Barack Obama is the smartest man with the highest IQ ever to be elected to the presidency, historian Michael Beschloss told radio talk show host Don Imus in November of 2008.
"So what is his IQ?" Mr. Imus asked. Mr. Beschloss didn't know. He was just assuming.
Many shared that assumption. Adjectives frequently applied to Mr. Obama are "smart" (278 million hits on Google), "intelligent" (62 million) and "brilliant" (24 million).
There is little evidence to support it. Mr. Obama went to Harvard, but so did George W. Bush, who some liberals consider dumber than dirt. The president won't release his transcripts, so we can't judge by his grades. Mr. Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, but when he was selected, popularity mattered more than scholarship.
Mr. Obama joined an undistinguished law firm, where he tried no cases. So no help there.
Many cite the president's oratorical skills, but he often rambles when he speaks without a teleprompter. That's because his brain "is moving so fast that the mouth can't keep up," wrote Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times.
Columnist Joe Klein said Mr. Obama's first autobiography "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." But Mr. Obama got help writing "Dreams from My Father" from "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers," celebrity journalist Christopher Andersen claimed in his 2009 biography of Barack and Michelle.
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