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Is Obama an affirmative action president?
(Note: more comments have been added to this entry.)
Several days ago, Tim W. wrote:
I have two words for Richard Cohen, Howard Fineman, and other liberals who are waking up about Obama’s level of competence: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
For years we’ve seen the negative results of affirmative action programs at the Post Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the public schools, and any number of other agencies. Did the left expect the results to differ when applied to the presidency and the cabinet (oh, excuse me, the Czardom)?
LA replied:
I can’t see Obama as reaching the presidency through AA. He was a very talented candidate, or at least he certainly impressed many people as being talented. For example, in the last debate with McCain, who seemed more capable of handing stressful emergencies? Obama, calm and collected, or the agitated, unfocused McCain? Obama was the better candidate.
To deny Obama’s talents and treat him as though he were simply a nothing is a mistake.
Tim W. replied:
I don’t deny that he has talents as a candidate and speaker, but I doubt very seriously that a white candidate with so little experience would have been elected. Obama had served only a couple of years in the U.S. Senate when he announced his candidacy. During those years he did nothing of note. He had no military or business experience. He was a community activist.
Sarah Palin, who also had little experience or qualifications, was taken to task for it and even lampooned over it. Her lack of qualifications became a huge issue in the campaign. That wasn’t the case with Obama. Obama got a pass from the likes of Cohen and Fineman. I suppose one could argue that this was an example of routine media bias in favor of a liberal, as opposed to favoring a black. But Obama won the Democratic nomination because he got a large majority of the black vote over Hillary Clinton, something I can’t imagine a white candidate of similar inexperience pulling off.
LA replied:
Yes he got a pass on various issues because of his race. But that is not the key thing. He won the nomination and won the presidency because HE WON VOTES. He wasn’t even played up that much before Iowa. Hillary was overwhelmingly the favorite, and Obama was considered to have little or no chance. He became the favorite as a result of his big upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, not because some bureaucratic entity gave him higher grades because he’s black.
To apply an AA analysis to a popularly elected politician is just mistaken.
[end of earlier exchange]
Today the discussion resumes:
Tim W. writes:
You’ll probably still disagree with me on this, but the past few days have made me more convinced that Obama is an affirmative action president. I think you’re looking at the process, rather than the motivation of the voters and the desires of the media. Obama was elected, fair and square, so you don’t feel that affirmative action applies, if I understand your position. He wasn’t hired or appointed by higher-ups, which is the normal way affirmative action candidates get their positions.
But presidents are never hired or appointed. That’s not how they get their job. They’re elected. And if someone who otherwise wouldn’t have been elected gets elected because he’s black, how is that different from someone who gets hired because he’s black? In both cases, the process for filling a position was followed, it’s just that certain allowances were made for the black candidate. It doesn’t necessarily mean he was totally unfit compared to the other candidates, just that his race gave him the decisive boost.
I’ve encountered many affirmative action hires in my life. They usually aren’t total nothings. They just aren’t up to the position they hold. Look at Cornel West. He isn’t a functional illiterate. But he also isn’t Harvard material, yet Harvard hired him and placed him in an affirmative action inspired black studies department. He eventually got called on the carpet by Harvard president Lawrence Summers for hanging out with rappers and writing “jive” nonsense instead of teaching classes and doing scholarly research. He screamed racism, of course.
Obama isn’t a total nothing. He’s a great campaigner, gives a well-delivered speech, and presented himself well during the campaign. But he isn’t up to the job at hand. He isn’t the first president to fit that bill, but he is the first to be elected because he’s black. He got an overwhelming black vote in the primaries against Hillary Clinton, a woman who had pandered to blacks since her college days. She ended up being called a racist. He “wowed” white lefties in non-diverse states such as Iowa and Vermont and Idaho, who saw Obama as the candidate to fulfill the diversity dreams they never have to deal with in their nearly all white locales.
He benefited throughout the campaign from favorable media coverage. I know, the Democrat always gets this, but does the Democrat always get a pass for belonging to a racist hate church? Obama got it, because he’s black. He weaseled out of something that would have been political death to a white who belonged to an equivalent white nationalist church. A white would have had to resign from the Senate, let alone give up any presidential dreams.
Obama’s present behavior of ignoring real world issues while pontificating about a world without nuclear weapons or flitting about to appear on talk shows or lobby for the Olympics is just what one might expect from someone who has some skills (talking, and talking, and more talking, plus a dash of charisma) but isn’t ready for prime time. He knows his constituency is enamored with his star power, which he has because he’s black. He certainly doesn’t have it because of past accomplishments. It may not last, and the recent debacles in Copenhagen and at the UN may have awakened a few people. But either way, I still feel that it is proper to call his an affirmative action presidency.
