US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge

A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

Comments

I'd care more

[thebrett]

If they had the text of this 'civic test' available.

Re:I'd care more

[ep32g79]

Perhaps this is what you are looking for: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Re:I'd care more

[ep32g79]

It is, and here is the breakdown question by question:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html

Re:I'd care more

[KevinKnSC]

If you're going to give them a hard time about that, you probably shouldn't confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. :)

Re:I'd care more

[tylerni7]

I apologize for writing in all caps, here, but let me just say WHAT THE FUCK.

Each question has between 4 and 5 options, some questions, like 19, show elected officials at about 10%.
That means if they picked a random answer, they would be correct twice as often.
I'll conceed that it wasn't the easiest question there, and I can understand low scores, but.... seriously?

Re:I'd care more

[Mr. Slippery]

I have to say that I think they may have gotten confused, what with high school teaching one semester of economics and one semester of government these days. Otherwise, why would I need to define "profit"?

Because this "test" is a bit of right-wing propaganda, which seeks to conflate conservative doctrine with actual facts about our government. (Or is there an answer to "Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:" or "International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?" hidden somewhere in the Constitution that I've missed?)

The "Intercollegiate Studies Institute" evolved out of William Bennett's Madison Center for Educational Affairs and Irving Kristol's Institute for Educational Affairs.

Re:I'd care more

[janeuner]

If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

Umm, wtf? Where is None of the Above?

Re:I'd care more

[Dave Tucker Online]

Some questions were obviously chosen because there are specific misconceptions regarding that issue. For example, the president has the ability to declare war, doesn't he? After all, our presidents have been sending troops all over the world for decades without congressional approval. But that is wrong. Only congress has that power. "Separation of church and state" being granted by the constitution is another common misconception.

Wrong answers to questions on central planning vs. free markets, however, are due to a devotion to a philosophy that is just wrong. I'm sure those elected officials were shocked that they got that one incorrect.

So yes, you would expect that no group could do worse than 25% when given 4 choices, but when the questions are chosen with misconceptions in mind, it becomes far more likely.

Re:I'd care more

[kramulous]

Seems to be a pretty strange one to get wrong. Don't Americans have a 'budget night' where the government lays out of the table how taxpayer money will be spent for the next financial period?

Re:I'd care more

[wilder_card]

No, D is correct. If Tax = Spend, then Tax/person = Spend/person, since the number of people is constant.

Re:I'd care more

[belmolis]

None of the above is unnecessary since the correct answer is D.

Re:I'd care more

[gregbot9000]

You see where the politicians choked is on economics and markets.

See when asked what a free market was the politicians kept looking for the box that said "where you get things for free from helping a business expand their market"

Or when asked why free markets secure more prosperity then government central planing they kept looking for "Because you are free to go work for a business in the market after you help it through central planing"

Or why a levee is a public good they were looking for "cause whats good for my contractor buddy with a no bid contract is good for the public"

Re:I'd care more

[Kamokazi]

Haha, you think most Americans care about their own history. That's cute. You really have no idea how stupid people can be around here. They're fat, dumb, and happy thinking they know everything and actually knowing nothing.

Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).

To be fair, where they live affects their perception of the world. Being in rural areas you stay isolated, so everyone around you generally shares your values, religion, etc. There is usually no noticable pollution (other than the occasional manure smell :-), employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, you have an overwhelming amount of pollution to people who aren't used to it (ie me), jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more. You see more foriegners and foriegn ways, or generally just people and things with values different from your own.

The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.

Re:I'd care more

[sumdumass]

You should really look into #8 a little. It's really interesting.

There weren't any justices up for appointment at that time. Roosevelt and congress was going to create positions for more justices and stack them just so if all the regular justices said "unconstitutional", the other ones could override them. This is what eventually led to the expansion of the interstate commerce clause in which the government seems to use to extend it's reach further then any sane reading of the constitution allows.

As for the reasoning, those seem like the same reasons I would miss stuff in school, I would either forget who said what when under pressure or I would miss something small like the difference between debt and deficit. You see, #33 would have been correct if we were only talking about the budget for the year but it was looking at the overall operation of the government throughout the years. IE, no deficit for the year means no debt for the year, but it doesn't erase any previous debt carried over from the previous year.

Over all, I think we did a decent job on the tests.

