Alma mater
A commenter has been telling us lately (but with no actual checkable references) that Obama is not all that intelligent because he got only Bs at Harvard. Since all the commenter has offered in response to a request for references is that somebody said that on a (nameless) BBC documentary last week, there’s no need to pay any attention, but in looking for something else I happened on an interesting piece about Obama’s student days from last February. There’s not much about having an average mind (there’s nothing, actually) and there is a fair amount of the other thing. Of course the reporter could be a raving fan and have simply thrown all the ‘average mind’ stuff into the trash can – but for what it’s worth, some people remember Obama as being quite clever.
Mr. Obama wrote that he learned of a transfer program that Occidental had with Columbia and applied. “He was so bright and wanted a wider urban experience,” recalled Anne Howells, a former English professor at Occidental who taught Mr. Obama and wrote him a recommendation for Columbia…Mr. Obama displayed a deft but unobtrusive manner of debating.“When he talked, it was an E. F. Hutton moment: people listened,” said John Boyer, who lived across the hall from Mr. Obama. “He would point out the negatives of a policy and its consequences and illuminate the complexities of an issue the way others could not.”…The professor, Roger Boesche, has memories of him at a popular burger joint on campus. “He was always sitting there with students who were some of the most articulate and those concerned with issues like violence in Central America and having businesses divest from South Africa,” he said. “These were the kids most concerned with issues of social justice and who took classes and books seriously.”
No mention of B grades, or of mediocrity. The memories could be fallible, they could be shaded by the present, but for what they’re worth, there they are. And at least that’s a checkable reference, which ‘a BBC 4 documentary last week’ is not.
Just hold on there, OB. If it was on TV, it must be true. I read somewhere that the stuff in TV programs has all got to be checked over for truth before it is put to air.
As I recall, I read that in some book. Well, it might have been in what you’d call a magazine but my grandmother called a book. That makes it doubly true, because what goes into books and magazines has to be checked for truth as well.
I heard that on the radio.
As one of those who were skeptical of Obama’s hyper-intelligence, first of all, I never said that he was mediocre. Second, I don’t think that B grades in Harvard Law School indicate a lack of intelligence, if he did receive B grades. Harvard Law School is very competitive place, I imagine and in any case, I’m not sure that university grades are an accurate measurement of one’s intellectual abilities: rather, they measure one’s learning of the subject
matter. It’s good that Obama took an early interest in social issues, as the article claims, but that is hardly the mark of a great mind. Many of us, myself included, are interested in social activism during our university years. I did watch Obama debate McCain, and while Obama won the debates, I didn’t find his debating style to be that of a hyper-intelligent mind. Now, it is possible that Obama made an effort to hide his hyper-intelligence during the debate (that is not irony), since brillance scares some voters. I’m open to that possibility.
If someone can identify the BBC4 program then as a BBC licence fee-payer I can try to check it on iPlayer.
I do not, personally, care whether Obama is hyper-intelligent or not. The hyper-intelligent tend not to be too clever.
I’d settle for someone who is smarter than a doorknob, with an open mind and a moral compass that isn’t addled by drink and theology.
Ian you are of course right about what you see on tv and hear on the radio; it is indeed guaranteed to be true. But how sure can we be that you remember it accurately? Aha – you didn’t see that one coming, did you.
Hehehe.
amos, this one wasn’t about you, it was about John Meredith, who didn’t say the Bs were at law school (he didn’t say where they were, the whole claim was very loose and vague, while also being very assertive). I don’t dispute what you say, but the post was about JM’s vague-but-dogmatic claim.
“I’d settle for someone who is smarter than a doorknob, with an open mind and a moral compass that isn’t addled by drink and theology.”
But why settle? I don’t want to settle, and happily, for once, we don’t have to. I’m sick of settling and I’m very pleased that for a change we get something more than ‘not as bad as Bush.’
I would also suggest that having an open mind is part of non-minimal intelligence.
Off-topic, except for the tangential relation to Obama’s recent declarations about science and being guided by facts, Dennis Overbye has a wonderful article in yesterday’s New York Times that serves as a sort of photonegative for my own frequently aired argument that faith is a moral failing.
I have a certificate from one of the British exam boards certifying that I have passed an A-level Art and Design examination with grade ‘C’. Damian Hirst passed with a grade ‘E’. Damian Hirst recently sold a large collection of his work at Sotheby’s and made around £95m.
A one-off comparison, perhaps. I’ve seen some interesting statistics comparing A-level success rate and degree success rate. There’s really not much in it. Not surprising. Put someone in a school, drill them for four or five hours a day, perhaps dress them in a fancy uniform and send them home to their parents home and then get them to sit an exam on how well they can remember stuff. Then take them half way across the country, stick them in a flat with dodgy plumbing, microwave meals and happy hour on vodka shots, and ask them not to remember stuff but think critically about things, without any drilling on remembering names and dates. I wonder why there might be a difference. Might almost be something like comparing apples and oranges.