LA replies:
I agree with you that Obama obviously got all kinds of advantages and favors and reduced scrutiny because of his race. Also, since he became president, the shocking degree to which he is not up to the job and is an “empty black suit,” as so many blacks are in job situations, has become clear. But I don’t think that it’s correct to call these things in and of themselves AA.
You write:
“He’s a great campaigner, gives a well-delivered speech, and presented himself well during the campaign. But he isn’t up to the job at hand.”
This gets at why I think that the analogy to AA, while it has elements of truth, doesn’t work. Voters did not look at Obama and think, “This guy doesn’t quite come up to our usual criteria for a president, but we’ll vote for him anyway, because blacks need a leg up.” He was elected because people liked what he had more than they liked what the other candidates had. Democratic primary voters didn’t think, “Hillary’s qualified, Obama’s not, let’s vote for the guy with the tan.” They thought, “I like Obama better than Hillary.” Same with the general election.
In electoral politics, unlike in hiring, there is a very limited universe of job candidates. In this election, there were only three (really only two) in the Democratic primaries, and only two in the general election. Voters didn’t say, “Gosh, we need a black a president, let’s lower our usual criteria for the presidency so that we can attract more black candidates and elect (hire) a black.” No. Voters were presented with a very limited choice, between Hillary and Obama, and then between McCain and Obama, and in each case they chose the one they preferred.
Also, while Obama has turned out to be stunningly incompetent and feckless and destructive and anti-American in various ways, the people who voted for him did not know that about him at the time. So that’s another way in which the AA analogy falls down.
At the same time, there are some ways in which the AA analogy does seem to apply. Most importantly, the media allowed the Rev. Wright business to subside, when the equivalent would have destroyed any white. So I’m not denying your major premises that different standards were applied to Obama. I’m just saying that calling this affirmative action is less than accurate.
You write: “And if someone who otherwise wouldn’t have been elected gets elected because he’s black, how is that different from someone who gets hired because he’s black”?
Let me suggest the difference this way. Remember the medical researcher in Atlanta who allowed a young black man to come up to look at her for-sale apartment without the doorman coming with him, because she didn’t want him to think she suspected him, and he immediately proceeded to murder her? Remember the woman in Bakersfield, California who on leaving a store was worried by a black man lurking in the parking lot, but, as she told the police later, she didn’t want to seem racist, so she proceeded to her car, where he held up at gun point, then kidnapped, robbed, and raped her?
In these instances normal criteria were not applied to blacks, because they were black, and this removal of normal criteria allowed the blacks to get into situations where they caused great harm. This happens all the time. But would we call these crimes instances of “affirmative action”? That would sound silly. I would instead call them instances of the larger racial dynamic of which affirmative action is but one expression. It’s the same with Obama. Normal criteria were removed in Obama’s case (the media would have destroyed any white who had belonged to the white equivalent of Rev. Wright’s church), allowing Obama to get into a situation (the presidency) where he is now doing great harm. That aspect of the Obama story is similar to AA. And the fact that as president he has turned out to be incompetent and irresponsible and is mainly into the glory of the office and is preoccupied with racial victimology (as in the Henry Gates affair) also makes him resemble an AA individual. Yet at the same time, as I’ve suggested, there is much about his political career and election that is unique to him and that does not fit the AA pattern. Therefore to call him an “affirmative action president,” period, seems simplistic and reductive. At the same time, to repeat myself, I do not deny that there are elements of truth in the description.
s
- end of initial entry -
Gintas writes:
I did some research, and it was harder than normal, because Babel Fish doesn’t translate from Swahili to English. But I figured out that BARACK OBAMA are Swahili/Arabic hybrid words for AFFIRMATIVE ACTION MESMERIZING JUGGERNAUT. So he is the AA president.
(Here is the real meaning if you care: “blessed” and “good” or “handsome one.”)
October 7, 1:15 a.m.
Jim C. writes:
Thus spake Auster:
In electoral politics, unlike in hiring, there is a very limited universe of job candidates. In this election, there were only three (really only two) in the Democratic primaries, and only two in the general election. Voters didn’t say, “Gosh, we need a black a president, let’s lower our usual criteria for the presidency so that we can attract more black candidates and elect (hire) a black.” No. Voters were presented with a very limited choice, between Hillary and Obama, and then between McCain and Obama, and in each case they chose the one they preferred.
Also, while Obama has turned out to be stunningly incompetent and feckless and destructive and anti-American in various ways, the people who voted for him did not know that about him at the time. So that’s another way in which the AA analogy falls down.
