Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Can A College Dropout Win The Presidency? — DocJay
Scott Walker has rock star status in the GOP. He turned around a bad fiscal scene in Wisconsin and is an effective manager (like most Republican governors). He defeated a recall effort led by unions, which makes him an original and tough guy. He’s got enough looks and charm to make a run at it too.
Does being a college dropout make a difference? He left Marquette with a semester plus to go (with a 2.59 GPA — hey, wait, what’s a transcript on a candidate doing out there?) and headed in to politics. He left after a few issues at school regarding political life. One guy who he accused of misappropriating student body funds for a limo ride still despises him, but, most importantly, it’s been alleged (without any conclusive proof) that Walker removed copies of the campus newspaper when it decided not to endorse him in a campaign against some anti-apartheid granola activist fellow (who ended up winning).
None of those potential sins seem big to me at all, but Lord knows the liberal media will milk them as much as possible while simultaneously obfuscating the greater sins of Hillghazi Clinton.
We’ve had a bunch of Ivy League elites lately, none of whom could run a lemonade stand for profit. Competence is desperately needed in a president right now, as is toughness beyond compare.
In the end, I don’t think the school issues matter (in fact, not being a snob may help) when Walker has a record of success to back him up.
Your thoughts?
Published in General
I might vote for him because he’s a college drop out. I’ve had enough of the Ivy League, and would prefer someone who got his education by actually doing something. I remember William F. Buckley’s quip that he’d rather be gopverned by the first hundred people in the Boston phonebook than by the professors at Harvard.
Liberals won’t vote for him because he doesn’t have credentials. But they won’t vote for him anyway.
And certainly the Ivy League hasn’t done a stellar job… It won’t affect my choice. I think he and Paul are the best candidates at the moment.
Weight, religion, education . . . I see a trend here.
The bottom line is that the liberal media will viciously attack any Republican candidate that has a chance of winning, even the squishy ones. To be successful a candidate will need to be able to sell himself directly to the American people and fight back when attacked. Personality is going to be just as important as policy. So who do we have that can win in this environment?
Why the heck are we hearing all this Bush/Christie stuff then? Corruption and cronyism come to mind.
The obesity one had some racy comedy but I was serious there. I have other ones and I almost added the Bush dynasty stuff as the big turnoff to voters but since there is a war on religion I picked that issue.
Walker is my first choice, I don’t care if he is a college dropout or has three PhD’s. If he wins reelection in WI, he will have proven himself capable of selling a real conservative message to a Democrat leaning audience. He will have withstood an onslaught from the left beyond what any other candidate has faced (so I don’t see him wilting in the face of questions about his college life) and has successfully implemented a conservative agenda as a chief executive. How he performs on the national stage is yet to be determined.
Well I hope he’s training himself in the Jedi ways.
Didn’t a college dropout start Microsoft?
Being a college graduate doesn’t give you any more smarts or practical knowledge. I dropped out of college, my sister-in-law received her degree in accounting, cum laude. Even after 2 years as an apprentice in a big accounting firm, she was unable to pass the “practical application” portion of the CA State CPA exam, she had theory up the kadzu. I spent 3 months coaching her with only a certificate of completion in accounting courses.
Walker is a doer, not a theorist, so he is my first choice.
Where a candidate went to college doesn’t seem to be an independent factor in how the media treats that candidate. How a candidate presents himself in the here and now is what determines his treatment by the media, who will then twist his educational background in any way necessary to support that current narrative.
Take Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and GW Bush. For all intents and purposes they have the same types of degrees from the same elite schools, yet the media sculpted that common fact into wildly different narratives. In the case of Obama, his education demonstrated his superior intelligence, while for Romney it showed him to be an upper-crust elite, while for the obviously “dumb” Bush, his Ivy League background revealed him to be a silver-spooned legacy baby.
