As we face a Presidential contest between a 77 year-old man and an 81 year-old man, claims of intellectual prowess and dementia are foisted upon us every day, as if there has been a reliable investigation of either man’s brain function. There has not been and there will not be any such investigation before the election this November. That both men tend to ramble and lack focus in unscripted conversations is neither surprising nor informative. They are old men who enjoy telling stories, some of which are mosaics of old stories and some of which are pure inventions. That they both misidentify fellow politicians and occasionally invent words does not suggest dementia or ingenuity. As is the case with most men and women seeking to acquire or retain political office, what they do is more informative than what they say.
The former President frequently touts his performance on a Minimental Test as proof of his intellectual superiority. That test is a screening tool to look for severe brain damage. It has targeted questions and tasks that allow a skilled examiner to uncover deficits suggestive of stroke, brain tumor, advanced degenerative brain disease, etc. It cannot measure an individual’s intellectual abilities: it is only checking for profound and obvious deficiencies.
President Biden’s spokespeople insist that he is energetic, insightful, decisive, focused, and blessed with a photographic memory, despite Special Counsel Mr. Hur’s recent testimony before Congress that Mr. Biden has ‘a poor memory.’ A point repeatedly visited by Mr. Biden’s detractors was that the President could not remember the year his son Beau died. Really? What insensitive Inquisitor would even ask such a question? As an individual who has done intellectual assessments of thousands of people, I would expect that kind of question to effectively disable the examinee. After asking about one of the most horrible and painful events in a man’s life, I would have expected the President to simply stare in disgust at the Special Counsel or visit upon him many of the expletives with which he is familiar.
If the President or former President has a good memory or a poor memory remains unproven and irrelevant. We are not looking for a national leader that will perform well on Jeopardy. We should be looking for a man or woman with good judgment and integrity, who will protect our democracy, reject all self-interest, and work to improve the lot of all Americans. If he or she frequently invents new words, it may be a sign of creativity, rather than of senility. Remember that William Shakespeare created many of the words and phrases we still routinely use. He wrote ‘historical’ plays that were more imagination than history, and his peers did not fear for Bill’s cognitive function. For better or worse, neither of the candidates for the Presidency is brilliant or stupid. Both of them are old and forgetful. Neither of them can be judged on the basis of a test score.
There is no true, comprehensive test of intelligence, despite many standardized tests being characterized as such since the introduction of formal cognitive testing more than a century ago. In the 20th Century, tests of intellectual function have become numerous and overrated. The most useful of these tests are the arcane tools of neuropsychologist who try to identify problems with ‘cognitive’ function. Unfortunately, the value and limitations of these tests have been overstated or trivialized by individuals with private agendas.
The most familiar of these tests are usually referred to as ‘IQ’ tests. They were originally adopted to identify children who would not profit from a conventional education. In 1904, the French government contracted with the psychologist Alfred Binet to develop a test to measure intellectual disabilities, and this was subsequently modified in the United States to become the Stanford-Binet Intellectual Quotient Assessment. It was initially used to measure cognitive problems, not intellectual strengths. It relies heavily on familiarity with and understanding of the language in which it is written, and it examines relatively few aspects of an individual’s “intelligence.”
Reasoning, factual knowledge, language skills, memory, originality, mathematical abilities, attention span, visuospatial processing, etc. are all very separate and distinct thought processes. An individual may excel in one area and lack the most fundamental skills in another. A man may be able to remember tens of thousands of catalogue numbers for household goods, as was the case for an intellectually challenged man working in a Brooklyn hardware store, while being unable to care for himself and live independently. Albert Einstein authored physics papers on the theory of relativity, the photoelectric effect [for which he won the Nobel Prize], microscopic Brownian motion, and refrigeration phenomena, but routinely forgot to wear socks to formal dinners.
Intellectual prowess is rarely, if ever, all-encompassing or permanent. In fact, ‘intelligence’ is often rated according to the examiner’s expectations, rather than according to any objective criteria. Rex Tillerson, the former President’s first Secretary of State, reportedly described the President as “a f—-ing moron.” Many of those who worked in the former President’s administration had even more negative assessments of his abilities and judgments. Similarly, Fox News, Newsmax, and other media outlets regularly portray President Biden as a blithering idiot. Whereas one of these two men will be the President of the United States in 2025, we must hope that those who have characterized them in such negative terms are mistaken. Democracy is fragile and is easily destroyed when handled roughly by those entrusted with its survival.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France
