Will Rhodes Portmanteau

I was, am, quite befuddled that it was asked.

The question, you may ask, is - what was the question?

This:

Will ‘intellectual’ label hurt Obama?

Being intelligent is a bad thing? The president, and the election thereof can be effected by people who feel that Barack Obama is too intelligent to be the man who is the “leader of the free world’?

I was really taken aback by that, not figuratively scratching my head.

PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) — There is a big question that hangs over this presidential campaign: Will a majority of voters give their support to the presidential candidate who is the intellectual in the contest?

Barack Obama has all the credentials of the famous “pointy-headed” intellectuals in the Democratic Party who have traditionally gone down to defeat.

My question to that is: Why wouldn’t you give your vote, or vote for, a person who is intelligent - isn’t that a prerequisite of being in office?

All you need to do is look at Barack Obama’s education:

He has degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he taught at the University of Chicago, and, yes, he even wrote his own books. In speeches and debates, he has bombarded voters with detailed arguments about public policy. When his character is attacked, his instinct is to respond with facts and figures.

And that is a bad thing?

The commentator goes on:

It is extremely surprising that Obama has this done this well given his intellectual persona. Anti-intellectualism, as the historian Richard Hofstadter noted, has been a tradition in American history.

Since World War II, Republicans have been very successful at making Democrats who appear too intellectual the subject of derision, symbols of how liberals are out of touch with average Americans and lack the passion needed for leadership.

In the 1952 presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon, unleashed a vicious attack on Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who had received degrees from Princeton and Northwestern Law School, for being an “egghead” too closely associated with the university class rather than the working class.

And we all know what Richard Nixon went onto achieve. But, is that even it? How has it come about that ignorance or lack of higher education is a feature in deriding a person who is running for office? Surely that is the sort of person you would want - we have seen in recent weeks how Bush has dealt with the US economy. And he is of better educated than John McCain and out-strips Sarah Palin by a mile!

Personally I DON’T want to go to the local bar for a drink with a guy who is running my country - I want him/her to do his/her job - run the bloody country!

History has told us what does, and will happen again, when an idiot is in office. OK - “He’s a nice guy, I could party with him, I could sit and have a conversation with him, nice fellow - he is one of us…”

But the problem with ‘us’ is you have to have an opposite which means there is a ‘them’.

Why?

All I can conclude from this is that the Republicans want the people to be, for want of a better word, thick!

The essence of education is that, it educates - it gives the person who is receiving the education one tool that everyone should have - the ability to ask questions. If you want to get government out of your face, ask them hard questions - just going along with “I know how to change this…” isn’t really something a person should accept. It should be followed by “How?”

How are you going to change this? How are you going to make things better? If that person cannot answer you they are not going to do it, full stop! Not because they aren’t a nice person - it is because they don’t know how to ask the same questions you want to ask.

In her interview with Katie Couric, Palin said, “I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.”

May be that, more than anything else is the reason McCain chose, Sarah Palin - that she doesn’t believe in a great world out there. May be because of her envy of parent who can give their kids something that she doesn’t believe in. What would be better is that travel is made cheaper.

The walls around the United States have been started with fences erected on her border - but that isn’t the walls that are most important. The walls that are erected in the minds of the people matter most - because once those walls of intolerances, envy and detest of something that is a simple as education there is a hard road back for everyone - even those who espouse intellectuals are not one of us.

Put an intelligent man in the Oval Office this time around - and you will see the difference almost immediately.