As for Obama? Who gives a monkeys if he got a ‘B’? The University of Chicago seemed not to have any problem with his academic credentials and made him a professor. After eight years of a cowboy, we need a professor to sort things out. And since the cowboy antics involved the Constitution – the “goddamn piece of paper” – who better than a professor of Constitutional law to fix it?
“The University of Chicago seemed not to have any problem with his academic credentials and made him a professor.”
Just so; this is what I said; and the University of Chicago does not hire the first person who strolls up to the door, to put it mildly, nor does any old fool get to be president of the Harvard Law Review.
Oh, PLEASE.
Who on earth thinks college grades are a barometer of intelligence? The fact that you get *in* to a good college is a sign of intelligence, unless your last name is Bush or Kennedy.
Obama is extremely intelligent. That much is obvious, except to those who don’t want to believe it.
Shades of the old “Bush got better grades than Gore” which conveniently ignored the fact that Bush’s degree was an MBA – the special deal for sons(sic) of rich parents while Gore studied a real subject. Well Obama studied a real subject and maybe he only got Bs because he was also engaged with the real world and not studying with the express purpose of getting As. I don’t really care what sort of student he was. What I care about is the fact that he is intelligent (hyper-intelligent – isn’t that for aliens with enlarged craniums) but what I care about much more is that he is actively turning around Bush’s contempt for competence (and for facts and anything that looks vaguely like reality).
The guy’s hit the ground running – he’s working hard to fix the problems Bush created as well as the one’s he inherited and did bugger all about.
The US now has a president who thinks and works. It’s a novelty. It shouldn’t be but it is. The conservatives are pissed compacency at all levels of society being their greatest ally, but if the best they can do is “Obama was only a B student” I won’t be losing any sleep.
As the ‘commenter’ in question, I should just point out (for the tiny number of possible readers who might care), that I did not claim that Obama was ‘not all that intelligent’ much less that he was mediocre (although I will wait and see what he does with the Presidency before I make up my mind), I just questioned whether it was reasonable to describe him as ‘hyper-intelligent’ on the evidence, and mentioned his ex-teacher’s comment about B grades in support, along with lots of other things. I still see no evidence of hyper-intelligence. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t clever, or even very clever in some things (economics doesn’t look like a long suit, but he is a brilliant speaker). He is also charming and very well dressed.
It is a bit naughty, OB, to misrepresent my comments like this, especially since you implicitly admonish me for doing the same thing. Hey ho.
The documentary was on the evening of 20th and was called something along the lines of ‘Obama, the road to the White House’. It was a pleasant, if unexciting, biog. The bit about B grades, to my recollection, was one of Obama’s teachers from his high school in Hawaii saying that AT THAT STAGE of Obama’s academic career he was getting a B to B+ average mainly because he spent most of his time flirting with women and showing off. There was no implication that he was incapable of getting higher grades, and certainly his later academic career (editor of the Harvard Law Review) tends to suggest that he was a high achiever.
OB – I was more digging at Bush than trying to sell Obama (or the US electorate) short, but I agree with what you say.
John Meredith – When asking people to read between the lines don’t get huffy when they do.
The article these comments are linked from make it clear that you are being criticized for repeating hearsay and refusing to substantiate it. Not for misrepresenting anyone. So what you “point out” is untrue, and your accusation of naughtiness is baseless.
Dirigible, I didn’t mean to be huffy, but it was a bit naughty of OB, even if I am wrong that there was an implication that I had misrepresented anyone in my turn. But I really don’t want to get any further into a scrap.
Rockingham, I am glad someone else saw it, I was beginning to think it was a dream.
John Kennedy , I believe, flunked the New York Bar Exams two times.
I know somebody from Canada who did the Bar Exams in New york – thankfully so, he passed first time around. Nonetheless, he ascertained to me that the examiners were very strict on people from outside the American durisdiction and that a low percentage of them only pass the Bar Exams.
I believe Hillary Clinton (Yale) flunked in the same way as did two of Obama’s new appointees, on their first try.
I’m trying very hard to understand what this discussion is about. Obama is obviously very smart. How smart? I have no idea, and so far as I can tell, no one else here knows either.
Will the outcome prove how smart he is? Not necessarily, I daresay there are very smart people who have made an absolute mess at being President. What we will see is whether he, and the team he has assembled around him, are are capable of sorting out some pretty bad messes, made messier by someone who showed no evidence of being smart at all, however astute as a politician.
I don’t know how smart I am either, though I almost flunked high school, and got straight As in grad school. But I’m not politician.
So, would someone like to explain to me why so much bandwidth is being wasted on this?
Oh in high school – I was wondering if it was just high school. ‘Tutors’ seemed to be a reference to university – surely even in the UK secondary school teachers are not called ‘tutors’? B grades in high school tell us even less than B grades at Columbia would have; Obama says he was not engaged in high school, did not get engaged until he was at Occidental and decided to transfer to Columbia.
