The Boss

The liberal university crowd of the northeast is scared to death. In their euphoria over Barack, it hadn't really dawned on them that there was another candidate in the race. His sophistication and compelling speaking style had rendered their brains unable to discern that simple fact - and to be fair, the media hadn't offered them much support in their reality grasping challenges. Nor had John McCain. They hadn't considered that Barack could lose.

But McCain came to life, the polls started to move, and the hearts of the intellectual elite sank in unison. Maybe we're not going to finally get our George McGovern win, they realized. Adlai's third try could also fail. John Kerry in racial drag may not be enough to overcome the dirty tricks of those nasty Republicans!

With America facing historic debt, multiple war fronts, stumbling health care and education systems, a weakened economy, drooping dollar, all-time high prison population, skyrocketing Federal spending for war, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc. etc., this is an unusually critical election year.

Then Sarah Palin came along. It's been just three weeks, but three weeks in hell lasts forever. They can't believe it! A mother of young kids? Who willingly gave birth to a Down Syndrome baby rather than have an abortion? Who doesn't believe in abortion? Who hunts? From Alaska? Sssshhhheee's White Trash!

The idea of "leadership" must be broadened from mere experience" to include breadth of knowledge, capacity for learning and insight, as well as respect for human rights and the rule of law.

To console themselves, they've taken to circulating silly emails. They don't view them that way, of course. They take these missives, filled with simple distortions and outright bigotries, as affirmations of the obvious - there is only one horse in this race, but the rest of the country is too dumb to know it! They are in their comfort zone of moral and intellectual superiority.

If you were the boss, looking at the educational background of your two
options, which team would you hire?

Obama:
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in
international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

& Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 of 899

& Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susi tna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

If one were going to choose someone to enter a training program, you might want to choose Obama and Biden based on their education as indicated in this chart - although despite the prejudice some might feel against McCain for having gone to the Naval Academy - it actually trains people to lead, not just to think. Thinking is good, but leadership is about what you do with the ideas after you come up with them.

This is a spoon chart - It indicates what their spoons were made out of when they were babies, so the burden on Obama and Biden as members of a privileged class (shall we say they were born with marble spoons in their mouths?) is to have shown dramatically superior life stories of leadership, courage, and achievement.

While Barack has done great things in terms of career advancement, he hasn't achieved anything other than proving himself to be a fantastic writer and speaker. Biden went from the marble spoon of education almost directly to the U.S. Senate at age 29, where he has not been outstanding.

So, clearly, the question posed by this email doesn't offer the appropriate criteria for choosing the person to assume the most important leadership position in the world. But don't expect the highly educated to figure that out. It's way too simple.