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We’ll take the jobs and economic growth, you keep the credentials

We’ll take the jobs and economic growth, you keep the credentials

One of the greatest mistakes we make is to confuse academic credentials with leadership.

Barack Obama, who guards his transcripts like they’re the equivalent of the formula to Coke, presumably had very good grades at Harvard Law School because he graduated with high honors, a purely grade-based achievement.  Obama’s college grades are more of a mystery.  Obama’s transcripts are strictly off limits to the media, however, which never questions why Obama has not released the type of information released by both George W. Bush and John Kerry when they ran for president.

Not so with Rick Perry.  His grades are of great importance, apparently.  Someone at Texas A&M leaked Perry’s college transcripts to Huffington Post, which ran an article which highlighted the less than impressive results in the headline:  Rick Perry’s College Transcript: A Lot of Cs and Ds.  This smells like payback for Perry’s efforts to reform the state higher education system, about which I posted yesterday.

Not an impressive collection of grades, but Perry has put together an impressive collection of economic and job growth in Texas while the rest of the nation has suffered under Obama.

Democrats can keep Obama’s academic credentials, we’ll take the  jobs and economic growth.

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Comments

LukeHandCool | August 5, 2011 at 2:36 pm

The last time I was on Facebook, a high school classmate (and rabid left-winger) mocked Palin’s supposed stupidity (over the Paul Revere manufactured controversy) and defended Obama’s record as POTUS thus far … by his academic credentials!!

After I said this was typical of the left’s faith-based religious reverence of credentialing, I supplied him with this snippet of an interview with Obama’s former colleague and U of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein:

Robinson: You are quoted in the Boston Globe, “I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.” How good is Obama’s mind?

Epstein: His mind is pretty good, but it is a clever “means-ends” mind. He has never written a scholarly article in his entire life.

Robinson: He was President of the Harvard Law Review but never wrote an article.

Epstein: If he did, it was unsigned and not academically significant.

Robinson: Would you ever give him tenure at the University of Chicago Law School?

Epstein: No, no, no…”

My former classmate’s response? He pulled out an old quote of Bush misspeaking.

LukeHandCool ( who feels obliged to confess he should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names starting with the letter “J” in the Ithaca telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University).

    You always have good comments but this is GREAT 🙂

    “LukeHandCool ( who feels obliged to confess he should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names starting with the letter “J” in the Ithaca telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University).”

I don’t think our country can take another “brilliant” president. I only hope we elect someone who is smart and has common sense – and actually had to work for a living!

Academia forgets that some of the most successful men in history were ‘dullards’ and drop outs:

Einstein
Edison
John F Kennedy
John Glen
Rush Limbaugh

Bill Gates
Paul Allen
Michael Dell
Henry Ford

Obviously success is not dependent upon credentials. A certain amount of ‘book learning’ makes things easier, but most jobs become absurdly simple when learned via experience.

Its not uncommon for theory to not mesh with reality as any College graduate usually learns to their chagrin. Doors open faster to the credentialed on presumption that the student completed a certain course of education ‘preparing’ them to ‘think’ about the real world. A degree means ‘I’m ready to start’ in contrast to the ‘I’m an expert’ that most seem to consider it

    mike in nc in reply to Steve. | August 5, 2011 at 4:50 pm

    Talked to someone who works at Paychex, very successful company, founded by:
    Tom Golisano, associates degree from Alfred.
    That Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital looks pretty damn good despite “credentials”.
    Whoops, credentials, isn’t that like “credible”? Mr Golisano has plenty of real “cred”.
    He’s the kind of “unexpected results” we used to get in American before bureaucracy crushed us.

      SunnyJ in reply to mike in nc. | August 5, 2011 at 8:43 pm

      You are all are really making a point that needs to be made in a bigger way…self made and modestly educated individuals that have been highly successful and contributory to this country/world:

      Bill Gates- Microsoft (drop out)
      Ernie Stroede (retired farmer/carpenter/inventor that planted seedling pine trees from the county, grew up on land and 60 yrs later, cut down same and invented and built log lift to build log house on same land and live happily ever after. He told me his estate plan is to die in that house and have me burn it down around him and return all back to where it came from)

      It would be good to tell that story.

There’s something almost reassuring about an obviously smart enough man who didn’t inordinately care about making highest marks in the classroom, especially since he went on to achieve by his own terms.

Probably his C’s were for carousing and D’s for drinking, or was he socially conservative back then, too?

    SunnyJ in reply to Nemo's omen. | August 5, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    My extremely socially conservative Catholic cousins use to beat it to town to make Sat night mass so they could go out and get the C’s & D’s and not have to go to Sunday AM mass. I was envious, as the non-Catholic headed for hell cousin, of that confession opportunity to put get things off your heart and get back in the game!

Someone at Texas A&M leaked Perry’s college transcripts to Huffington Post…

I hope one day that this kind of tactic truly bites the academic elites and the media (but I repeat myself) in the @ss.   And hopefully I’ll live long enough to see it, but I’m not optimistic?
.