Why so much bandwidth? Well I don’t really have to explain why I choose to write about one thing rather than another – but sometimes comments provoke my curiosity, even or especially when I disagree with them. John Meredith seemed very certain of his facts, but equally unable to back them up, so I was curious about whether there is any reason to be so certain. I read this article for a different reason, as I said, but parts of it jumped out at me because of the existing curiosity.
John M, sorry, I don’t think I did misrepresent your comments; I’ll look them up to check, but I did look them up while I wrote the post, and I don’t think I was very far off…
Nope; I checked; I haven’t misrepresented what you said. You’re misrepresenting yourself, actually – as aggressive commenters so often do – the ‘all I said was’ reply. There was a lot of sneering and innuendo (on ‘The doll study’) accompanied by very confident assertions based on mistaken factual claims – such as –
“And it wasn’t me who denied that Obama was ‘hyper-intelligent’ but his tutors who rated him a B student.”
and
“One reason for not thinking he is especially clever is that the teaching staff at his university considered him only a ‘B’ student even though there is every sign that he tried hard.”
That turns out to be one teacher at high school, where he’s said himself he wasn’t very engaged and didn’t try very hard.
That kind of telltale misremembering would seem to indicate an agenda.
To nail things down just that bit more, John –
“I did not claim that Obama was ‘not all that intelligent’ much less that he was mediocre”
You didn’t claim that in those exact words, but then I didn’t say you did; but you did cite a (false because inaccurate) reason for “not thinking he is especially clever.” Not thinking someone is especially clever is not miles away from claiming someone is not all that intelligent. I didn’t misrepresent you.
Oh, I didn’t mean you, OB! Of course, once you start a thread like this, which promised to have some interest, you have to respond, and you’ve responded well. I just wondered, and perhaps I should have said it straight up, why John Meredith is so eager to show, for some reason, that Obama isn’t ‘hyper-intelligent.’ We know why Obama might not have done well in high school. He was a mixed up kid with a fairly mixed up family life that spanned continents. But why does someone want to question his intelligence, when everything he has done for the past few years seems to be very intelligent indeed.
But you did make one tiny mistake. “Not thinking someone is especially clever is not miles away from claiming someone is not all that intelligent.” No, it’s not. The expressions are basically equivalent in rhetorical force whatever difference in meaning they may have.
Despite the bandwidth John Meredith has been taking up, I think, to be frank, that he is acting like a Troll. That’s what Trolls do, after all, tie up bandwidth. I was involved recently in another net discussion group, and was completely taken in. Trolls troll, after all, and when they get a bite, they troll some more. If you look carefully, though, you can see the hook. After awhile it’s best to leave them sitting in the boat, waiting for the nibble that never comes.
Yeah, I wonder too, Eric – he talks very trollishly but then becomes more civil at other times. But all this sneering and all this flat assertion that turns out to be quite inaccurate – very trollish.
“The expressions are basically equivalent in rhetorical force whatever difference in meaning they may have.”
I know, that’s what I said! Perhaps you overlooked the ‘not’? Not miles away. :- )
Anyway, you’re right about trolling; I don’t want John Meredith moving in and taking over.
No, I didn’t miss the ‘not’. I just thought that ‘basically equivalent’ was a bit stronger than ‘not miles away.’ I don’t think it’s any distance away. But that is a minor point.
Tssss – it’s litotes – emphasis by understatement. You’re an ex-minister; surely you know your rhetorical terms?!
Heehee.
I have no idea who John Meredith is, but I think he is a well-intentioned person. He has a nice comment about Jean’s bicycle trip in the TPM blog.
The whole thing about Obama’s intelligence seems like a case of a minor point that got out of hand, because of misunderstandings, etc.
No, the thing about Obama’s intelligence seems like a case of trolling, for the reasons we’ve already canvassed.
I have no idea who JM is either, but one doesn’t need to know who someone is to spot trolling. Having a nice comment on some other blog has nothing to do with anything; this isn’t a court case, and character witnesses are beside the point. There’s no background – trolling is all surface, and if it’s there, it’s there.
I won’t take up too much more bandwidth on this (I have to do other things today) but I am sorry anybody should mistake what I am doing here as ‘trolling’. I want to discuss and argue, and I tend to post more when I disagree with something, but it isn’t ‘trolling’ as I understand it (an attemopt to provoke for not other reason than to annoy). I agree that the ‘B grade’ point and even the discussion about intelligence has taken on too much of a life of its own (I didn’t realise that the B grades were school grades, by the way (if they were) perhaps someone said something about ‘graduating’ with B, that often throws me). The main point of all of this was supposed to be whether ot not it was reaosnable to call Obama ‘hyper-intelligent’ on the evidence and what that sort of (in my opinion) over-heated rhetoric might mean.
As to misrepresenations, I deny that ‘not especially clever’ in this context can be taken to mean ‘not all that intelligent’, I rather think that if the words were as directly synonymous as you claim, you might just have directly quoted my phrase, but if you want to take it that way, there is nothing I can do about it.
As to ‘sneering’ and ‘aggression’, pshaw! I have not sneered at all and have only returned aggression for aggression (I don’t deny that I can give it out as well as take it).