part one: the iowa caucuses
4 January 2008
Congrats to Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama and their supporters for winning the Iowa Caucuses last night. While I plan to cover politics a lot more on this here blog this year with my sure to be award-winning series, "Decision 2008: A Black or A Woman," here’s one little note to get the ball rolling.
Mitt Romney’s got a Harvard JD/MBA and founded Bain Capital, and so he’s made more money that your dad and all his friends combined. Rudy went to NYU Law and recorded a record 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. McCain went to the Naval Academy (I’m assuming his daddy had something to do with that, but the guy lived in a cage for five and a half years!). Fred Thompson has a JD from Vanderbilt and was awesome in Law & Order.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley and Yale Law and in addition to being pretty intellectually badass, emerged from a very difficult personal and professional scandal because of her husband’s lustiness - much respect for brains and balls. Barack graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law, and, I don’t know, from what I’ve seen is a pretty charming black guy (though I’d like to see him pack on a few more pounds). John Edwards has a JD from UNC and, let’s just say it, is dreamy.
Last night’s Republican winner, Mike Huckabee, went to Ouachita Baptist University and has no advanced degrees. I don’t mean to be a snob about this (even though that’s how it’s going to come off) and I wouldn’t vote Republican if my father was running as a Republican and/or the GOP platform suddenly changed from "Down With Gays and Reading, Up With Jesus and Ain’t Reading" to "Free Handjobs for All Mulgrews," so I guess it’s moot anyway. But there’s no way I’m voting for a presidential candidate who went to a school that I could get into if I took every test in high school left-handed and after several major hits from a nitrous balloon. Not that I’m particularly smart (because that ship sailed in about 7th grade) or that the college I went to (Boston College) is exactly Ivy-covered, but I feel a little more comfortable knowing that my president at least did better on his/her SATs than I did. Call me crazy.
There are major flaws in this argument, namely that perhaps Huckabee got a scholarship to Ouachita Baptist or wanted to stay close to family or loved Jesus too much (he was a minister, after all) to go anywhere else. These are possibilities. Also, our current president went to Yale and has an MBA from Harvard and, well, that hasn’t exactly worked out for us, or, you know, the world and the next few generations of inhabitants of the Middle East. And sure, Mike Huckabee has accomplished much in his life and was governor of Arkansas for 11 years, even though being governor of Arkansas is like being a lifetime achievement award winner at the Special Olympics (and yes, I know Bill Clinton, who I’m a fan of, was governor of Arkansas, but he was also a Rhodes Scholar). But there’s no way that I can in any way support an Arkansan who was a minister and went to Ouachita Baptist University as President of the United States. I mean, wow. I think I just blew my own mind.
Disclaimer: I’m a liberal New York Jew. And no, I’m not Jewish but rather Irish Catholic, but there’s very little difference anyway. I measure success by things like wealth, educational background, and attractiveness of significant other. My world revolves around the Northeast, and people from other parts of the country who do not have breasts scare me a little (actually, non-Northeasterners with breasts scare me a little, too). But here’s the thing: I still only hope that there are enough people out there like me to prevent what happened in 2004 from happening in 2008. Not like me in the sense that last night I drank four Sam Adams Cherry Wheats, beat off twice, and watched five tivo’ed episodes of "Family Guy," but like me in the "having reasonable and reasonably intelligent political ideals" sense. Call me crazy. And if this election unfurls like the one in 2004, I may just be driven mad.
Mitt Romney’s got a Harvard JD/MBA and founded Bain Capital, and so he’s made more money that your dad and all his friends combined. Rudy went to NYU Law and recorded a record 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. McCain went to the Naval Academy (I’m assuming his daddy had something to do with that, but the guy lived in a cage for five and a half years!). Fred Thompson has a JD from Vanderbilt and was awesome in Law & Order.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley and Yale Law and in addition to being pretty intellectually badass, emerged from a very difficult personal and professional scandal because of her husband’s lustiness - much respect for brains and balls. Barack graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law, and, I don’t know, from what I’ve seen is a pretty charming black guy (though I’d like to see him pack on a few more pounds). John Edwards has a JD from UNC and, let’s just say it, is dreamy.
Last night’s Republican winner, Mike Huckabee, went to Ouachita Baptist University and has no advanced degrees. I don’t mean to be a snob about this (even though that’s how it’s going to come off) and I wouldn’t vote Republican if my father was running as a Republican and/or the GOP platform suddenly changed from "Down With Gays and Reading, Up With Jesus and Ain’t Reading" to "Free Handjobs for All Mulgrews," so I guess it’s moot anyway. But there’s no way I’m voting for a presidential candidate who went to a school that I could get into if I took every test in high school left-handed and after several major hits from a nitrous balloon. Not that I’m particularly smart (because that ship sailed in about 7th grade) or that the college I went to (Boston College) is exactly Ivy-covered, but I feel a little more comfortable knowing that my president at least did better on his/her SATs than I did. Call me crazy.
There are major flaws in this argument, namely that perhaps Huckabee got a scholarship to Ouachita Baptist or wanted to stay close to family or loved Jesus too much (he was a minister, after all) to go anywhere else. These are possibilities. Also, our current president went to Yale and has an MBA from Harvard and, well, that hasn’t exactly worked out for us, or, you know, the world and the next few generations of inhabitants of the Middle East. And sure, Mike Huckabee has accomplished much in his life and was governor of Arkansas for 11 years, even though being governor of Arkansas is like being a lifetime achievement award winner at the Special Olympics (and yes, I know Bill Clinton, who I’m a fan of, was governor of Arkansas, but he was also a Rhodes Scholar). But there’s no way that I can in any way support an Arkansan who was a minister and went to Ouachita Baptist University as President of the United States. I mean, wow. I think I just blew my own mind.
Disclaimer: I’m a liberal New York Jew. And no, I’m not Jewish but rather Irish Catholic, but there’s very little difference anyway. I measure success by things like wealth, educational background, and attractiveness of significant other. My world revolves around the Northeast, and people from other parts of the country who do not have breasts scare me a little (actually, non-Northeasterners with breasts scare me a little, too). But here’s the thing: I still only hope that there are enough people out there like me to prevent what happened in 2004 from happening in 2008. Not like me in the sense that last night I drank four Sam Adams Cherry Wheats, beat off twice, and watched five tivo’ed episodes of "Family Guy," but like me in the "having reasonable and reasonably intelligent political ideals" sense. Call me crazy. And if this election unfurls like the one in 2004, I may just be driven mad.
