Are you smarter than Obama? Palin? McCain? W? E-mails?

Most of us probably never considered the possibility until the e-mail arrived: "Are you smarter than Barack Obama?"

I write for a living and grew up in the basketball-crazed state of Indiana and the Harvard scholar Obama already writes better than I do and could whip me in a game of 1-on-1. So I'm willing to concede the smart issue and go right to a Cubs trivia competition.

But then I get e-mail come-ons asking if I'm smarter than Sarah Palin. Or John McCain. Or Hillary Clinton. Or George W. Bush. Hmmm.

Can we really find out if we are smarter than our president, our next president and all those other folks by taking an online quiz?

No, we can't!

"You can't really find out your IQ from an online quiz," explains Stacey Kirsch, a 46-year-old project manager from Wood Dale. As the international director of administration for Mensa, that smart people's club, Kirsch knows a thing or two about intelligence.

To qualify for Mensa you have to have an IQ in the top 2 percent of people. Go to www.us.mensa.org and they'll tell you if any of those school or military tests you took might qualify you, or they'll set up new tests for you.

Only about 40 percent of people confident enough to think the Mensa test will grant them admission "really do make the grade," says Dr. Frank Lawlis, a retired professor of psychology who serves as supervisory psychologist of testing for Mensa.

But none of the more than 100,000 members worldwide or 55,000 members in the U.S. is a U.S. president, president-elect or candidate on whom we just voted. Could their IQs qualify for Mensa?

"Anybody can guess," says Pam Donahoo, executive director of American Mensa. "We've had people who swear they could tell you the IQ of their dog."

Hoaxsters once published a made-up list of presidential IQs (verified by "The Lovenstein Institute") that ranged from Bill Clinton's 182 to W's 91.

Donahoo says people can make some assumptions about presidential intelligence by looking at accomplishments such as Clinton's Rhode Scholar status, Obama's magna cum laude honors from Harvard Law School, or Bush's degrees from Yale and Harvard. But you can't be certain without a certified IQ test, she says.

Things such as "endurance, tolerance and stubbornness" play a role in academic success, too, Lawlis notes. "There's more than one kind of intelligence."

(Or, as my dad used to say: "Everybody is stupid at something.")

While we probably all think our president should be smart, being super smart might not make the job any easier. Figuring out how to compromise, market ideas and get along with folks can play a role in a president's success.

Quoting from a Dilbert cartoon by Mensa member Scott Adams, Kirsch says, "Intelligence has far less practical application than you would think."

Some studies even suggest that smart people are less happy than idiots.

"In terms of things like getting along with your spouse, some studies say smart couples have more problems," Lawlis adds. (Maybe your ex really is a genius.)

While all Mensa members are smart, not all of them are brain surgeons and rocket scientists. Police officers, postal workers, Realtors, homemakers, clergy, barbers, plumbers (Joe the Mensa plumber?) and even media members belong to Mensa.

Once you qualify for Mensa, even if it was via a test you took three decades ago, your membership is good for life - regardless of how you voted in the last election.

But your IQ can drop.

"If you are under a lot of stress, you can lose up to 20 IQ points," Lawlis says. "If you breathe through your mouth, you could lose 5 to 10 IQ points."

With all the stressful problems facing our nation today, if our new president ever turns into a mouth-breather, maybe those of us who get those e-mails really could be smarter than Obama.