In 2010, the Sienna Presidential poll — which is very well respected — ranked George W. Bush as the 42 most intelligent president (only Harding ranked lower). [1, pdf file]. 14 of the 19 categories have W. in the bottom 5. These categories are: Communication ability, Court Appointments, Handling of U.S Economy, Ability to Compromise, Executive Appointments, Overall Ability, Imagination, Domestic Accomplishments, Integrity, Executive Ability, Foreign Policy Accomplishments, Leadership Ability, Intelligence, and Avoid Crucial Mistakes. The 4 categories that he is not in the bottom 5 of are: Background (he is the 7th worst), Party Leadership, Luck, and "Willing to Take Risks". Luck is the only category in which he is in the second quartile.

The article states:

"And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls, I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration, on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both."

Important criticisms of his presidency are not about his lambdacisms or rhotacisms. The criticisms of his presidency are not that he couldn't make decisions but that the decisions that he made were wrong, harmful, or showed a stubbornness to consider the fact that he was wrong. His presidency was marked by decisions to ignore nonpartisan reports contrary to the party line: when a international terrorism report that had been published annually for 19 years said that terror was increasing, not decreasing, his administration cancelled the reports. [2]

[1] http://siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/co...

[2] http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2002243262_terror16...