2/11/2020 How intelligent is Bill Clinton?

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How intelligent is Bill Clinton? Is Bill Clinton smart?

Why does it seem like Bill Clinton has such a

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40 Answers What are some indications that Bill Clinton is

intelligent?

James Evans, former SSgt, Force Recon, Vietnam, USMC, PhD Univ Prof Is Hillary Clinton smarter than Bill Clinton?
Updated Sep 28, 2017 · Author has 582 answers and 3.9m answer views

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking visited the Clinton White House in March 1998. A
short time later, Hawking gave an NPR interview regarding his Clinton visit.

The interview covered Hawking’s one-hour briefing of the President on Cosmology.

Hawking says the President asked him to give him a private briefing in the Oval Office
because he knew very little about the subject.

Hawking says that during the briefing, Clinton was bent over in his office chair rummaging
through the bottom drawer of his desk. The President seldom looked up from the drawer,
and said nothing for about 20 minutes.

Hawking said that he was insulted by the President’s lack of interest, and twice nearly
stopped the briefing to tell the President that he was going to leave.

Then, from out of nowhere, Hawking said, Clinton asked a question that Hawking believed
could have come only from the most experienced cosmologist. Hawking said it took him
several seconds to collect his thoughts before answering.

Partway into Hawking’s answer, and again without looking up from the desk drawer,
Clinton stopped Hawking to say, “Yes. That seems reasonable, but what about. . .”

Clinton’s question, Hawking said, was so penetrating that it threw him completely off his
game.

At that point, Hawking said, he and Clinton began a half-hour discussion about theoretical
physics in general, and cosmology in particular, that Hawking said he could have had only
with an experienced colleague. During the discussion, Clinton continued to rummage
through his desk drawers.

By the time Hawking left the Oval Office, Clinton had gone through all the desk drawers.
Hawking said that he didn’t ask the President if he found what he was looking for.

According to Stephen Hawking, Bill Clinton is one smart fellow.

Semper Fi,

JE, PhD
296k views · View 4.7k Upvoters

Related Questions More Answers Below

Is Bill Clinton smart?

Why does it seem like Bill Clinton has such a reputation for being smart?

Why not have Trump testify by video like Bill Clinton did?

Is it true, as President Bill Clinton maintained, that a blowjob is not sex?

What are some indications that Bill Clinton is intelligent?

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2/11/2020 How intelligent is Bill Clinton? - Quora

Robert X Cringely, The one from TV, not an impostor.

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Updated Aug 31, 2017 · Author has 92 answers and 354.3k answer views

Bill Clinton is smart, of course, but his abilities go beyond what you might expect. My
mother, who was from Arkansas, had a Bill Clinton story she told that explains what I mean.

My mother met Bill Clinton twice — once when he was running for reelection as Governor
in 1980 (he lost) then again during his first Presidential campaign in 1992. The first time
was at a meeting of the Democratic Women of Benton County, of which my Mom was a
member but not an officer. The second meeting was the day before the 1992 election
when Bill and Hillary arrived in Fayetteville on their campaign plane to vote. Bill shook
every hand in the terminal asking each person for their vote. When he got to my mother
CLINTON REMEMBERED HER NAME. Twelve years after meeting at an obscure event, he
knew exactly who she was, which I need to point out was nobody special except to my Dad
and me. That kind of intelligence (and memory) is very useful in a politician.
50.8k views · View 2.4k Upvoters

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Cameron Beck, Taught History, learned in part from a good historian, my

grandfather
Updated Jul 18, 2018 · Upvoted by Michelle Callard-Stone, PhD Behavioral Psychologist ·
Author has 856 answers and 6.8m answer views

Here’s an example of Bill Clinton’s considerable intelligence in operation:

When he was governor of Arkansas, it was not unusual for two groups with totally
conflicting interests to meet with Clinton, hoping that he could resolve the conflict. The
two groups would emerge from the meeting, each convinced that they had won. Only a
very intelligent man could achieve that consistently.

And another:

In a speech Clinton gave to Congress on 22 September 1993 detailing the Clinton health
care plan, the teleprompter was loaded with the wrong speech. Specifically, the one he
gave to a joint session of C...
Continue Reading

Susann Moy, Conservative on Quora

Answered Feb 11, 2017 · Upvoted by Marc Bodnick, Former Stanford PhD student in PoliSci ·
Author has 3k answers and 10.7m answer views

Bill Clinton is widely viewed to be an incredibly intelligent man. When he was President, he
was a quick study. Whatever the topic, he got up to speed rapidly.

Clinton famously held his staff meetings way beyond schedule as he discussed the finer
points. He would also call up staff in the middle of the night to re-argue points. He
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2/11/2020 How intelligent is Bill Clinton? - Quora
enjoyed the give and take of discussion and debate.
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The intensity was acutely felt in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, in which members found
themselves waking to the president’s voice at all hours of the night on matters of arcane
policy.

“My wife and I, we had the official phone right next to our bed,” former New Mexico
Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as Clinton’s Energy secretary, told HuffPost in a phone
interview. “And whenever it was after 1 a.m., it was President Clinton. And he did it quite
frequently.

“I remember some of those late phone calls my wife would turn over in bed and say ‘Oh
my God.’ We put the phone in another room and I’d lock the door so she wouldn’t
hear.”

Donna Shalala, who served as Clinton’s Health and Human Services secretary,
memorably resorted to sleeping with her briefing books in the event of a question to
which she didn’t have an immediate answer.

And Dan Glickman, secretary of Agriculture during Clinton’s second term, recalled being
astonished over a presidential phone call inquiring about an obscure provision allowing
the administration to regulate pork prices, which were at an all-time low.

“It was always frenetic and high intensity,” Glickman said of his time in the
administration.

Learning to live with Clinton’s nocturnal schedule was also a challenge for his chief of
staff, John Podesta, who has an affinity for early morning jogs.

“Clinton’s a great guy to work for — he’s fun, appreciative. We had a very honest
relationship. He’d yell at me. I’d yell at him,” Podesta said in the May issue of Runner’s
World. “But the stress is incredible. You’re always on edge. One of the things that would
drive me crazy the most was that Clinton is a total night owl and I’m an early-morning
person.”

“So the phone would ring at 2:30 in the morning and I would shoot out of bed. My wife
would nudge me, saying, ‘That’s the president, you have to wake up.’ I’d think, Oh, s–t,
something bad must have happened. But most of the time, he was watching C-SPAN
and wanting me to call some senator and correct what he said.”

Bill Clinton's Work Habits Took A Toll On His Staff, But Hillary Might Do Things
Differently

Clinton seen as the most intelligent president, George W. Bush the least

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2/11/2020 How intelligent is Bill Clinton? - Quora
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Jim Mowreader
Answered Jan 4, 2018 · Author has 6k answers and 13.6m answer views

This is a teleprompter. It’s how politicians give speeches: a speechwriter creates the text of
the speech, a computer operator loads the speech into the teleprompter, and the politician
reads the speech off the screen. Every president since Eisenhower, except Nixon, has used
one.

When they give a big speech like the State of the Union Address, the president rehearses
for quite some time beforehand to get all his mannerisms and inflections down.

And then came the 1994 State of the Union Address, President Clinton’s first “real” SOTU -
the one you give right after you are inaugurated for your f...
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Robert W Tucker
Answered Dec 5, 2017 · Author has 103 answers and 121.5k answer views

Very, both in the formal sense and in his abilities to work with disagreeable people to get
things done. I would place his IQ in the top 1%, give or take, but his IQ score is the least
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