of the votes came in for Ronald Reagan which didn't surprise me. Most of my readers are conservatives and he is the ultimate conservative choice. But I also have some less-conservative (and some down right liberal) readers, so there were also votes for Clinton, Obama and even Carter (that one surprised me). I even had one reader expand the definition of "recent" president and include a vote for Lincoln.

Thanks for all the comments and I really appreciate the different views. Now I'll give my view for the smartest president and it may surprise some. I'd say President Obama is the smartest.

The current president is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. That says something about his IQ right off the bat. He served in the Illinois Senate starting in 1997, then was elected to the US Senate in 2004. He gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in the same year. That's when I realized he was going to go somewhere. His speeches move people.

He's received a lot of negativity because of his use of teleprompters, but he mostly deflects these comments. During his presidential campaign, he sidestepped one of the most divisive subjects - abortion - with the comment that it was above his pay grade. After his inauguration he took action by funding foreign abortions without a lot of statements. You may disagree with his politics, but I think this shows his political IQ.

Obama has also been able to push a lot of legislation through congress by using the economy as cover. A lot of the items in the stimulus bill had nothing to do with stimulating the economy.

So, my vote goes to Obama as the smartest president even if I don't agree with his politics.

1 comment:

Cameron said...

I agree. Which is not surprising since he was my vote as well. Though there was another commenter who said it was still early to name him, which very well may be true. But that's also partly why I named him; in just six months he's been able to ram through initiatives that his party has wanted to do for years and was never able to.