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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Obama's Grades in College Were Terrible . . .

. . . at least compared to my own. How do I know this? I know my grades, and Obama won't release his; this is all you need to know. What got me thinking about this was a comment by Roger Hedgecock today that the Republican nominee will be subject to scurrilous attacks by the main stream media as they deploy legions of investigators to interview team mates from the candidates high school football team and former college roomies. Right on cue, we find this article from Maureen Dowd on Rick Perry's grades in college.

Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.

“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”

He even got a C in gym.

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.

But given Obama's known record and his failure to disclose all sorts of information about his past, the rebuttal should be relatively easy, as the headline of this post demonstrates. Given that more of such peurility will be coming from the left, the eventual Republican nominee needs to be ready. Here are some lines of attack and the easy counter-volley available to the Republican nominee.
  • The Republican is a friend of bankers and Wall Street. (Waiting for laughter to subside.) You mean like William Daley from JPMorgan, Geithner from the Fed, Peter Orzag, former budget director, now with Citigroup, Rahm Emmanuel earned $16.2 million at investment bank, Wasserstein Perella, Jacob Lew, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, at Citigroup?
  • The Republican's Uncle (fill in your favorite relative) was a tax cheat. (More laughter) Like Timmy "The Tax Cheat" Geithner, in charge of your collecting your taxes?
  • The Republican's uncle was arrested for DUI. Kind of like Uncle Omar? Was the Republican's brother also under a deportation order?
  • The Republican has some shady friends. Like Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers?
Please help out the eventual nominee and post your own examples in the comments.

2 comments:

  1. Boy, I remember in the early 80's when Roger was a self-professed liberal. Not that we believed him.

    So are you arguing that one should not expect more out of the next president, then we did with Obama?

    The college grades are an issue though. You want a president, or for that matter an executive, who pays attention to detail and can digest a lot of information. Perry couldn't do that in college, and his debate performance suggests that he hasn't gotten any better in the intervening years. Obama has shown that this ability is only a necessary skill, not sufficient one.

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  2. Kelly, I disagree about the college grades, and not because mine were bad. Both experience and research have shown that there is little correlation between success and grades.
    With regards to Obama, I must say that I regard him as a bit of a dim bulb. He is unable to answer questions off the cuff in unscripted situations without stumbling around. That is indicative of someone who isn't in command of the facts and theories that support his positions. Even though I disliked McCain's positions, I respected the fact that he could wade into a hostile town hall and answer with conviction. It was a big reason he got my vote, instead of the Libertarian in 2008.

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