Education and political affiliation

[JWsleep]

Sorry--power is out here in Houston and I missed this.

I am the classic democrat PhD Obama guy. I am actually a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, but I grew up in Garrett Park MD and lived for 20 years in NYC (went to NYU and CUNY).

Don't know about the chicken and the egg here: I've been voting democratic since I started voting. (I did vote for Bloomberg, however... he's pretty much a democrat anywhere but NYC!)

I do think smarts is important for running the country (the last 8 years have been good evidence for that!), but all smarts are not the same. Churchill was never a good student and he was a great leader. Jefferson was a great thinker, but less than a great president, IMO. My favorite is Teddy Roosevelt. Harvard educated, could read in 8 languages, was an incredibly active outdoors man and hunter, modernized the NYC police dept, modernized the US Navy, helped fight big trusts and monopolies, won the Nobel peace prize, etc. The best of both worlds.

As for the value of higher degrees, it totally depends on what you want to do. There's no way to get my job without one. But my father-in-law didn't go to college, is a VP at a paper machinery company, and lends me money from time to time! He's about as anti-Obama as you can get, for what it's worth. Allowing his daughter to marry some liberal East coast academic was a pretty big concession on his part. Thank god we have football to talk about!

(Actually, he's one of the smartest people I know and we argue politics constantly. If you want to understand your own views, find a smart person who disagrees with you. Really, there's no better way to learn, as Plato tells us.)