Let’s focus on why the average American did not realize that Obama would be “stunningly incompetent.” Uhhhh…could it be he was the beneficiary of … affirmative action?
Let’s address this question by examining what constitutes the so-called Obama “brand.” By far the most important element of the Obama brand is his putative brilliance. Well, why did the public think Obama brilliant? Could it be:
1. Columbia graduate? 2. Harvard Law School graduate? 3. President of Harvard Law Review? 4. “Constitutional law” professor at University of Chicago Law School?
All of the above represent gifts from white society to a man who is neither black nor a descendant of slaves. Obama was accepted at Columbia despite mediocre grades at the mediocre Occidental College. Despite taking easy courses at Columbia, Obama did not graduate with any honors despite rampant grade inflation. What does he do? Obama applies ONLY to the top three law schools: Harvard, Yale, Stanford—and guess what? He’s accepted by all 3 schools. Does he distinguish himself at Harvard? No. Does he distinguish himself at Chicago? Hell no! Unbelievably, Brilliant Barry manages to publish nothing—but succeeds brilliantly in teaching dumb gut courses on racial grievance.
Without affirmative action, the brand known as Barack Obama would never have left the hangar.
LA repllies:
I think Jim’s comment is clueless, based on a false, credentials-centric view of reality. He actually seems to think that people vote for a candidate because of points on the candidate’s resume. That’s not the way reality is. People vote for a candidate because they think that candidate has the qualities and positions for the job.
By Jim’s logic, going to Harvard and Columbia is such a wondrous thing that anyone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard should be president. But lots of people have gone to Harvard and Columbia and they are not president.
John writes:
LA wrote:
This gets at why I think that the analogy to AA, while it has elements of truth, doesn’t work. Voters did not look at Obama and think, “This guy doesn’t quite come up to our usual criteria for a president, but we’ll vote for him anyway, because blacks need a leg up.” He was elected because people liked what he had more than they liked what the other candidates had. Democratic primary voters didn’t think, “Hillary’s qualified, Obama’s not, let’s vote for the guy with the tan.” They thought, “I like Obama better than Hillary.” Same with the general election.
The role of affirmative action in Obama’s election is subtle but powerful.
Indeed, most liberals didn’t believe that they were voting for Obama because blacks need a leg up. Rather, they subconsciously exaggerated all of Obama’s strengths and downplayed his weaknesses. I’ve noticed this same phenomenon in other20areas.
For instance, when I talk to a liberal about race and intelligence, the liberal often responds by saying that the smartest person he knows is black. Likewise, virtually everyone—conservative or liberal—exaggerates the brilliance of many eminent blacks such as Thomas Sowell and Ben Carson. Thomas Sowell is a nobody among economists, but he’s incredibly popular and highly respected. Why? Because he’s black. But his fans don’t idolize him specifically because he is black; instead, they unknowingly exaggerate the importance of his work and the keenness of his mind. This feat of mental agility allows people to respect famous blacks for traits other than skin color, even though their perceptions of these traits are distorted by skin color. [LA replies: When your main evidence as to the existence of AA is the esteem in which Sowell is held among conservatives, you sound like a bigot and you discredit your position. Sowell has made genuine intellectual contributions. Only a conserative-hating liberal—or a bigot who is incapable of giving any black any credit for any intellectual ability—would deny that.]
Thus, liberals didn’t focus on Obama’s skin color. They focused on his intellect, his urbanity, and his eloquence. But Obama’s purported intelligence and verbal lucidity were grotesquely exaggerated by a subconscious inflation of all positive qualities possessed by any black person. Affirmative action may appear to be irrelevant to Obama’s victory—and indeed overt affirmative action may be irrelevant—but subconscious affirmative action is not.
Here’s an account of this subconscious exaggeration of black achievements in an academic setting:
Affirmative Action grading doesn’t have to be official policy or even conscious. Ken Harber wrote an essay filled with grammatical and content errors and gave it to 92 white college students to grade. They were given different biographies of the author and some indirectly revealed that he was black. On a scale of 7, papers that the white students thought were written by a black person got a grade of 3.5 and papers they thought were written by a white person got 2.7. On the essays supposedly written by a white some students wrote things like “when I read college work this bad I want to lay my head down on the table and cry.” The comments written on the essays supposedly written by a black were overwhelmingly positive. The mystery of how Michelle Obama could graduate from Princeton while not mastering basic English is solved.
Was candidate Obama different from one of these black essay writers?
LA replies:
The study you quote is very interesting. But you poison the well by your other statements. Conservatives who deny that Obama has any intelligence at come across as bigots and discredit themselves.