If Walker presents himself as smart and competent, he can use his lack of a degree to his advantage – by showing that he is a natural talent who doesn’t need the coaching of others to succeed. As mentioned above, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have shown the strength of that archetype.
I think the much bigger problem for Walker will be why he left college.
It’s one thing to leave college because you want to start the company that will enrich the lives of millions. It’s another to slink out right before graduation with no obvious explanation.
If there are indeed skeletons in the closet associated with Walker’s dropping out, he will probably need to come clean on them early and, if necessary, go on a brief but loud apology tour. Otherwise the issue might indeed plague him until Election Day.
I think the narrative will be he was upset some liberal got elected by playing a race card. The kid that won was kicked off the job just months later. If this narrative is true then I’m fine with it. I want Walker to win so much he will burn with passion and energy to beat the progs.
Some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met, I met in college.
Some of the smartest never went to school after High School.
I also think many on the right fear the media’s portrayal of Republican candidates too much.
For all the hand-wringing about how the media juggernaut plays up any blemishes in a Republican candidate’s past, we forget that George W Bush had anything but a stellar college and early adult career – bad grades, alcohol and drug problems, failed businesses – as well as some unflattering campaign tactics. Yet he still managed to win (barely).
A competent candidate can withstand the American media, even with a few missteps in his past.
These words you speak are true.
I would be thrilled to vote for him for one reason: He looked at the whopping unemployment in his state, realized that a lot of the jobless people lacked credentials, not skills and intelligence, so he got the state to scour the databases of the state’s colleges to find people they could award an associate’s degree to or who were near enough that they could coax back to finish a course or two to get that degree. That little thing helped thousands of people get past the computer job candidate screeners.
I think he is a saint. He actually did something constructive that actually helped real people solve real problems in the real world. He would be the best president in the world.
I would run out of pepper spray dealing with those progressives. Walker has handled them skillfully so far.
Walker is my first choice, too: Principled, pragmatic and tough without being obnoxious.
Good, I like that.
One of the smartest men I know dropped out of high school. I hired him as my IT guy.
And Apple?
Honestly, I think it makes him more of an appealing candidate. We need to get away from the Ivy’s. They’ve compiled a rather poor record of late.
This is an excellent, straightforward summation. Well done Nanda.
There are millions upon millions of college graduates who are not qualified to be president of a local fast food restaurant, not to mention the U.S. President. Leadership skills are primary. A university today cannot guaranty this qualification.
Has Scott Walker ever been on Uncommon Knowledge? If not, he’d be an interesting interview considering he was able to survive the recall. I am curious how he views the media and the progressive machine that turned its arsenal against him.
What I’m enjoying about the comments is the understanding that a college pedigree does not ensure skilled leadership. Obviously a great education can open doors but the measure of a person is their accomplishments. I wrote an article long ago about a man who had an incredible career in aeronautical engineering after MIT in the 50’s. The man was teaching PE in Nebraska after his football life and administering IQ tests was part of his job. He sent out Can Do letters to every business he found in the big papers and one man responded with an interview. Part of the interview was an IQ test, the same me Ron had been passing out to the high school kids. His new boss paid him to go to MIT after Ron ripped through the test in a few minutes.
Walker dropped out of Marquette because he had a promising job opportunity — quite some time after those “political” incidents.
The Democrats tried to make the allegation that his withdrawal was related to those on their website at some point. They removed the allegation (I believe after that Politifact article). So basically it’s thoroughly discredited.
Also, I seem to recall reading that Walker’s actually working on finishing up that degree. How about a college dropout who finished up the degree as governor of Wisconsin?
What a beautiful sight that would be! :)
I want someone who will actually fight to win. Walker fits that description but so do Cruz and Paul. At this point, though, its anybody who is not a squish.
Sorry, HvA, both Cruz and Paul have focused *way* too much attention on themselves for my taste. Fighting to win doesn’t require picking fights. (By the way, *smile* when you say ‘squish’.)