The Emotional Appeal of Presidential Candidates Who Are Not Too Intelligent
Why Republican Candidate John McCain’s Poor Academic Record May Be One of His Strongest Political Assets
By JOHN W. DEAN
from Findlaw.com
Friday, May. 30, 2008
I ended my last column by raising the question of why, for decades, Americans have consistently elected the less intelligent of the two presidential candidates between whom they have been asked to choose, and by asking how the Democrats might deal with the fact that they have two highly intelligent potential candidates in this year’s presidential race. Since then, the New York Times has also addressed this issue. With the headline “The Snare of Privilege: ‘Elitist’ is the label they all run from. But why, exactly, are Americans so allergic to it?”, the Times noted, ironically, that the least privileged of the contenders in the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama, will still have to fight being tagged as privileged, and so ensnared.
In this column, I’ll consider why this is the case, and suggest that the label of privilege far better fits McCain than Obama.
In Fairness, McCain Should Be Considered More Privileged Than Obama
According to the Times, Obama’s problem stems from the fact that he “holds two Ivy League degrees at a time when not all Americans accept the notion of an Ivy League education as a triumph of American opportunity.” Based on information from the Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Nicholas Lemann, it is reported that average Americans are more likely to respect “the guy who owns a Toyota dealership in Marietta, Ga., and who grew up poor” than to respect an Ivy Leaguer. For presidential election purposes in recent years, those who attend Ivy League schools have been considered to be “privileged,” and meritocracy, according to most Americans, is not to be found in the Ivy League.
If truth be told, however, Obama earned his Ivy League degrees the hard way, while the child of privilege in this year’s presidential contest is John McCain. McCain obtained his appointment to the U.S. Navy Academy because his father and grandfather had been there, and McCain’s path to the Senate was made easy because his predecessor, Barry Goldwater, liked his father, Admiral Jack McCain.
Yet McCain always passes over his privileged history, while making much of the fact that he finished at the bottom of his class at Annapolis to establish his bona fides as a regular guy. In addition, McCain invokes his laudable Vietnam POW experience as evidence of his physical toughness and stamina, qualities to which regular guys can easily aspire.
(Continued here.)
By JOHN W. DEAN
from Findlaw.com
Friday, May. 30, 2008
I ended my last column by raising the question of why, for decades, Americans have consistently elected the less intelligent of the two presidential candidates between whom they have been asked to choose, and by asking how the Democrats might deal with the fact that they have two highly intelligent potential candidates in this year’s presidential race. Since then, the New York Times has also addressed this issue. With the headline “The Snare of Privilege: ‘Elitist’ is the label they all run from. But why, exactly, are Americans so allergic to it?”, the Times noted, ironically, that the least privileged of the contenders in the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama, will still have to fight being tagged as privileged, and so ensnared.
In this column, I’ll consider why this is the case, and suggest that the label of privilege far better fits McCain than Obama.
In Fairness, McCain Should Be Considered More Privileged Than Obama
According to the Times, Obama’s problem stems from the fact that he “holds two Ivy League degrees at a time when not all Americans accept the notion of an Ivy League education as a triumph of American opportunity.” Based on information from the Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Nicholas Lemann, it is reported that average Americans are more likely to respect “the guy who owns a Toyota dealership in Marietta, Ga., and who grew up poor” than to respect an Ivy Leaguer. For presidential election purposes in recent years, those who attend Ivy League schools have been considered to be “privileged,” and meritocracy, according to most Americans, is not to be found in the Ivy League.
If truth be told, however, Obama earned his Ivy League degrees the hard way, while the child of privilege in this year’s presidential contest is John McCain. McCain obtained his appointment to the U.S. Navy Academy because his father and grandfather had been there, and McCain’s path to the Senate was made easy because his predecessor, Barry Goldwater, liked his father, Admiral Jack McCain.
Yet McCain always passes over his privileged history, while making much of the fact that he finished at the bottom of his class at Annapolis to establish his bona fides as a regular guy. In addition, McCain invokes his laudable Vietnam POW experience as evidence of his physical toughness and stamina, qualities to which regular guys can easily aspire.
(Continued here.)
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