Jim C. writes:
I’ll state it again: I doubt that Obama’s IQ is higher than 105.
LA replies:
The comment that Obama’s IQ is no higher than 105 is so obviously false that it shows that you are writing out of sheer dislike.
October 7
Van Wijk writes:
If nothing else, Obama of a certainty owes his office to the White Guilt vote.
But what is affirmative action if not an expression of White Guilt?
LA replies:
I agree with you that affirmative action is an expression of white guilt. (See my FrontPage Magazine article, Guilty Whites.) And I agree that to a significant degree, Obama’s election is owed to white guilt.
But notice what you (and I) have just said. Affirmative action and Obama’s election are both sub-sets of a larger category, which is white guilt. Which means that Obama’s election is not an offshoot or specimen of affirmative action but more like a cousin of it.
Jim C. replies to LA:
Here is incontrovertible evidence of Obama’s sub-110 IQ:
Review President [Barack Obama] Explains Affirmative Action Policy
To the Editor:
Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has [sic/have] been the subject of commentary for the last three issues, I’d like to take the time [“take the time” is redundant] to clarify exactly [sic/how does one clarify “exactly”?] how our selection process works.
As our Treasurer, Lisa Hay, explained in your [sic] first article on our selection policy (October 12th [sic/SB 12]), all students who wish to become editors of the Law Review participate in a writing competition at the end of their first year. [LA replies: presumably “SB” is an abbreviation for “should be.” You should have said “should be” instead of assuming that everyone knows what SB means.] The entire writing competition is conducted on a double-blind basis, to ensure absolute [sic/redundant] anonymity. Each submission is graded by at least three different [sic/redundant] Review editors to help decrease the effects [sic/SB likelihood] that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores. [LA replies: Obama’s word, “effects,” is fine. Your substitute, “likelihood” is syntactically incorrect, since it needs to be followed by a clause containing a predicate, but is not. If your purpose is to demonstrate another person’s lack of intelligence by pointing to his errors of syntax, grammar, and usage, you’d be better be sure that you are being correct on such matters yourself.]
Once all the writing competition submissions have been graded, these scores, as well as the law school transcripts of all those who have chosen to release the [sic], are submitted to a Selection Committee [sic/both words sb lower case] made up [sic/composed] of the President ad [sic] two other Review editors who have been elected by their fellow editors. [LA replies: To say that a committee is “made up” of certain persons is entirely correct. Idiomatically, “made up” is better than “composed,” which sounds pedantic. Second, there is nothing wrong with capitalizing “Selection Committee.” As we can see in the next paragraph, “Selection Committee” is the proper name of this committee, just like “Senate Judiciary Committee.” The fact that you didn’t notice that Obama’s subsequent capitalization of “Selection Committee” is entirely correct and didn’t remove your objection to his first instance of capitalizing it, shows that you are not paying much attention.]
The Selection Committee first identifies the group of candidates whose excellent performance, either in the classroom or on the writing competition, sets them apart. (Approximately half of this first batch is chosen solely on their performance on the writing competition; the other half are selected on a weighted formula of 70 percent grades and 30 percent writing competition.) The Selection Committee must then choose the remaining editors from a pool of qualified candidates whose grades or writing competition scores do not significantly differ. It is at this stage that the Law Review as [sic] for several years instituted an affirmative action policy for historically underrepresented groups: out of this pool, the Selection Committee may take race or physical handicap into account in making their final decision, if the Selection Committee believes that such affirmative action will enhance the representativeness of the incoming class. On the other hand, the Selection Committee may find that given the make-up [sic] of the first batch of candidates, such considerations are unnecessary. In no event is the Selection Committee required to meet any set quotas. [LA replies: what’s wrong with “make-up of the first batch”? And your picking at obvious typos or even typesetting errors, such as “as” in place of “has,” is trivial. Are you suggesting that Obama doesn’t know the difference between “as” and “has”?]
Once final selections are made, all writing competition material is destroyed. No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind [sic/my god, he’s illiterate]. [LA replies: The last clause of the sentence is badly written and is missing a predicate; that hardly makes the author “illiterate.”]
The Review as a body feels that the success of the program speaks for itself. The vigor of debate and the wide range of perspectives that results from our current selection process have not been purchased at the price of any “lower standard” of editorial excellence; in fact, our program argues for the proposition that diversity can and should be the companion of quality legal scholarship [sic/no, Barry, you did not make your argument]. [LA replies: Agreed that he has not made an argument for AA, he is merely asserting its goodness.]