Re:I'd care more

[dgatwood]

A lot of this stuff is not really civic knowledge, though. For example, while philosophy did play a role contributing to the thought processes that led to the founding of our government, it has little bearing on understanding the way governments actually work....

Also, #33 appears to have no correct answer. A. is wrong; the deficit is zero, but the debt may still be substantive. B. is wrong because printing money causes inflation if less money is taken out of circulation by being destroyed than is being printed, and has really nothing to do with money given to the government (which is still effectively in circulation). C. is wrong because the government may well be helping some groups while taking from others. On the average, it may be "true", but it still isn't actually true. D. is wrong for the same reasons. E. just has nothing to do with it.

They apparently consider D. to be "correct", which is just utter nonsense. Basically, the claim is that if the aggregate of all taxes and spending are equal, then the amount collected from each individual is the same as the amount spent for each individual. Clearly, this is not the case. A person on welfare clearly gets more money spent on them than a person not on welfare, etc. Now you could argue that the -average- per-person spending is the same as the -average- per-person income, but the "correct" answer did not say that. If they had said "per capita" instead of "per person", the answer would have been correct.

*scratches head*

Humorously, the other four questions I missed were the same four questions that politicians answered correctly more often than normal people. Apparently, I don't think like a politician. Good to know.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

The economy of Singapore is a highly developed capitalist mixed economy. While government intervention is kept at a minimum....

Sorry, no.

Re:I'd care more

[CaptainCarrot]

For example, calling the USSR's planned economy a "failure" when it took a nation devastated by the sequence of a civil war, WWI, and WWII, and made it the first spacefaring nation and a major world power, is overly simplistic.

You mean the planned economy that starved tens of millions, and collapsed under its own weight only 40 years after WWII ended, surviving in the meantime only because of a black market and barter system? Yes, I call that a failure.

I'm afraid it's not at all clear that FDR's policies did anything to lift us out of the Great Depression. And if your thesis is that the kind of government spending that took place during WWII is a sustainable, feasible model for an economy in the long term and in peacetime, I have to wonder what you're basing that on.

Re:I'd care more

[torstenvl]

I hope it's not, too. It has very little to do with civics. What is Sputnik? What's the definition of business profit? A lot of these questions are from Business Economics 101 and have absolutely nothing to do with civics.

Re:I'd care more

[ozmanjusri]

Not so much a "Hey look at me!" as much as it's a sad commentary on those who failed this test.

Yep. I'm an Aussie who answered 29 out of 33 correctly, 87.88%, without trying too hard.

One of the kids here (14yrs old) got 100%. Smug little bastard.

Re:I'd care more

[dgatwood]

Reread what I said. The word you're looking for is capita, not person. Those do NOT mean the same thing in proper English. Doing something per person means that you did something for each literal human being. Doing something per capita means that you did on average something per person.

The term "capita" refers to an equivalence class of population units in which all people are treated as being equivalent even if the literal individuals that make up the population are not equivalent. Therefore, when you say we spend $1,000 per capita, it means you spend $1,000 on average per person.

By contrast, the term "person" refers to a flesh and blood object. When you say we spend $1,000 per person, you might stretch that terminology to mean that you spent $1,000 per capita. However, a precise interpretation of that phrase is that you spent exactly $1,000 on each person. I'm sure you can understand that those two statements are completely different in their meaning.

Here's an example. I encounter ten homeless people on the side of the road asking for money. If I give $1,000 to one person and nothing else to the other nine people standing there, I gave out $100 per capita within that population of ten people. I'm sure you won't argue that I gave out $100 per person, however. The people who got nothing would beg to disagree with you, as they did not get $100. Okay, after they beat up the tenth guy, they might, but....

The problem is that using the phrase "per person" is ambiguous. It can be interpreted in two different ways---the way you interpreted that statement (as a sloppy way of saying "per capita") and the way I interpreted it (as a logical fallacy that if you spent population * k dollars on a group, this implies you spent k dollars on each member of that group).

Saying "per capita", by contrast, is deliberately unambiguous and can only mean "per average person". There's a reason that people talking about financial matters always say "per capita" and not "per person". To people who are used to precise meanings of terminology like "person" versus "capita", the meaning of those two phrases is completely different. I'm not at all surprised that a lot of people missed that question because by a literal interpretation of the phrase "per person", the "correct" answer is incorrect.

