NO QUARTER » Jimmy Carter

Education Does Not Make a Leader

Katmandu2 — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:00:17 +0000

A recent e-mail making the rounds suggests that Barack Obama’s superior education and intelligence mandates his choice as president over John McCain.

There are many things wrongs with using a single category as a decisional tool for a job so complicated as the presidency. Surely one’s experience, character, judgment displayed in the past, leadership qualities, legislative accomplishment, patriotism, etc., should be considered.

Paper accomplishment has its limits. After all, Ted Kaczynski attended Harvard and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Michigan – but he was a destructive individual. Bill Gates, famous as an innovator and now a humanitarian, was in college only briefly. And many of us have had college professors who we would not entrust with picking up our newspaper from the driveway while we were away on vacation.

But let’s look anyway at the single variable of educational pedigree as a predictor of presidential performance. (Aside: McCain’s defenders may point out that McCain’s father and grandfather made four star admiral, though they were very poor Naval Academy students.)

Who were the great presidents and who were the failures? Numerous polls of historians show a fair consensus, with some large deviations for recent presidents, as might be expected. I chose the most recent polls listed at Wikipedia’s Historical Rankings of U.S. Presidents, which have the advantage of the most coverage, but I looked at other listed polls when recent polls showed wide variation. I am not making a statistical comparison; changing standards of education over time make that a questionable task (as education has become more formalized over time). And to keep this at readable length, I have omitted many qualifications on my analysis. So here goes –

Among the top ten presidents, Lincoln’s formal education consisted of about 18 months of schooling; he was largely self-educated. Washington may have attended a school near his home for the first few years. He was not taught Latin or Greek, as was common among the “educated” of the time, and never learned a foreign language. Nor did he attend college (Harvard, WM. & Mary, Yale and Princeton were available). His formal education ended around the age of 15.

Getting to the modern era, where paper degrees supposedly are a surrogate for intelligence, Truman (whose standing has risen to #7 in the polls) did not earn a college degree. Reagan (whose ranking, controversially, varies from 6 to 16) graduated from an institution of little note — Eureka College.

Eisenhower, now consistently ranked in the top ten, finished in the upper half of his class at the Military Academy, but was routinely criticized during the 1950’s as being not intellectual or well read.

On the other hand, the two Roosevelts, members of the highest echelons of America’s upper class, were very well educated. Wilson was perhaps the best educated president, and often ranks in the top ten, but his star is diminishing as historians place his imperialist foreign policy, his racism (he reinstituted segregation into the federal government) and sexism (he tried to have a leading suffragette committed to an insane asylum, and countenanced the brutal beating and prison torture of suffragette demonstrators), and his odious personal beliefs (e.g., he was a eugenicist) into modern perspective. Grover Cleveland, whose rankings vary from 8th to 20th, did not attend college.

Middling presidents (those ranking in the 20’s) include Hayes, who was first in his class at Kenyon College and who completed Harvard Law in two years. He is right now our only Harvard Law School graduate.

Bill Clinton (underrated in the polls, IMHO) went to Georgetown’s elite Foreign Service School, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He studied at Oxford under a Rhodes Scholarship, and graduated from Yale Law School.

Taft (20th) graduated second from his Yale class, then got a law degree from Cincinnati. John Q. Adams (25th) went to Harvard. So, the middle of the pack has a number of well educated persons. (The famously well-read and educated John Kennedy with time has seen his rankings drop, to between 14 and 18.)

Now the fun part — the bottom of the rankings, and bowing to current popular opinion, let us start off by noting that though a mediocre student, George W. Bush attended Phillips Academy, Yale University, and has an MBA from Harvard. A perennial in the loser category, James Buchanan (ranked 40th), graduated from Dickinson College with honors, then studied law. Franklin Pierce (38th) finished third in his class at Bowdoin, then attended an unnamed law school.

Andrew Johnson (37th) was self-taught, a point for the degree=excellence school, but John Tyler (35th) graduated from the prestigious Wm. & Mary, then read for the law.

Jimmy Carter (34th) attended Georgia Tech before receiving an appointment to the United States Naval Academy where he received a physics degree in 1946. Carter finished a high 59th out of his Academy class of 820. Richard Nixon (32nd) was a Duke Law School graduate.

Hoover (31st) had a geology degree from Stanford, later becoming a mining engineer. Gerald Ford (28th) had a University of Michigan degree in political science and economics; at Yale Law he graduated in the top 25 percent of his class.

Again, this is a simplified analysis, but the proposition that academic achievement equates with expected presidential performance is so demonstrably false that a more rigorous analysis is unnecessary.

As Mark Twain said – “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.”

No Class

NoQuarter — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:38:32 +0000

Carter: McCain ‘milking’ POW time

Former president Jimmy Carter called Republican presidential candidate John McCain a “distinguished Naval officer,” but said the Arizona senator has been “milking every possible drop of advantage” from his time served as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

You can watch the video of Carter’s comments.

Good god almighty.