This isn’t to say [sic/nice construction, lightweight] that our selection procedures are ideal. No matter how anonymous the process, we are in the difficult and unusual [sic/the whole point of “diversity” is to avoid evaluation] position of evaluating our peers; indeed, the absolute [sic/redundant] necessity of anonymity prevents us from making the nuanced evaluations that a law school admissions office might make. As a result, the design of the selection process—including not only affirmative action but also the use of the writing competition or the use of grades—has been an important subject of discussion for each volume of the Review. As I stated in the first Record article, we decided last year as a body that [sic/Barry, you need a comma here] based on the percentage of women in the Law School and our previous success of attracting a large number of women to editorial and leadership posts at the Review, an affirmative action program for women was unnecessary. Because of the drop-off [sic] of women editors this year, that policy is subject to change if the majority of Review editors think it’s appropriate. In the meantime, we’ve been in contact with members of the WLA [ [sic/use parentheses]Women’s Law Association] to ensure that we effectively recruit women to participate in this year’s competition.
Let me end [sic/OK, Barry, I’ll “let” you] by emphasizing that the Review is committed to including the widest range of viewpoints on its editorial staff, and strongly encourages 1L women and men of all backgrounds and ideological stripes to participate in this year’s writing competition.
I’d also like to add one [sic/Barry, “a” suffices] personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review’s general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen’s personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity [sic/depth OR sincerity?] of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited [hell, Barry, you be thriving] from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may [sic/might] have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally [sic] felt stigmatized [sic/comma Barry?] either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review. Indeed, my election last year as President of the Review would seem to indicate that at least among Review staff, and hopefully for the majority of professors at Harvard, affirmative action in no way tarnishes the accomplishments of those who are members of historically underrepresented [Barry, you be half white?] groups.
I would [sic/Barry, all these conditionals—hallmarks of a 2d-tier intellect] therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area ia [sic] most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen’s extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow [sic/redundant:”might” already communicated your meaning] undeserved. Such attributes speak less to the merits or problems of affirmative action policies, and more to the tragically deep-rooted ignorance and bias that exists [sic/plural verb—Barry?] in the legal community and our society at large.
Barack Obama
President, Harvard Law Review
Published November 16, 1990
LA replies:
Jim C. initially said that Obama’s IQ is no higher than 105. After I pointed out the obvious falsity of that statement, he slightly upped his estimate and said that Obama’s letter is “incontrovertible” proof that Obama’s IQ is “less than 110.” That’s still too low. It is said that the minimal IQ needed for graduate work is 115. Clearly the author of this letter is capable of doing graduate work. Therefore his IQ is at least 115. I’d say it’s more likely to be at least 120.
Jim’s purpose was to discredit Obama’s intellect. As a result of the tendentiousness, triviality, and mean-spiritedness of his critical comments about Obama, all he has succeeded in demonstrating is his own bigotry against Obama.
LA continues:
Steve Sailer guestimates Obama’s IQ at 125. But as I pointed out, he lacks sufficient data to justify this guess.
LA continues:
I would add this. Some people think that if a person utters lots of uninteresting, cliched thoughts, as Obama does, he must be of no better than average intelligence. This is not correct. Consider William Clinton. I believe that Clinton has an extremely high IQ. I say this particularly on the basis of a press conference he gave during his presidency when he was explaining some scandal, Whitewater, I think. The energy, quickness, and improvisatory gusto with which he constructed one lie on top of another was astonishing. It showed a very high IQ.
But now let us consider Clinton’s remarks about social matters, particularly race and diversity. They never go higher than third-rate cliches.
Possession of high IQ does not mean that a person has good insights or is an original thinker. It simply means that he has a good capacity for processing information. His possession of that capacity does not tell us how the capacity will be used.
The blogger named OneSTDV says:
This exact same discussion is occurring at my blog: Re-evaluating Obama’s IQ. Here’s what I wrote about the letter that Jim analyzes:
His writing sample is actually written quite well and I’m somewhat impressed by his word choice and sentence structure (surely better than his wife’s). However, his argument lacks any original thought and he commits the exact kind of errors a high-scoring LSAT student would have mastered. Here he uses personal anecdote as a counterargument (a type of error tested for on every LSAT):
“I respect Mr. Chen’s personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action…however, I have not personally felt stigmatized.”
Jim C. misses the most egregious error in the article. Obama uses anecdotal evidence to prove a general point. Other than that, the article actually speaks to Obama’s high IQ given his pretty clear writing aptitude and vocabulary.
One of my commenters brought up a good point though: Why didn’t Obama go to an Ivy straight out of high school? If Obama is highly intelligent, then surely (due to affirmative action) he would have been accepted at almost any Ivy even if he had even mediocre SAT scores. It’s possible he didn’t score high enough and thus was rejected by Columbia or Harvard as a high schooler.