Worse, depending on how you interpret the question, answer A. can also be correct. The question did not specify a time period. If you define the time period of the question to be from the creation of the government up until the present, and if the amount of income equals the amount of money spent during that time period, the debt is provably zero. So by one interpretation, D. is correct, by another interpretation, A. is correct, and by a third interpretation, neither is correct....

See why I object to this question now? Writing good, unambiguous test questions is really hard. This test was pretty well written for the most part, but that question was a real stinker. :-)

Re:I'd care more

[glitch23]

Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).

I believe you are wrong. Democrats do indeed react based on emotion which is why they want to view the world as gray. They say we don't live in a black and white world but only because they don't want to view it that way and do what they can to add the gray. On the other hand Republicans are going to disagree on topics with Democrats because Republicans make decisions based on absolutes. The personal values they hold are based on absolute values which Democrats just choose to ignore and therefore view them as personally held by Republicans because they have to be if there isn't anything absolute. Having anything absolute means they wouldn't have the power to view/judge things how they need/want to view/judge them. Having absolutes, in a way, means you don't need to be all knowing of the outside world because, in a sense, you don't have control over certain aspects of that world anyway. What is right will always be right and what is wrong will always be wrong and people will get what they deserve in the end. This doesn't make them stupid and the Democrats smart. It means they know some things are considered above them but Democrats want to get their grubby little hands on anything that will put things in their favor.

Constitutional Correction

[DrSlinky]

... of the morons, by the morons, for the morons.

Re:Constitutional Correction

[sgt scrub]

In other words the U.S.A has finally become an Idiocracy.

Re:Where's the test?

[krlynch]

Google is your friend....

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Misleading

[Luthair]

To make an accurate judgment, we really need to see the test, questions about economics for example can be largely opinion/philosophy based rather than factual. Though failing to correctly answer opponents in WWII is either blatant stupidity, or willful ignorance, a child raised by wolves could answer that 2 days after being 'rescued'.

Its also important to consider who might consider themselves elected officials. For example doesn't the US also elect local sheriffs?

Re:So that's what explains it...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

George Bush getting elected twice.

No, but it does explain why he got the PATRIOT act and PATRIOT II acts passed by congress.

Key Caveat

[necro81]

the key caveat with this news item is that, when you RTFA, you find that they are culling the results from "self-identified elected officials." So, anyone could take the test and, for a laugh, identify themselves as an elected official.

In other words, it is not the case that the organizers of this test randomly selected a cross section of the populace, got complete demographic information about them (including occupation) then had them take the test.

See also self-selection and selection bias.

Re:Where's the test?

[vux984]

So I took the test and scored 90.91% (30/33)
And I'm Canadian.

The 3 I missed...

I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional. I didn't know what particular rights the first amendment gives. And I missed the one about the Scopes "Monkey Trial", which I'm not sure how I got wrong. I think I misread the correct answer as something to do with teaching evolution in private schools.

Of course, I got a few right that I made educated guesses on too, so it works out I guess. I had no trouble with the ones that were more 'general knowledge' but struggled with the real "Americana". Like the source of the phrase 'wall of separation' between church and state... I didn't actually know the answer was Thomas Jefferson's letters, but made it as an educated guess from the choices.

Overall, though I'm shocked that any elected official would score less than 80% on it... never mind less than 50%.

It's not a great test

[ratnerstar]

I took it and got all 33 answers right. This is not to brag, but to establish some limited credentials for when I say: this test sucks. Hard.

Okay, yeah, people should know the three branches of government and who has the power to declare war. On the other hand, a lot of questions and answers are very vague or misleading. Some examples:

Q: If taxes equal government spending, then:

A: tax per person equals government spending per person

This question tests your grasp of logic or algebra, not civics. For the record, another option is "government debt is zero." This is incorrect because it's the deficit that's zero, not the debt. It's designed to confuse. A knowledgeable person could get this question wrong merely by being careless.

Q: Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than governmentâ(TM)s centralized planning because:

A: the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends

This is not the answer I would have given in a non-multiple choice test. I picked it because it was better than the other options.

Q: Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

A: individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources

This is just phrased poorly. Why not be clear and ask "What is the definition of capitalism?"