It’s yet another example of why Democrats have had only ONE two-term president since Franklin Roosevelt.

Tonight on No Quarter Radio

Bud White — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:40:13 +0000

Tonight I have the honor of interviewing Bob Shrum. His book, No Excuses, is just out in paperback and it’s candy for the political junkie. If you love politics, you’ll love this book. I’ll be asking him about his political war stories. I also want to get his thoughts on this recent primary campaign and the concerns expressed by Hillary’s supporters. We’ll take some calls. I hope you’ll tune in to hear this very special guest. The show begins at 9 p.m. EST.

Who’s Less Bad?

LisaB — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:50:31 +0000

Friday’s Washington Post has a story on how the McCain campaign is looking to woo disaffected Clinton supporters. The GOP thinks it has a shot at these voters who believe Obama is out of touch with them and because McCain is a “maverick” who may be able to accommodate their interests.

That is why the Obama campaign is trying so hard to tie McCain to Bush — it’s the maverick thing. If Clinton voters see that McCain can be “worked with” they might jump to him rather than hang with a nominee who has so offended them for the past several months.

Obama advisors are confident the Clinton supporters’ flirtation with candidate McCain will wane and they will vote Democratic in the fall.

Polls do not necessarily bear this out, however.

Over the past three months, Washington Post-ABC News polls showed an average of 25 percent of those backing Clinton in the primaries “defecting” to McCain in a hypothetical match-up with Obama. A new poll from the Pew Research Center conducted just before the final Democratic primaries put the number at 28 percent.

Other data in the new Pew poll may add to the concern among some Democrats. In that survey, the percentage of Clinton supporters holding a positive view of Obama continues to slide: Forty-five percent of them view Obama favorably, down from 58 percent in December, before the voting started.

Apparently to further know Obama isn’t necessarily to like him.

In addition, those Clinton supporters voting for Obama in the fall may actually be soft support. While they will vote for Obama, it is not a positive vote for Obama, just one against McCain. If these aren’t “Obama people,” they might be won by some judicious mix of argument and policy. We shall see.

Nearly 6 in 10 of those backing Clinton over Obama in the primary said they would support Obama in the fall, with about half of those voters saying they are motivated to do so primarily to vote “against McCain” rather than “for Obama.”

Lastly, this WP piece noted that in the 1980 election when Ted Kennedy contested all the way to the convention, a higher percentage of Kennedy’s supporters (47) said they would NOT vote for Carter. Although only about half that number followed through, it was enough to help sink Carter and elect Ronald Reagan to his first term.

Change We Can Believe In?

Larry Johnson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:03:02 +0000

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why Barack Obama represents “change” and “hope” for a new future. The White House is currently occupied by an inexperienced man–a nice man–of limited accomplishment who used cocaine as a young adult. And the best answer the Democrats now offer is an inexperienced man who used cocaine as a young adult? That is change?

There is no denying that Barack gives a better speech than Bush. But running a snappy, happy campaign is different than the task of governing. Figuring out who should be the lead Federal agency for dealing with terrorism is not the same as rallying folks to attend a caucus. If that was the case then I would jump on the Barack bandwagon. Let’s face the facts–Barack is Jimmy Carter but not as smart.

Like Carter, Barack offers hope. But here he diverges.

Carter was at least a details guy. He was a nuclear engineer–couldn’t pronounce it properly (nooklear)–and lover of details. Not Barack. He hates details. He’s still trying to figure out how many states there are. And he certainly does not understand the basics of the Federal bureaucracy. I doubt if he can explain the difference between the FBI, Homeland Security, and ATF. For example, if a car bomb goes off in the Holland Tunnel, who is in charge of the investigation? (See the end of this post for the answer.)

He is used to doing business the Chicago way–pay for play. Patronage works well at the local level and keeps folks moving and keeps you in office. Well guess what? Patronage works on the Federal level but it is called lobbying. But Barack has now declared he won’t use lobbyists or allow lobbyists to work (even though he has them in his campaign and uses them to raise money).

As I survey the choice between Barack and McCain it is like being asked to choose between amputating your leg or your arm. Not a great choice either way. Barack is unlikely to subject us to the lunacy of the neocons. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he is surrounded by security advisors–Lake and Rice in particular–who have a record of fiddling while Rome burns. Those two were the principle architects of Clinton’s non-response to the genocide in Rwanda.

So as the campaign moves forward count me in neither camp. I will acknowledge wisdom and grace exhibited by either candidate. And I will also mercilessly pillory their nuttiness. I suspect we will be doing more of the latter than the former.

Now the answer to the question above–it depends. Port Authority would have the initial lead. FBI and ATF would try to insert themselves and get control. Bottomline, the coordination process is still a mess.

Unelectable Morning Open Thread: RNC Obama Ads

Uppity Woman — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:05:44 +0000

Democrats will lose in November if we nominate Obama. The GOP is ready, and they have four ads on Obama waiting in the queue. Consider this an open thread on Obama’s unelectability.

