Just Some Poor Schmuck

In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, Lisa Orenstein of Baltimore thinks that people with advanced degrees make much better Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidates. No mention of GWB’s Harvard MBA.

Qualifications and Qualities on Both Tickets - washingtonpost.com

I was always taught that education matters. Indeed, each political party (and every parent) has stressed the importance of a good education and the virtues of higher education. Yet, somehow, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s academic background is sufficient for the second-highest job in the land.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer [”Palin’s Problem,” op-ed, Sept. 5] wrote that Republican nominee John McCain picked Ms. Palin to be a “game-changer” who would fill the campaign with magic. And I wanted Sarah Palin to be a hidden gem, too. But she attended six colleges in six years before receiving her undergraduate journalism degree from the University of Idaho. One of those schools was the obscure North Idaho College. No graduate degrees on her résumé.

Former president Bill Clinton, on the other hand, attended Georgetown University, received a Rhodes Scholarship to University College at Oxford and earned a law degree from Yale. Hillary Rodham Clinton graduated from Wellesley and then Yale Law School. Democratic nominee Barack Obama went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School; his running mate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., also has a law degree. Republican Mitt Romney was valedictorian at Brigham Young University and received a joint law degree and MBA from Harvard.

But I don’t know if that’s a comparison I would make. Notwithstanding my personal experiences with all manners of educated idiots. (Yes, you can get an advanced degree without knowing how to find your ass with two hands and a flashlight). But there’s this.

These men were perhaps the most educated leaders in the history of Asian communism. Two of them, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris; Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. In retrospect, it seems unlikely that these talented members of the elite, sent to France on government scholarships, could launch the bloodiest and most radical revolution in modern Asian history. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family. An older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.

Not that any of candidates are in any way equal to the leaders of the Khmer Rouge. But in this case, education, including the earning of advanced degrees from prestigious French Universities, meant little or nothing as a measure of civilized behavior.

OK, Democrats might pretend think that McCain and Palin are bloodthirsty maniacs, but no one thinks Obama and Biden are going to plunge the country into a bloodbath that compares to the Khmer Rouge in any manner.

Even if they did, it would be a damn short one. Those Republicans are bloodthirsty maniacs.

From a link of The Best of the Web