Anyway, of course people should be doing better on this than they are. But it's still a crappy test. And for the record, the "officials" cited aren't exactly Barack Obama and John McCain; they're poll respondents who indicated that they have held elected office at one point. That could include your local dogcatcher, the chairman of your condo association, the head of your PTA, etc.

So don't be too alarmed.

Re:Test administration was poor.

[JCSoRocks]

Nevertheless it's still a depressing example of the state of America. I can understand how you'd miss a few. I managed to get 90%... but I can't imagine missing half of them. Self-identified or not, you'd still expect them to do at least a little *better*, not worse.

My Guess

[slimjim8094]

is that this is related to the attack on 'elitism', which has turned into an attack on the elite. There are a lot of stupid people, and a lot of smart people, but people (typically neo-Republicans) conflate elitism (being a dick in the fashion of 'i'm better than you') to being elite (in general, suceeding at life, often because/with education).

This selects against people who suceed at life, or people who look like they have suceeded at life. Because 'they can't relate to me' is more important than understanding a number of economic theories, or the culture of an enemy nation.

My (slightly) partisan guess, but I wouldn't be suprised.

Semantics

[nick_davison]

Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.

But police actions, anti terrorism actions and a broadly, ill defined war on a noun like "terror" or "drugs" are all fair game.

Splitting hairs, they're different to "declaring war." In practice, they're all ways presidents have ensured they can declare quagmires, I mean wars, without actually needing to stop and ask congress.

It's kind of like asking a child, "Did your brother hit you?"
Crying, "Yes!"
Brother, "Ha! I only kicked you. You're wrong!"

Re:Semantics

[atraintocry]

You're right...I think that's that's precisely why people should be educated on who exactly can declare war according to the Constitution. So that they can call out the things you listed as the bullshit power grabs that they are.

Re:Results from a Brit...

[Tranvisor]

Or perhaps that since the results were made public and reported on, smarter people, the people who read the news relatively currently, have actively looked for and taken the quiz. People who like to take little quizzes like this do it because scoring higher probably makes them feel a little better about themselves. Uninformed people probably don't seek out things that will, in all likelyhood, make them feel dumb.

Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

For what it's worth, I took the test just now and got 100%, but I find a few things about it questionable: First, there are several questions that I'm not sure really fall under the definition civics. Second, several of the questions are of a theoretical rather than factual nature and I got the distinct impression that the test makers were pushing a specific (libertarian/conservative) ideological agenda. Maybe my impression was incorrect; I haven't had a chance to look up the group yet.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines civics as, "a social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens." Most of the questions deal with the structure of our government and the history of that structure, so they can reasonably be said to fall within civics. But consider the following questions:

13) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:

25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:

30) Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?

31) International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?

Number 13 is a question of philosophy (or, if you like, history mostly far preceding US history). Questions 25, 27, 30, and 31 are questions of economics. I suppose you could include economics as part of civics, because it's important to governance, but on that rationale you could start including all sorts of things, like statistics. Also, the answers to the questions are largely theoretical in nature. While there may be a consensus view amongst economists, they don't really admit clear empirical answers due to the complexity of disentangling the various influences in macroeconomics. On the topic of how best to stimulate economic activity, there are various different schools of thought that advocate different approaches and have enjoyed popularity at different times.

The other point was more a vague feeling I got that the questions were pushing an agenda. The survey picks out "religion" as one of the constitutional rights, rather than "freedom of religion". It asks for the attribution of the phrase "wall of separation" between church and state, and highlighting that this is not from the constitution (even though it is from one of the framers) is a favorite past-time of those who advocate a larger role for Christianity in government. Questions 27 and 31 praise free trade criticize centralized economies. And answering one of the questions "correctly" points out that federal disaster aid is not guarantied by the constitution (relevant to disagreements over the aftermath of hurricane Katrina). It's not really pronounced and may be just coincidence, but I'm curious if anyone else got this feeling. I'll have to look up ISI and see if I've guessed correctly. In any case, it occurred to me that you could use the press release to get the general public to take it and use it as a push poll, stating your opinions as the "correct answer" or selecting factual information in such a way as to give the appearance for support of your argument.

Re:Where's the test?

[mrchaotica]

I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional.

The key to that question would be to think about what he would have been allowed to do: three of the four choices require powers the President doesn't constitutionally possess.