Obama and The Second Amendment
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifEg1aq6Emo[/youtube]

“Without Preconditions”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIlhTVyZfYY[/youtube]

Obama’s Ill-Timed Tax Increases
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNMIwx6bGvs&eurl=http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com/2008/05/rnc-obama-ads.html[/youtube]

Carter-Obama Taxes
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vycxh1oSUo&eurl=http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com/2008/05/rnc-obama-ads.html[/youtube]

Obama: Don’t Drive. Don’t Eat. Freeze Your Butt Off

Uppity Woman — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:00:26 +0000

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

No Kidding. Barack Obama actually said that today. You can’t make this stuff up. He was talking about America “leading by example”. But it does conjure thoughts of exactly what Barack Obama has in mind.

Talk about an omen of what is to come if this guy, by some freak oddity, became President. I’m just wondering which “other countries” he wants the approval of. I mean, we are talking about the Presidency of the United States here. I wasn’t aware that our food, cars or warmth was subject to another country’s ‘approval’. But that’s just me.

Seeing Obama’s latest remark about his country kind of got me thinking what we would have to do if he were to become President, perish the thought.

Here are some practice tips I would think would work well with an Obama Presidency:

You can start by telling your useless anti-Obama elderly parent or neighbor that it’s just too damned bad if she is cold all the time and needs more heat in her apartment. Tell her old people are useless to Barack Obama anyhow, so turn down that thermostat and Live With It! Those goddamned Old People are a such a burden on society anyhow. Besides, most of them don’t like Barry. So screw ‘em. As one very loving “progressive” Obama supporter so compassionately described it back in January:

So, Barack scored a decisive victory tonight, unless you look exclusively at the old people vote. While he kicked ass in nearly every age group except those over 65, his support goes down progressively as the voters get older and he really, really doesn’t do well with the old people

Pundits are already pundit-ing that he needs to improve among old people because otherwise that whole “breaking down barriers” thing he’s pontificating about doesn’t count if all the old people don’t vote for him because he’s black. Then again, November 2008 is kind of far off. A lot of ‘em will prolly kick the bucket by then.

Bzzzzzzzzz! Time’s almost Up! There are still a lot of old people in the USA and they all still pretty much hate Barry.

You just don’t see too many of them hanging out swooning over his vibrating cell phone do you? Some say that a certain amount of wisdom and discernment comes with age. Translated, this means older people recognize a con when they see it. Just saying.

So bascially, if Barry decides to appoint himself President, he will just have to make all those old people crank down that thermostat to 62, let them freeze, the old farts — so “other countries” will say “Ok”. All 27 million of them! Think of the money the country will save if Obama just gets rid of all those pesky old people he doesn’t have time for. The problem is, he’s going to have to round them all up and make them feel too cold to vote in November or else it’s back to being a Chicago Thug for him. Maybe he can spring Tony Rezko and get him to cut off the heat completely. That’s the Obama-Chicago way.

Here’s considerate Barry smacking down one of those old farts in Iowa, where they simply cannot wait to vote again in November now that they know him better. The guy is just a boatload of compassion isn’t he?

And another thing, America: When Barky Obama is President, you aren’t going to be allowed to eat as much as you want anymore either. So get with the program and stop eating now! That way Barack Obama won’t be sending the Food Police to your house later. They are going to take your food and give it to somebody else who needs it more. You want a big meal? Get an invitation to the White House. Otherwise, no arugula for you!

You also might as well get rid of that damned SUV right now! Of course he can keep his. After all, he is the President! Oh wait, Ok, so he’s not president yet. But he will be just as soon as he figures out a way to cheat again and disenfranchise some more of the 57 states that aren’t going to vote for him. That should fix it. In the meantime, get yourself a subcompact and shove the five kids and the dog in it. If you don’t all fit, leave some kids home or something. And while you’re at it, start biking to work. So what if you commute 30 miles every day.

To be honest with you, hearing Barack Obama make those remarks reminded me of the Jimmy Carter days. Anyone who remembers Jimmy also remembers what a blast it was only being able to get some gasoline on Odd or Even days, depending on the last digit on your license plate. It was also fun to listen to Jimmy give his School Principal lectures to us on TV. I think they called that period in American History the “Carter Malaise”. But at least Jimmy waited till he was actually President to chastise and depress people. Of course, he also got his a$$ handed to him on a plate when he ran for his second term.

Obama Prosperity: It’s just around the corner. His. Not yours.

Here’s the New Democratic Logo for “Losers for Obama”

NoQuarter — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:05:39 +0000

Loser ‘Droid Jimmy Carter

to the states of Michigan and Florida:

DROP DEAD!

The former president tells Jay Leno Wednesday night that the two states’ delegations should not be seated at August’s convention because they “disqualified themselves.”

“It would be a catastrophe for the party.” (Via Mark Halperin’s blog)

So here’s the new logo for the Democratic party convention, via New Hampster:

And HERE’S a t-shirt for these LOSERS:

BUY YOUR T-shirts here at New Hampster’s ZAZZLE page.