Do I still get the points if I was there when you were reading it alound and said "Oh my god that was ripped of from Frederick Douglas!" (or words to that effect)?
I can't help but recall that it was the East Coast establishment which gamely led us into Vietnam, and PhD-holding ex-college President Woodrow Wilson who completely blew the World War I endgame, while former railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln saved the Union. Experience is overrated, and so is intelligence. We've tried being led by elites (see above), and we've tried being led by idiots (last eight years).
McCain has experience, but it's not clear how much translates to executive governance (ditto Biden). Obama and Palin are virtual unknowns insofar as actually running the shop goes. Both of them are playing up identity politics and character issues; what they'd actually *do* with power and responsibility is unclear.
First of all, the fact that education leads fairly directly to investment in the status quo and the fact that Academia is basically conservative in infrastructure doesn't automatically mean that the trappings of intellect should be somehow suspect--which seems to be the argument made by a number of modern politicians. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect my leaders to know more about the world than I do, and I certainly don't think it's unreasonable for me to lust after the possibility of a leader who I could look up to, respect, be inspired by, and generally view as a statesman worthy of my admiration. I don't think that more education or even intellectualism makes a better president, but I do want my leaders to be elite in that I want them to be better than me--because I know for sure that I shouldn't be president
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I probably should have prefaced my previous post by saying that I'd seen this posted elsewhere and thought it was funny as hell ;).
My point, broadly, was that Lincoln was an outstanding leader but lacked obvious qualifications. There's an interesting book by the American historian T. Harry Williams called Lincoln and his Generals which examines Lincoln's growth as a strategist during the Civil War years. He (Lincoln) compares very favorably with the professional soldiers who ought to have directed the war effort; actually, Lincoln compares very favorably with most of our "war presidents
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I can't help but recall that it was the East Coast establishment which gamely led us into Vietnam, and PhD-holding ex-college President Woodrow Wilson who completely blew the World War I endgame, while former railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln saved the Union. Experience is overrated, and so is intelligence. We've tried being led by elites (see above), and we've tried being led by idiots (last eight years).
McCain has experience, but it's not clear how much translates to executive governance (ditto Biden). Obama and Palin are virtual unknowns insofar as actually running the shop goes. Both of them are playing up identity politics and character issues; what they'd actually *do* with power and responsibility is unclear.
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My point, broadly, was that Lincoln was an outstanding leader but lacked obvious qualifications. There's an interesting book by the American historian T. Harry Williams called Lincoln and his Generals which examines Lincoln's growth as a strategist during the Civil War years. He (Lincoln) compares very favorably with the professional soldiers who ought to have directed the war effort; actually, Lincoln compares very favorably with most of our "war presidents ( ... )
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