LA replies:
But don’t you know? The letter was actually ghost written for Obama by William Ayers. (Joke.)
LA adds:
My joke was not intended as a dismissal of Jack Cashill’s theory that William Ayers ghost-wrote much of Obama’s Dreams from My Father. As I’ve said repeatedly, I think there is a good chance that Cashill’s theory is correct, even though (to sound like Jim C. talking about Obama) Cashill often says things that make me question his intelligence.
John Hagan writes:
Speaking of IQ, do you remember this guy? This bar-bouncer from Long Island tested between 190-210 and has one of the highest IQs ever recorded.
LA replies:
No, I had never heard of Christopher Langan, even though he’s famous.
The Wikipedia article includes this:
Langan’s media exposure at the end of the 1990s invariably included some discussion of his “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe” (often referred to by Langan as “CTMU”), and he was reported by Popular Science in 2001 to be writing a book about his work called Design for a Universe. He has been quoted as saying that “you cannot describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you’re willing to admit that it’s both physical and mental in nature” and that his CTMU “explains the connection between mind and reality, therefore the presence of cognition and universe in the same phrase.” [Emphasis added.]
Well, he agrees with what I’m saying all the time.
It contnues:
… In conjunction with his ideas, Langan has claimed that “you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics.”
Langan is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID), a professional society which promotes intelligent design,
October 8
John Hagan replies:
I remember when this gentleman was sort of discovered back in the late 90s, but his existence had slipped my mind until this evening when I as reading about Obama’s possible IQ score at VFR. Langan does approach the nature of reality very much like you do, and though I have not read much of anything he has wrote I’m going to give him a go and see what I find.
James P. writes:
You say,
“Clearly the author of this letter is capable of doing graduate work.”
But where? Is this the type of work one would expect from the editor of the Harvard Law Review? Clearly not. The effect of AA is not to place a total illiterate in graduate school, but to place people in a higher ranked school than their grades and test scores would otherwise justify. Though we don’t know Obama’s grades or test scores, on the basis of this writing sample one must be skeptical that he was truly HLS Law Review material. Also, if this was the text of the letter as published, was it published as written, or did the editor make corrections to an even worse draft? [LA replies: Agreed, but in my replies to Jim C., I was not arguing that Obama had not been the beneficiary of AA; I was arguing against Jim’s assertions that Obama’s IQ is no higher than 105 or 109.]
“He became the favorite as a result of his big upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, not because some bureaucratic entity gave him higher grades because he’s black”
Yet he was in a position to win that caucus because of everything that had gone before, reaching back to attendance at elite schools. If AA put him in elite schools that allowed him to get the professorship at Chicago, win state office, and win a Senatorship, then it is accurate to describe him as an AA President, especially in view of his lack of accomplishment between leaving school and becoming President. [LA replies: Yes, but, again, there are lots and lots of black graduates of Columbia and Harvard and they are not president. So clearly Obama had qualities, beyond the unfair or fair factors that got him into Columbia and Harvard, that accounted for his becoming president, and really my sole point in this whole discussion is to refute those commenters who argue that Obama is NOTHING, that he has NO special abilities and qualities that led to his becoming president. (And, by the way, as a Columbia alumnus, I’m getting a kick in this discussion from Columbia being placed in the same category of prestige as Harvard, which I’ve never seen happen before).]
“Voters were presented with a very limited choice, between Hillary and Obama, and then between McCain and Obama, and in each case they chose the one they preferred.”
But their preferences were influenced by Obama’s race. He got “bonus points” for being black in addition to his other qualities, as people (especially in the media) were falling all over themselves trying to prove how non-racist they were because they loved the black candidate.
“while Obama has turned out to be stunningly incompetent and feckless and destructive and anti-American in various ways, the people who voted for him did not know that about him at the time. So that’s another way in which the AA analogy falls down.”
Anyone who was unaware of this was a willing dupe. There was a sufficient record in November 2008 to predict exactly how he would perform. It is true that the media did their best to cover up his track record, but the information was there for anyone willing to look for it. [LA replies: How could voters in 2008 know that he would be incompetent, feckless, and destructive as president?]
“I think Jim’s comment is clueless, based on a false, credentials-centric view of reality. He actually seems to think that people vote for a candidate because of points on the candidate’s resume. That’s not the way reality is. People vote for a candidate because they think that candidate has the qualities and positions for the job.”
