I saw that too. It is scary that someone with so little education could become president. It should almost become mandatory that a president has at least a Masters degree (or some other sort of highly regarded post-graduate diploma).
Obviously, the formal education does not make the person. You can look anywhere and find people with good credentials but without a clue (can anyone say “Behe”?).
To have a truly democratic process, you absolutely can’t put on restrictions like that. However, you would hope that people would use common sense and realise that it is usually better to have educated representation than otherwise.
I usually just find it disturbing that there are so many people who don’t. If you have followed the US presidential race, you will remember how the Republicans have portrayed Obamama as “elitist” and that he thinks he is better than the “average American”. I have made the point several times, that I (as an American) do not want the “average American” in the oval office. I DO want someone who is more clued up on how things work in politics. Not someone who is in it for themself alone, but yeah, someone who is better educated, has more experience, etc., than the “average American”.
This willful ignorance that the the Republicans have portrayed as a virtue is vile.
It makes me think of a quote in this article from the NY Times (see paragraph 2, page 2).
“She’s [Sarah Palin] always talking about the ‘Average Joe,’ ” Jeremy Long said. “Average me! I don’t want myself in the Oval Office. I want someone smarter.”
Agreed.
What scares me is that both McCain and Palin make no effort to inform themselves at all, even on the topics that they talk about in their speeches. We’ve already noted McCain’s ignorance about the difference between a planetarium projector and an overhead projector. Sarah Palin, in her first policy speech, spoke about the need for more government backed research in autism and other children’s disorders. Then she went on to say this…
“Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? … some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”
A little research by Palin, or her speech writers, would have revealed just how imporant fruit fly research is, particularly in autism and other children’s disorders. ???
One movie title that comes to mind when I read about McCain and Palin is “Dumb and Dumber.”