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[mrchaotica]

That doesn't mean he doesn't understand the Constitution; it means he can't count. ; )

Missing Question...

[MustBeOriginal]

What's the best way to become an elected official:
1. FUD Campaign.
2. Diebold VOTE-RIGHT(tm) automatic voting machine.
3. Be married to indiscreet high office holder and then publicly declare you still love him.
4. Legally change name to "None of the Above"

Re:Where's the test?

[vux984]

Some of the questions initially appear esoteric, but then I realized the way the questions are designed, it's not so much a test of if you know the actual historical event, but if you can, based on your civic knowledge, reason out the correct answer.

Huh? The questions were remarkably straightforward. They were not trick questions. They were not cases of multiple 'right answers and one best answer'. They were not multivalued : a,b,c then d is a and b types. They did not generally have deliberately misleading questions or answers. There were a couple that were slightly tricky... like the last question might trip you up if you don't know the difference between a debt and deficit, but seriously... you SHOULD.

It's not really a fair test for the general public.

I'm curious to see what you think a fairer test would be?

If questions on the same topics were asked in a more straightforward manner, you would get higher scores.

How could they be more generally straightforward?

I don't think many people could get 100% on it without at least a college education.

I think that says more about the american education system than the test. But seriously, the fact that the general public didn't get 100% isn't really the issue... the issue is that elected officials on average, FAILED it.

Its multiple choice with ~4 answers per question. A big enough collection of monkeys doing it randomly should score an average of 25%.

Plus, like most simple multiple choice tests, at least 2 of the answers can be easily eliminated with basic reasoning as being off topic or otherwise clearly wrong, reducing most questions to a 50/50 shot even if you don't have strong knowledge of the topic. So getting 50% on this test should pretty much be a freebie. If you know even a little bit, you should score >50%. And the average should probably be up in the 70's, at least.

I don't think you need college to get 100%, a high school education should be sufficient. But I will agree that the people who didn't go to college include the people who didn't do well in high school, so going to college would definitely be a predictor for higher scores.

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[Skjellifetti]

Vice President Elect Biden is correct. Article I does indeed define the role of the Vice President:

Article I. Section 2:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

Article II merely describes how the Vice President is chosen and the conditions under which the VP may become President (later superseded by Amendment XXV).

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[darkmeridian]

Biden is saying that Article 1 defines the role of the vice president of the United States, and that that role is part of the Executive Branch. The VP gets to break ties in the Senate so that the Executive branch can check and balance the powers of Senate.

Keep in mind that Cheney is pushing the idea that the Vice President is NOT a part of the Executive (while the President is) only so he can avoid federal disclosure laws. Cheney wants to advance the power of the unitary executive by co-opting in part the power of the legislative branch of government. It's pretty scary stuff.

I got the same as you

[Anonymous Coward]

81.something%

The thing is, I'm Canadian and everything I know about U.S. civics comes from television and places like Slashdot.

Actually, whats embarassing is, I probably know more about the U.S. than I do about Canada in these areas. Sigh!

And you wonder how we elect these idiots

[Quila]

Bush, Obama, William Jefferson (even while under indictment), Stevens, Clinton, etc.

The populace gave the Democrats in Congress a victory, kicking out lots of Republicans in this whole "change" mantra, yet it's shown that 43% of Obama voters didn't know the Democrats were in charge in the first place. Only 17% knew Obama won his first election by having his opponents removed from the ballot.

We are, in aggregate, dumb and completely uninformed. We will therefore get commensurate-quality representatives in government.

Re:Where's the test?

[CaptainCarrot]

To be accurate, much of civics is history. Much of it has to do with understanding our political traditions and their historical roots.

Re:Where's the test?

[Bigjeff5]

Deficit would have been 100% correct, no question

Actually, it would have still been wrong, a deficit is just a form of debt. Different from most debt, sure, but it's still a debt of a sort.

The question made a premise and then asked what amounts to a math question based on it. It's very common in SAT type tests to test your ability to solve problems.

The question was, in math form: IF taxes = government spending THEN? D. taxes/person = spending/person.

The question itself had nothing to do with debt or deficit or anything like that. A deficit (a type of debt) occurs when taxes/person are less than spending/person. In other words, when government spends more than it takes in via taxes, the government has a deficit, or debt.