I think a lot of idiots voted for the guy precisely because of his “credentials.” How could they possibly justify voting for him on the basis of experience? In fact they were willing to overlook his lack of experience because he went to elite schools, and were willing to believe that he must be “smart enough” to be President because he went to elite schools. [LA replies: I don’t think that’s the way most voters think. I think they look at a candidate, and they consider two main factors: how they feel about his positions, and whether they “see” him as a president.]
“By Jim’s logic, going to Harvard and Columbia is such a wondrous thing that anyone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard should be president. But lots of people have gone to Harvard and Columbia and they are not president.”
Obviously not everybody can be President regardless of what school he attends. Yet we see that of the 19 Presidents since 1900, 13 attended elite schools (Ivy League, Stanford, Military Academies), and there are only four exceptions since 1928 (Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan). Clearly attending elite schools confers some advantage, and it would be proper to say that in the eyes of the country anyone who went to Yale, Columbia, or Harvard could potentially be President. In my view, that is why some students want to go to these schools—not for the education, but for the prestige that is especially advantageous in careers such as politics.
I myself think that trying to estimate Obama’s IQ is futile. If we discovered beyond any doubt that it was 95, would he be thrown out of office? No. If we discovered that it was 180, would we revise our opinions of his incompetent, feckless, and destructive policies? No. He is “smart enough” to be President. As you say, the problem is not his capacity to think, but how that capacity is used. “Intelligence” is overrated in a President in any event. Two of the supposedly “smartest” Presidents, Wilson and Carter, were disastrous as Presidents. Eisenhower and Reagan were extremely intelligent, but did not affect intellectual pretensions, and were excellent Presidents.
Tim W. writes:
It’s interesting that Obama admitted to having benefited from affirmative action while at Harvard, where nearly everyone supports the practice. It didn’t make him feel stigmatized at all to admit to this. I wonder if he’d feel the same way now when talking to a nation that is more (dare I say it?) diverse in its attitudes toward affirmative action? Would he give a speech today endorsing affirmative action, noting that both he and Michelle got a boost from it in their academic and professional careers?
I also found it interesting, though not unexpected, that Obama failed to address the issue of whether a more qualified white or Asian was held back each time he benefited from AA schemes. The only permissible way to argue against AA is to fret about its possible stigmatizing effect on the beneficiaries. A few have dared to mention that it hurts East Asians. Among major political figures, only Jesse Helms ever went on TV and argued that AA unfairly kept whites from getting jobs or educational opportunities, and his ad is today considered evil.
LA replies:
What a damning commentary on “conservatives.” They all supposedly oppose AA. Yet they are all still so under the power of liberalism that they never voice the single thing about AA that is most objectionable: it is unjust. It unjustly gives undeserved advantages to some people, and it unjustly imposes undeserved disadvantages on other people. They dare not say that, because the people being unjustly helped are black, and the people being unjustly harmed are white.
This is proof of my view that conservatives really accept liberal principles, that a true opposition to liberalism does not now exist, and that an indispensable condition of its coming into existence is that whites must become willing and able to speak on behalf of whites.
Jonathan W. writes:
I would like to correct James P.’s statement that we don’t know Obama’s grades or test scores. Obama graduated magna cum laude, which at Harvard Law School, indicates a grade point average in the top 10% of the class. Since law school exams are graded blindly, I do not know how he could have faked that.
LA replies
Have you got a link?
I doubt that a 120-125 IQ is enough to get a person into the top 10 percent at Harvard Law.
Jonathan replies:
I had originally read it on Wikipedia, but I wanted to find something more reliable. This article from The Harvard Crimson says, “The presidential hopeful graduated magna cum laude from the Law School in 1991; his wife earned the degree three years earlier. ” This page details Harvard Law School’s criteria for Latin Honors. It discusses the system after the recent change, but as far as I know from talking to people who have attended, the only difference is that Summa is now given to everyone in the top one percent, whereas it used to be discretionary and only granted once every few years. I agree that it is hard to believe that Obama managed these grades, given that they would put him in the same camp as a person like Justice Scalia.
Jim C. replies to LA:
Here is a section of my comment yesterday with your reply:
The entire writing competition is conducted on a double-blind basis, to ensure absolute [sic/redundant] anonymity. Each submission is graded by at least three different [sic/redundant] Review editors to help decrease the effects [sic/SB likelihood] that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores. [LA replies: Obama’s word, “effects,” is fine. Your substitute, “likelihood” is syntactically incorrect, since it needs to be followed by a clause containing a predicate, but is not. If your purpose is to demonstrate another person’s lack of intelligence by pointing to his errors of syntax, grammar, and usage, you’d be better be sure that you are being correct on such matters yourself.]
