So your argument is, the big bad meanies will make fun of me and/or complain that they aren’t genuine? Give me a break…
Or to put it another way, a way that maybe you don’t see… what’s the general opinion in non-crazy America about the birth cert? The folks on this board regularly ridicule the birthers. I’d suggest that most people think he’s US. (Wait, let me prove it.)
If a similar reaction were to happen with the grades, you don’t think that would help him with the opinion of the indies, where elections get decided? Really? Just like the cheap trick w/W’s drunk driving thing (see **Bricker’s **thread) probably helped W as a sympathy play? A rational person sees that there’d be a backlash big-time against those theories (obviously not among the true believers on the right, but how many of them are lining up to vote Dem in Nov anyway).
I’d suggest finding a better downside if you want to have credibility in this discussion. Or just drop it, which.
Any business will come up with your college grades ,when you apply for a job. There are online services that will dig up extremely personal facts about you for 50 bucks. Somehow Obama’s birth certificate and college transcripts got burned up in the 911 fires. Go figure.
Nobody had trouble getting Bush’s service records did they?
Oh wait, they did. Sorry.
Given that Mr. Obama is known to have placed high in his class and served as the head of an influential publication, it would not normally serve any point to go digging up his transcripts. Unlike Mr. Bush, who appeared to have deliberately dumbed down his public persona in order to curry the favor of a certain bloc of voters, Mr. Obama has done nothing to suggest that he was a poor scholar.
No one bothered to dig up Mr. McCain’s transcripts, either, because he did not make an issue of his education. Once Bush made intelligence (or an apparent lack of it) an issue, then there was a lot of scrambling to find out his particulars as well as the particulars of his opponents. Similarly, I do not recall anyone chasing down the transcripts of Messrs. Bush (I), Dole, or Clinton. The Bush (II) period was an anomaly based on a particular campaign tactic that he employed.
Your ability for nuance clearly outpaces my ability for understanding. Please explain what you meant, if you are able to in my primitive dialect :rolleyes:
This is something I actually never thought of before - that W wasn’t stupid, per se, he just played one on TV, so people would relate more, want to drink a beer with him, etc.
I’m glad that we have such omniscient mods here that they know, with an absolute certainty, that the risk is absolutely zero that this issue won’t hurt the Dems in Nov, and therefore aren’t willing to take the trivial steps to take it off the table.
No risk whatsoever. You’d bet your life on it. You’d bet the lives of your kids on it. Gotcha.
Edit to add, I wasn’t being sarcastic w/the comment about W, I honestly never thought about that before.
I think at this point I’ve done enough explaining. I said nothing about “the meanies.” I said the people who are complaining would not be persuaded and would only dodge. And nobody else gives a flying fuck about the issue. If you’re lost, try Hare Krishna.
Truth be told, I figure the whole “Bush is dumb!” thing got tedious and overused well before his administration ended. I didn’t figure he was personally dumb (though he’s not as smooth a public speaker and thus unfavourably and unfairly compared to Clinton and Obama in this regard), but I could buy that he’s an incurious and lazy thinker, which made it relatively easy for his various handlers with their various agendas to isolate him for their own ends.
The only people that this stupid story will get traction with are anti Obama conspiracy dreamers. I am sure people who are dumb enough to buy the birther arguments will fall behind this farce too. But they would not support Obama anyway, so there is no danger of it hurting his chances. These people are talking to themselves. People who need evidence will ignore this idiocy.
I have never understood how people thought that someone who was actually stupid could successfully graduate from Yale, (at whatever class position), and then make it through flight training in the Air Force. It doesn’t make sense.
There are videos of GWB in debates for his first run at the Texas governorship in which he is articulate and decisive. His later debates and press conferences had to have been a choice of style, (unless he is suffering a seriously debilitating illness of the mind). I have always thought that he was intellectually lazy, choosing to go with his gut instead of actually taking the time to become informed of a situation before making a decision, but he could not have actually made it to the positions he did, (even with the help of Poppy and Rove), without having sufficient intelligence.
I am not in a position to influence any decision to expose or conceal his transcripts and so I do not spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the topic. It may very well hurt the Democrats in November or Obama in 2012. My only point was that a claim that some great number of candidates (3) had their transcripts outed in two of the last three elections seems weak when it was only an issue bcause of the behavior of the candidates.
I am sure you heard of gentlemens Cs. The rich and powerful at the Ivy leagues get in and get grades. Bush’s family is in position to do a lot for Yale. They can raise money, provide speakers for them and donate buildings and huge amounts of money. They can provide political connections and important jobs. The Ivies know better than to screw up that relationship. They scratch each others backs and we get the bill .