Should Elected Public Officials Be Intelligence Tested Term Paper

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Intelligence testing should not be required for candidates prior to running for public office.

Firstly, the assumption that higher traditional measures of intelligence will result in better governance is highly debatable and flawed. Second, the ability to govern may be better determined by a measurement of emotional intelligence, rather than standard IQ measurements. Third, moral character may be a better measure of the ability to govern than intelligence.

Americans often complain that the nature of our democratic government leads to the election of individuals whose intelligence levels leave a great deal to be desired. Clearly, the actions of a great many public officials give credence to this claim. We have only to think of the, the indiscreet and inappropriate sexual shenanigans of Gary Hart, and the infamous inability of Dan Quayle to spell potato correctly as evidence of this assertion. In response to these criticisms, many Americans have begun to push for mandatory intelligence testing of candidates before running for public office.

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Initially, critics of this plan argued that the noted unreliability and the age and sex biases of existing tests made such testing untenable. In response, a new intelligence test was created. The new test is free of bias toward specific ethnic groups or ages. In addition, it is an accurate measure of four main areas of intelligence: reasoning power; creative thought; memory; and understanding.

At the basis of the argument for intelligence testing for public officials is the dubious assumption that higher intelligence results in better governance. While this may seem intuitively correct, there is certainly little concrete evidence that high intelligence automatically equates with high performance. On an individual level, all we have to do is look back on the after-school accomplishments of the brightest and most accomplished individuals that we knew in high school or college. Most people can note numerous examples of highly intelligent people that for some reason or another failed….....

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"Should Elected Public Officials Be Intelligence Tested" (2003, January 10) Retrieved May 21, 2025, from
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