Lawrence, you are the one being pedantic. I was not rewriting the piece; I was merely pointing out egregious COGNITIVE errors that reflect a mediocre intellect. “Effects” is not fine because it is vague. Obama is trying to say that there may be a likelihood [add predicate phrase] that the review editors would be biased.
Just look at this ridiculous construction: “Review editors to help decrease the effects that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores…”
First off, an eighth-grader would have realized that the sentence should have begun with the infinitive “To help.” The first 5 words of Obama’s sentence make absolutely no sense—“review editors to help decrease”????????????????
To sum up, my markup of the letter was only meant to show that Obama possesses a meager intellect as reflected in his inability to communicate simple ideas. And I agree with your assessment of Clinton’s intellect—but Obama is no Clinton.
Another thing you should ponder with respect to Obama is why he would marry someone so below his exalted cognitive status. According to the principle of assortive mating, both Obamas would have similar IQs. I believe this is true. I estimate Michelle’s at 101, Barack’s at 105.
LA replies:
Jim quotes this, presenting it as a sentence written by Obama:
“Review editors to help decrease the effects [sic/SB likelihood] that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores.”
Obviously this is a mess, and Jim heaps great outrage on it.
Unfortunately for Jim, however, he left out the first part of Obama’s sentence. Here is the whole sentence, including Jim’s bracketed comments:
Each submission is graded by at least three different [sic/redundant] Review editors to help decrease the effects [sic/SB likelihood] that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores.
To make Obama’s sentence more readable, let’s delete Jim’s bracketed comments:
Each submission is graded by at least three different Review editors to help decrease the effects that any particular editor’s subjective opinions may have on the final scores.
It’s not a great sentence, mainly because of the passive construction that leaves the sentence without a subject for the verb “to help decrease the effects.” But that’s not a serious problem. As for the rest, including the choice of the word “effects,” the sentence is gramatically fine, its meaning is clear.
Thus Jim is so bent out of shape in his effort to cast aspersions on Obama’s intellect, that he took one half of Obama’s sentence, thought that it was the whole sentence, and condemned that half sentence for its syntactical flaws as though it were the whole sentence.
Jim set out in this discussion, with great energy and conviction, to demonstrate that Obama’s intellect is mediocre. How would Jim classify his own intellectual abilities, as shown by his manhandling of Obama’s text?
Michael S. writes:
You wrote:
“Jim set out in this discussion, with great energy and conviction, to demonstrate that Obama’s intellect is mediocre. How would Jim classify his own intellectual abilities, as shown by his manhandling of Obama’s text?”
Ouch. You touched on this before. Animus (“writing out of sheer dislike”) clouds intellect.
James P. writes:
Jonathan W. writes:
“I would like to correct James P.’s statement that we don’t know Obama’s grades or test scores. Obama graduated magna cum laude, which at Harvard Law School, indicates a grade point average in the top 10% of the class. Since law school exams are graded blindly, I do not know how he could have faked that.”
I respond, first, that we still don’t actually know what his grades were. Second, we don’t know that they mean anything. On this score I will quote Mencius Moldbug. His words on Sotomayor are, I think, precisely applicable to Obama, who was also a progressive race activist earmarked for advancement:
I am confident that Sonia Sotomayor’s transcript “for the last two years” would show “almost straight A’s.” Who assigned her these straight A’s? And why?
At this point we leave the domain of verifiable facts, and enter that of proof by authority. Half Sigma does not know. Nor do I. Nor does anyone….
My judgment is that when we look at the career of a progressive race activist of the late 20th century, institutional records and personal endorsements tell us just about nothing. Every rule can be, and is, bent for these people. What’s clear is that at Princeton, David Germany was first and foremost a student, and Sonia Sotomayor was first and foremost an activist. Why on earth would anyone expect her grades to mean anything?
I will repeat the analogy I used when I questioned Barack Obama’s Columbia record: the academic records of college athletes, who are regularly found to have graduated from reputable universities, while remaining almost literally illiterate. Trusting the academic records of a race activist—especially when not actually disclosed, but merely attested to—is credulous beyond belief. Behind any Sotomayor is an army of activist professors whose commitment to la lucha is, shall we say, slightly greater than their commitment to the academic integrity of Princeton. At least, in the athlete’s case, his coaches and his professors are different people.
This is what is truly remarkable about Judge Sotomayor: at every stage in her career, her success is plausibly and parsimoniously explained by her mere ancestry. In every institution in which she has produced a record of excellence, her biology below the neck is a sufficient explanation of that record. As historians, we cannot even exclude the possibility that she got her Princeton A’s because someone helped her with her papers. We have no evidence for this, but we also have no evidence against it—and we are writing history, not conducting a criminal trial.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2009 01:12 PM | Send
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