Down with Mediocrity, Bring on the Elite

Another timeout from wedding stuff for some political musings.  I’m trying to present this information in a relatively unbiased light.  I’ll be absolutely the first person to admit that one can obtain an excellent education from a state or otherwise “lesser” college.  There is nothing that says someone with a degree from, oh say, Yale (I’m talking ’bout you, W) has any intellectual advantage over someone who put in the effort to earn a degree from a non-Ivy League school.  I’m actually of the opinion that the name of the school is FAR inferior in importance to the effort and determination that the student puts into his/her education.That being said, I started thinking about education and the education of our Presidential/Vice Presidential candidates while reading a wonderful article in Newsweek written by Sam Harris.  He eloquently asserts, correctly in my opinion, that “there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country”.  People like a leader that is “just like them”.  Well people, look where that got us for the last 8 years.  Incredible.  We don’t need Joe Blow American in the highest office.  We need someone who is frighteningly smart, logical, persistent, and who doesn’t rely on “a higher power” to make decisions for them.  He specifically rails on Sarah Palin, which got me wondering – what is her educational background?  Does it indicate that maybe, although she completely lacks experience in nearly all aspects of federal government, she could at least quickly learn what she needs to?  Well, I looked, and I’m quite convinced that she can’t.  I’ve seen shorter paths to a Bachelor’s degree out of people who smoke weed 5 days a week.

From Wikipedia:

Sarah Palin:

In 1982, Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester. From there she transferred to North Idaho College, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From the community college she then transferred to the much larger University of Idaho for two semesters.^[11][12] During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest,^[13][14] then finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant,^[15][16] at which she won a college scholarship and the “Miss Congeniality” award.^[17] She then left the University of Idaho and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.

That’s a LOT of schools, and I think it says something about her character.  To be an equal opportunist, I wanted to give all the candidates the same scrutiny.  Joe Biden might not have been a model student, but by my calculations, he received nearly double the degree at about 3 fewer colleges.  Oh yea, then he got his J.D. at Syracuse, again, not with a stellar class rank, but complete nonetheless.

Joe Biden:

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark,^[10] where by his own later description he was a lazy student.^[11] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965,^[2] ranked 506th of 688 in his class.^[12]

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968,^[10] where by his own description he again underperformed and ranked 76th of 85 students.^[11][13] During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.^[13] (The issue came up in 1987 during Biden’s presidential campaign, and later that year the Delaware Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility cleared Biden of the plagiarism charges regarding his standing as a lawyer, saying Biden had “not violated any rules”.)^[14] Biden was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.

And then we move on to the top of the ticket…

John McCain:

Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There, he was a friend and informal leader for many of his classmates,^[9] and sometimes stood up for people who were being bullied.^[4] He also became a lightweight boxer.^[10] McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, he did not always obey the rules, and that contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899) despite a strong intelligence.^[9][11] He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.^[4][12] McCain graduated in 1958.

Barack Obama

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.^[10] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.^[11] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983.Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.^[19] In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review’s staff of eighty editors.^[20] Obama’s election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.

Purely going on intellectual qualifications, I see a couple of clear winners.  I will let everyone draw their own conclusions.  We all need to accept that people SMARTER than us need to be leading us.  We need to stop accepting and encouraging mediocrity in this country.