Someone please refresh my memory. How long did he teach at the UC Law School and what did he teach? Since BHO is considered a scholar, how many law journal articles and law related texts/books did he publish?

    beloved2 in reply to Hurricane. | August 6, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    I didn’t realize it was sarcasm until after I researched. Answer none!nada! See http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/the-truth-about-obamas-teaching-at-chicago-law-school
    and scroll down to the following article titled “Chicago Law prof on Obama: The Professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified & never attended any of the faculty meetings”.
    The reason why Obama nor Michelle have no law licenses has never been explained, whether it was voluntary of involuntary surrender has never been explained.
    Obama’s purpose is economic jihad, folks, he is just a puppet of George Soros and as long as Soros (who has made a career of ruining other country’s economies)is happy with him, we are stuck. Who really thinks there will actually be an election in 2012?
    Remember when the press went gaga over Dan Quayle’s C grade in chemistry in 1980? Research Abraham Lincoln’s career before he won the presidency, he was the biggest loser than Richard Nixon’s career.
    “Not an impressive collection of grades, but Perry has put together an impressive collection of economic and job growth in Texas while the rest of the nation has suffered under Obama.

    Democrats can keep Obama’s academic credentials, we’ll take the jobs and economic growth….”
    YES, PERRY CAN!
    What are Obama’s academic credentials? That he got an affirmative action degree in Alinsky from an unaccredited university?

Wasn’t Perry a democrat back in his college days? Why, yes he was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry

“In 1989, The Dallas Morning News named him one of the most effective legislators in the 71st Legislature.[citation needed] That same year, Perry announced that he was joining the Republican Party.”

    retire05 in reply to joated. | August 5, 2011 at 4:33 pm

    Why, yes, Perry WAS a Democrat, for less time than Reagan was a Democrat. Would you consider Reagan a liberal?

    Perry was also considered a VERY conservative Democrat, and for you to understand what that means, consider this; even to this day, Texas Democrats are ususally more conservative than East Coast Republicans.

    In 1988, the year before Perry changed parties, you would be hard pressed to find any Texan that didn’t consider themselves a Democrat, yet the state was, and remains, conservative. Back then, the only reason that any Republican got elected was because of the good old boy system and people tended to vote for the guy from their county.

    Now, Texas is solid red. Since the 2010 elections, two Texas Democrats have switched to the Repupublican Party simply because they felt that the national Democratic Party has become far too left wing.

    I hope that who ever leaked Perry’s grades is fired. Since Obama feels he has the right to keep his grades “personal”, Rick Perry should have been given the same courtesy. But in academia, even a conservative school like A & M, you are going to find liberal nut cases. It seems to go with the [university] territory.

My younger brother was a high school valedictorian; was featured in the LA Times for having the highest SAT score in all of So CA; earned a scholarship to Harvard; graduated with distinctions for having majored in the dubious subject of Political Science.

That he emerged from college with Left Wing views is another story.

What’s news worthy is how this straight A sibling, while arguing for moral necessity of the ‘Progressive Tax’; could not cite to his less educated brother the amount of the national debt, the Fed Gov’t’s 2010 tax revenue, NYS Medicaid budget… and more poignantly, what our widow mother’s escalating property tax is.

So yes. I’ll take Perry’s record of job + economic growth over Obama’s splendid mysterious grades.

DINORightMarie | August 5, 2011 at 5:13 pm

If someone had “leaked” Obama’s grades back in 2007 or early 2008, we might have a different president. That ammo was concealed for some reason. Myth creation comes to mind.

I have my theories, most related to the favoritism that typically goes hand in hand with affirmative action. Not being a Harvard person (or any Ivy League person), I can’t speak for the credibility of the Law School faculty while Obama was attending Harvard Law. Or while at Columbia as an undergrad, for that matter.

We knew he was less than academically stellar via word of mouth from peers and fellow travelers while he attended high school. I would say that, unless something drastic and dramatic happened, mediocre performance was his output at the Ivy League schools, too.

Prove me wrong, someone – please! Leak the Executive Order-sealed records. It would be so sweet to have the FACTS, for once, on Obama’s academic performance. 😀

I also agree @retired05 the person should be charged with a criminal breach. But, since Perry’s transcripts were revealed (as were Sarah Palin’s, McCain’s, Kerry’s, Bush’s, etc. etc.), then Obama’s should be revealed, too. It should be a given that someone running for public office is open for examination.

Why is he the only one allowed to keep records private? Hmmmmm??? Anyone? Anyone?

At least Huffy Poo was interested enough and actually able to obtain Gov. Perry’s college transcripts – unlike the current occupant of the W.H.

    The irony in their interest in these records and publishing of them, given their rabid response and cover up of Obama’s records is not the least bit subtle.

eaglewingz08 | August 5, 2011 at 9:08 pm

so when is the US Attirneys office going to investigate this violation of federal laws? Somehow I think if Obama’s records were leaked the outrage would be thunderous. Indeed given the fact that Perry is not even a candidate yet makes this more outrageous and criminal.

Perhaps the good professor can tell us if releasing a person’s university transcripts without that person’s permission is an identity theft crime or a violation of that person’s privacy rights? If so, it is a federal crime?

[…] Professor Jacobsen: One of the greatest mistakes we make is to confuse academic credentials with leadership. […]

    I think the insanity of mistaking academics with leadership started with Vice President Dan Quayle’s C grade in chemistry. How about Ronald Reagan’s C’s and D’s in a major of sociology from Eureka College? Nobody mentions that because it had nothing to do with “tearing down that wall” of Berlin, Germany and dissolution of communist USSR.
    Even Obama mentioned an admiration for the “gipper” during his campaign. My point is that even Democrats recognize Reagan’s extraordinary leadership, not the 45 year prior C’s and D’s. Governor Perry even parts his hair the same way the actor, Ronald Reagan did. Perry would be an extraordinary president.!!!