Why GOP embraces simpletons and how it hurts America

Oh, yeah. I misread it.

I don't have any problem with someone having a personal ideology they adhere to. I wish everyone would have a fully-formed worldview.

 

I also think there's a problem with equating an Ivy League degree with intelligence in the case of the ruling class. George Romney was going to use his pull to get Mitt into a damn fine school, period, and set him up for life. Ditto the parents of both George Bushes and of John Kerry. Yale has such a thing as a "gentleman's C" for a reason.

You see a guy like Clinton or Carter or Cain or Paul, the degrees -- and especially the advanced degrees -- mean more.

 

I'm not sure anyone on the right would consider Carter an idiot. Most of us would agree that he is/was very smart -- among the smartest to ever hold the office.

Weak, yes. Not able to make a good/quick decision, yes. But not dumb.

The job of President doesn't necessarily require a nuclear scientist. It's a management job. It requires good decision making.

And, like you, I'm not one to be overwhelmed by credentials. Those of us who lack college degrees rarely are.

I still think it's worth taking them into consideration. maybe none of the four are super geniuses. But, I'm not sure eny of them are simpletons either.

And, I see no evidence the GOP electorate is gravitating towards simpletons. Bachmann, Perry, and Cain all fell by the wayside once they were exposed as not being the sharpest knives in the drawer.

 

Yeah, some of this shit is getting ridiculous.

 

Which is why Kerry only getting into BC Law, or Gore failing out of every grad school he ever attended should have exposed them as not being the deep thinkers they portrayed themselves to be.

 

Oh, for the love of God. You're the one who recently made a "teleprompter" crack about Obama.

Now you're going to play teacher's pet?

Give me a break.

 

I agree. What's Moddy thinking with that post?

 

"Only" getting into BC Law? It's a Top 25 school, nationally, and considered probably the best school to attend if you want to practice in Boston, other than you-know-where. He was from Massachusetts. It's perfectly possible that he took a scholarship to go there or who knows what else reason.

Gore didn't drop out of Vanderbilt. His grades were fine. He decided it wasn't for him.

 

Yesterday, our greatest president was Reagan.

Today, our smartest was Carter.

For all the lip service conservatives pay the founding fathers, you'd think they'd be able to cite presidents who served before 1977 when the subject calls for it.

 

I would agree with that, although I think both of them kept their intellectual pursuits going after college, Kerry as a courtroom lawyer and Gore by getting himself truly educated on the Internet and environment. (Cue "he invented the Internet" joke here, but he really did get interested in the inner workings before most.)

Bush the Elder did that too. Bush the Younger did none of it.

 

Well, GWB had an MBA from Harvard, too. Not that I think he was dumb, it's just that I think this credentials thing is a bit overplayed. HST didn't even go to college, and by and large his presidency, played out amidst some very complex and trying times, has been judged a solid success. Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, was a humanities PhD and acclaimed scholar who was in on some pretty sordid (and long-lasting) misjudgements (e.g., the Palmer Raids).

Re: name-brand degrees for the "ruling class." Does that mean you would consider JFK's Harvard training to be of less consequence that Nixon's Whittier/Duke education, given that Tricky pretty much had to put himself through school?

 

The GOP embraces simplicity more than it does simpletons. The party wants to distill ideas down to a basic essence - Just Say No! or Tear Down That Wall! or Drill, Baby, Drill! - in order to articulate to a more common folk. It's useful for creating risible anger, too, which is what the GOP has been trading in for some time.

Michelle Bachmann is not an idiot. She isn't. If you sat down with her and talked about, oh, ten topics for an hour, you'd come away impressed enough. Ditto on most of the Presidential candidates. (Not Cain, IMO).

But the GOP has been retreating since one of its geniuses - Nixon - more or less went insane/drunk-with-power and set the preferred order back 30 years. The party came to resent everything about him: The looks that inspired ugly masks, his wild gestures, his tirades, his temper, his pessimism, his love of hoarding secrecy. In Reagan they got their dream: Optimistic, trusting, knew where none of the bodies were buried, good with a smile and a line, rode horses. It was their idea of a "man." They've been chasing it since with not a lot of luck. Gingrich is far closer to Nixon in many ways.

I do think the party will come to regret the day Sarah Palin got anywhere near national politics. She's shrill, paranoid, power-hungry, image-obsessed and lacking most of the positive intellectual qualities Nixon had. And she's not a positive person. She's grim and competitive.