All that said, you did a heck of a lot better than I did, I got an 81% and was pretty disappointed with myself for it. :/

I'm not exactly a history buff though, and that's where I made my mistakes. Oh well :P.

P.S.: The ruckus around the 2nd ammendment only happens when you try to change what the 2nd ammendment says. If you take it at face value (like we have for almost 200 years now) there's no confusion. If people don't like it they aught to push for a new ammendment to alter it (or "clarify" it, if you like), not try to make laws that infringe uppon it.

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[internic]

Okay, I got a chance to look at the ISI website, and it is, indeed, a politically conservative organization as I was able to guess from the content of their quiz. One portion of the site is hawking a book about "American Intellectual Conservatism" . Also looking at the mission statement is instructive.

It isn't clear to me whether this is an attempt at a sort of "push polling" as I was speculating or whether they're honestly trying to test what they see as the "important" part of civics, which is strongly colored by their world view. It's probably best to assume the latter. However, if they're not testing based on a wide consensus view of what's important in civics but rather based upon their particular ideological slant then they're not exactly testing peoples' knowledge of civics in a fair sense.

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Kagura]

That's an interesting survey. I never really thought about it before, but you can clearly influence the results you want based on the questions you ask and the ways you ask them. I don't know what mod actually thought it was worth modding up.

Re:Where's the test?

[TroyM]

Debt is the accumulated deficit - it's the total amount we owe. Deficit is how much we added to the debt this year. If we could magically balance the budget this year, we'd still owe $10 trillion, we just wouldn't be adding more to it.

This distinction is important. When Bush took office in 2001, we had a $5 trillion debt, but were running a slight surplus. He talked like the government was taking in money and had nothing good to do with it. If you weren't paying close attention, it sounded like the $5 trillion debt had been eliminated, just because we weren't running a deficit that year. So he was able to pass massive tax cuts and spending increases, and now we've doubled the national debt.

Re:Where's the test?

[splorp!]

I have a high school education and I only missed 3.
My wife has a college education and she missed 6.
Education isn't the entire defining factor. It's an interest in politics.

Re:Obama voters fail basic knowledge test too

[Anpheus]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/interview-with-john-ziegler-on-zogby.html

Re:Are these civics? Or is this a push poll?

[prichardson]

I took the quiz and got that too, especially that question about why free markets result in a better economy than planned economies. Any moron should be able to recognize the giant assumption in that question.

Uneducated title of TFA

[macraig]

I'd be more interested in reading TFA if its title correctly spelled the word "American". I find it amusing that alleged professional journalists, who produce an article describing the alleged ignorance of Americans and American politicians, can't even manage to correctly spell the nationality of their subjects IN THE TITLE nor proofread it before it goes to press on an internationally available Web site.

Where's the credibility? Journalists are part of that same cross-section of (American) idiots.

Only one free-market question on whole test

[Latent Heat]

Wrong answers to questions on central planning vs. free markets, however, are due to a devotion to a philosophy that is just wrong.

There was only one question on the whole test that solicited an answer that favored free markets over central planning. There was another question that appeared to favor government action to solve the "free rider" or "tragedy of the commons" problem that is commonly cited as a defect of unregulated free enterprise. And there was another question that was backed up by Keynesian Theory of how a government should respond to an economic recession.

The ISI is an organization that many would characterize as "right wing." I see the question about the advantages of free enterprise as "getting their licks in." But if one has a left-wing world view, there might be only one question on the whole test one would get wrong.

I would think that someone with a "liberal", "progressive", or "left-wing" world view would be at an advantage to get the question about War Powers correct -- yes, presidents have been sending our soldiers all over the place, but that Congress has not declared war on anybody since 1941 is a major talking point in such circles.

Re:Biden is a perfect example

[Attila Dimedici]

At the time that Article 1 was written, the Constitution specified that the Vice President was the person who got the second most Electoral College votes. That means that usually the Vice President was the President's chief rival, so when Article 1 was written, the Vice President was not viewed as the President's surrogate.
This was changed when Aaron Burr (who was nominated with the intention that he become Vice President) received the same number of Electoral College votes as Thomas Jefferson (nominated by the same party).
I think that in this last election if the original design was in place that Sarah Palin would be Vice President.