- Sun Aug 21, 2016 6:14 pm
#76124
As to prior presidents, they furnish the context.
2016 is hardly the first political contest in human history.
Machiavelli is not on the ballot either, but he is relevant.
Relevant too are prior presidents.
Some looked at peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and found him qualified as he cleaned out fish ponds in the autumn of 1976.
Some looked at Gerald Ford stumble and thought him awkward, but he was probably the best athlete to ever be president.
Adlai Stevenson was thought to be witty and smart, but he flunked out of his first law school.
Ford was thought to be dumb, but he did well at Yale Law.
If BIll Clinton was so bright, why didn't he complete a degree at Oxford? Even his daughter got a D Phil there.
JFK was deemed brilliant by many in the press, but it was Ted Sorensen who wrote his good stuff.
Ike was deemed bland and tedious, but was anybody with more important managerial experience ever elected?
If Bush Jr was so dumb, why were his SAT scores higher than Al Gore's?
Why did Gore drop out of law school with failing grades, then drop out of divinity school too? Perhaps he was just a latent genius waiting to scribble Earth in the Balance?
So yeah, who is qualified is indeed a question so subjective as to be nigh solipsistic.