My Rankings from most to least:

1. Ted Cruz
2. Bernie Sanders
3. Hillary Clinton
4. John Kasich
5. Donald Trump

Close between 1&2. Close between 3&4. Could be convinced otherwise

What do you base this on?

I think its really hard judging someone's 'intelligence' at the best of times. Add in that most of these people are very experienced at putting on a public face and thats all we really have to go on... and it seems almost impossible.

Even looking at Trump, its hard to know if he's not intelligent or if he says things he knows are wrong because it helps him get political support and further his own goals.

I would rank them Cruz, Clinton, Sanders with all three clearly smart enough for the job. Kasich next who is probably smart enough. Pretty clear to me Trump is last and is not smart enough to be a good President. His interviews with WAPO and the NYT's are jaw dropping.

Rank them according to your criteria.

Yeah I probably ranked HRC too low, she does have an impressive academic resume, as does Cruz. Kasich probably least impressive academic record but TRUMP is an Ivy Leaguer so take academic achievement FWIW. Of course University of Chicago has a fine reputation. Some might say the person with most financial success that being TRUMP. Sklansky would mention SAT scores. Chuck Schumer ftw.

Trump is living proof that the wealthy can buy elite degrees.

I was more asking about how you came to your conclusions.

A straight up list thread is lame if people don't actually give any explanation.

It would be more interesting to rank them in terms of who's the most/least delusional.

I will cop to lame but I'd rather not make it about my criteria which the way these things go is like ripe for a diversion. Lou offered up an opinion that I found interesting. I might find others opinions interesting therefore I would be entertained.

Was the... thread title altered?

1. TRUMP
2. Hilldawg
3. Kasich
4. Bern
5. Cruz

Awesome!

I agree Trump should be on top. He is not boring when he speaks, and has rather deep answers.

Sort of the way Gary Kasparov when he gives interviews, you think this guy really has some insights.

Problem with Trump is he is pushing 70, and is starting to lose it.

Oddly enough Hillary is probably the smartest one, perhaps by a large margin, and the absolute worst of the bunch.

The worst leaders in history are probably on both extremes of the intellect scale.

Well Bernie is what 74? So I guess he already lost it perhaps? HRC is 68, Kasich 64 in May, and Cruz is 45. Cruz by far the youngest of the lot.

Cruz
Hilldawg
TRUMP
Kasich
Bernard

I agree with the bolded part. She actually has a genius IQ. Saw it somewhere. Hubby, too. (Not that it makes her guaranteed to be more intelligent, but I would wager her 143-146 score is a better indicator of her true ability than anything the others offer as quantitative "proof".)

Let's run through them.

HRC:
Hillary Rodham graduated from Wellesley College in 1969, where she became the first student commencement speaker. She went on to earn a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973.

Bernie Sanders :
Sanders was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student he was an active civil rights protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Ted Cruz:
Cruz attended two private high schools: Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas; and Second Baptist High School in Houston, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 1988. During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group known at the time as the Free Market Education Foundation, a program that taught high school students the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Frédéric Bastiat.

Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year, and with his debate partner David Panton, also Team of the Year from the American Parliamentary Debate Association. Cruz and Panton would later represent Harvard Law School at the 1995 World Debating Championship, losing in the semi-finals to a team from Australia. Princeton's debate team named their annual novice championship after Cruz.

Cruz's senior thesis at Princeton investigated the separation of powers; its title, Clipping the Wings of Angels, draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to US President James Madison: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect the rights of their constituents, and that the last two items in the Bill of Rights offer an explicit stop against an all-powerful state.

After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree. While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant". At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.

Kasich:
Earning a bachelor of arts degree in political science from The Ohio State University, in 1974,he went on to work as a researcher for the Ohio Legislative Service Commission

Trump:
Trump attended Fordham University in the Bronx for two years. He entered the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, as Wharton then offered one of the few real estate studies departments in U.S. academia.While there, he worked at his father's company, Elizabeth Trump & Son. Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in economics.

So by education, I guess it'd be Cruz/Clinton/Trump and then Sanders/Kasich.

The curriculum from school to school doesn't change a whole lot. For a lot of courses they're literally taught out of the same textbook. The prestige and the networks are the true defining characteristics, at least when held up against most mid range schools. In practice you'd be hard pressed to find a native english speaker who had modern, academically inclined parents and a quant background who wouldn't destroy the media GMAT score at the ivy league schools.

But I guess to people who buy into the concept of expeptionalism, which is to say men who are so jilted about how their lives have turned out that they need something to occupy their minds so they don't shoot themselves in the head (suicide is never the answer. trust in christ.), it's really tempting to imagine that there are just some people out there who're so dynamic that they'd solve all the worlds problems if only they could muster the energy to get out of bed, and c'mon who wants to read boring academic journals? lol that's for nerds.

I'd take Kasparov against the field. (He would also probably make the best president.)

Cruz is clearly very booksmart. unfortunately one of his books is the bible so that sets him back a bit

There are people who think cruz is actually religious?

Raw intelligence (defined as most likely to get the right answer to a difficult question far outside their area of expertise):

1. Donald Trump
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Ted Cruz
4. John Kasich
5. Bernie Sanders

1 is well ahead (although I think age is slowing down his mind). Close between 2 & 3, they could easily be reversed. 4 & 5 are far behind and could also be reversed.

Learned verbal reasoning skills (not exactly intelligence, but what most are most including OP are actually observing when ranking by "intelligence"):

1. Hillary Clinton
2. Ted Cruz
3. John Kasich
4. Donald Trump
5. Bernie Sanders

Cruz is probably ahead on raw talent here, but Hillary has long experience enough to overcome age weighing on her mental dexterity.

Emotional intelligence:

1. Donald Trump
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Bernie Sanders
4. Ted Cruz
5. John Kasich

Trump is the absolute blowout leader in emotional intelligence.

It's interesting that the person with a combination of the highest intelligence and emotional intelligence is the frontrunner in both parties. I think that's a pretty common theme in presidential elections.

Cruz is only surviving because of well trained verbal reasoning skills, thanks to being a lawyer for many years, and youth vs the field.

Chess probably both selects for small-goal thinkers, and makes you a small goal thinker. There's no doubt Kasparov is a genius (I'd back him vs the field to get a math or philosophy PhD), but his level of big-picture intelligence/perspective and creative intellect is a long way behind someone like Trump. He will also have the flaw, as many experts do, of vastly overestimating his own intellect, his own (or human) ability to understand the world, and his own solutions. The latter makes for bad presidents.

Trump is one of the great geniuses of our generation. You have to be fairly smart to see that though. He has plenty of holes, and age has robbed him of some of his wit, but there are very few people alive better at creative, independent, big-picture thinking.

Interesting couple of posts ToothSayer, seriously. I am assuming you put a high value on being a creative thinker as POTUS due to the challenges of implenting policy preferences a POTUS has.