John Kerry, Intellectual

God, I love this picture.

OK, you know the "truth" about who's smarter, George W. Bush or John Kerry. As we've all been told, time and time again, Bush is the gregarious, seat-of-the-pants thinker who was a poor student, partying his way through college. Kerry, by contrast, is the deep-thinking intellectual whose natural gifts helped him excel at school.

Well, it turns out pretty much everyone was wrong about that. Indeed, the record shows that, at Yale anyway, they were both terrible students. So you think Bush is an idiot because he mangles every third sentence? Well, you Kerry boosters have it worse--you got taken in by someone just as dumb, but who's a smooth talker. Here's the relevant bit:

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

There is this interesting side-note to the story:

The grade transcript, which Kerry has always declined to release, was included in his Navy record. During the campaign the Globe sought Kerry's naval records, but he refused to waive privacy restrictions for the full file. Late last month, Kerry gave the Navy permission to send the documents to the Globe.

Kerry appeared to be responding to critics who suspected that there might be damaging information in the file about his activities in Vietnam. The military and medical records, however, appear identical to what Kerry has already released. This marks the first time Kerry's grades have been publicly reported.

It appears Kerry did have something to hide after all--the fact that one of the left's most scurrilous charges against Bush is a knife that cuts both ways.