Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 November 26

= November 26 =

which US presidents from long ago had a reputation for being dumb?
If we limit the discussion to Presidents from FDR and earlier, which US Presidents were rumored or believed (whether fairly or unfairly) to be not particularly smart in their day?--69.121.235.11 (talk) 13:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Lincoln was often derided as a hayseed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:25, 26 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that anyone whose opinion mattered for much thought that Lincoln was actually stupid, but some did see him as a kind of rural crackerbarrel philosopher, given to telling anecdotes and funny stories at inappropriate times...
 * Buchanan wasn't lacking in basic intelligence, but he was kind of weakly-willed or something, since he allowed himself to be easily manipulated by others into taking petulant spiteful decisions which (as could be easily foreseen) were counterproductive to his administration's continuing political influence and the health of the Democratic Party. (Together, these decisions greatly increased the probability that the Civil War would start when it did, and ensured that Buchanan would be perpetually ranked as one of the worst presidents.)
 * And of course, some people have claimed that William Henry Harrison didn't know enough to come in out of the rain... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Warren G Harding also had something of a poor reputation in that area, particularly for his coinage of the word "normalcy". Tevildo (talk) 17:04, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Andrew Johnson, together with Harding, are considered among the less intelligent presidents. That is, with the limitation imposed by the OP. Otherwise, there's serious competition for the post of dumbest president from the post-war incumbents. B8-tome (talk) 18:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * See also: U.S. Presidential IQ hoax
 * And:
 * —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:C11B:49D1:9CF3:5784 (talk) 19:47, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:C11B:49D1:9CF3:5784 (talk) 19:47, 26 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Whoa, John Quincy Adams was smart AF. Too bad he inherited an deep-rooted problem no man could solve for decades. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:43, 26 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Warren G Harding didn't coin the word "normalcy" Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 April 22.  The Oxford English Dictionary records it from 1857, eight years before he was born. 92.27.49.50 (talk) 16:59, 27 November 2017 (UTC)


 * In the 1857 cite, the word meant perpendicularity. There's another cite from 1893 "mathematical normalcy" with rather obscure meaning, but the first usage with the modern American sense seems to be by Harding in 1920.    D b f i r s   23:37, 28 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I am not sure why Harding is here, he had a long and storied career until his untimely death, and our article says he was respected while alive and looks positively on his accomplishments. There were various scandals associated with members of his administration such as the Teapot Dome Scandal, but these were conducted without Harding's knowledge, and many of his appointees were praised.


 * Likewise, Andrew Johnson was loathed by Democrats because he was a Republican, and by zealous anti-Southern Republicans because he continued Lincoln's policy of reconciliation and vetoed many bills whose purpose was to enact vengeance on the South or remake it in the eyes of ideologues. There's no actual evidence of his stupidity.


 * LBJ and Andrew Jackson were criticized for being uncouth, and I am no fan of either, but again, where is stupidity evinced? I think that the problem is we do not any of us know these people or have evidence of them through unbiased lenses.  The question cannot be answered objectively, as we have no uniform standard and a span of four centuries to look at. μηδείς (talk) 02:43, 29 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Andrew Johnson likely went quite a bit further than Lincoln would have in making pro-Southern decisions without getting much of anything in return for them -- and what you see as "remaking the South in the eyes of ideologues" others saw as protecting newly-freed blacks against the attempts of their former owners to continue to command their labor at a very low price (see Black Codes (United States)). I don't know anything about Andrew Johnson's IQ, but he seems to have had a worldview formed before the Civil War in rural and backwoods small-town North Carolina and Tennessee, and he held to these positions rigidly and inflexibly in the very different circumstances of his being U.S. President in 1865-1866.  His being unable to modify any of his positions in any meaningful way even long after it became very clear that this would create lots of political turmoil certainly showed a kind of narrowmindedness or tunnel vision which was not too compatible with him being the leader of a large and diverse country during a period of crisis.  Herbert Hoover was extremely intelligent and capable in some ways, but he had a similar inability to usefully adapt to greatly changed circumstances which ended up ruining his presidency... AnonMoos (talk) 14:29, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I say the current president Donald Trump is the dumbest president since the Lincoln/Johnson era. His plan for making America great again is a lie. Planet Star  01:13, 4 December 2017 (UTC)