Wayne Allyn Root’s Million-Dollar Challenge:
But the thing Root really wanted to talk about was Obama’s grades. Specifically, he was willing to bet a million dollars that he earned a better grade point average at Columbia than his old classmate, and that the only reason Obama went on to Harvard Law School was the color of his skin.
Here’s an article in The New York Sun, Obama’s Years at Columbia Are a Mystery. For what it’s worth, note that:
Mr. Miller acknowledged that Mr. Obama displayed academic achievement at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude and led the Harvard Law Review. Still, Mr. Miller said, he would like to see information about how Mr. Obama performed in various subjects at Columbia.
Basically people want to take a look at Obama’s college transcript; we know for example in 2000 that Al Gore and George W. Bush were mediocre students, though Gore showed significant improvement in his grades. McCain has not released his transcripts either, and we know that he graduated in the bottom 1% of his class at the Naval Academy. Half Sigma is claiming that Sarah Palin’s IQ is in the range of 110 (2/3 of a standard deviation above the norm) based on the fact that she transfered colleges 5 times and graduated from University of Idaho with a degree in journalism without having written any stories for the student paper. And we all know Joe Biden’s touchiness about his IQ.
Since intelligence is moderately heritable,1 the fact that Obama’s mother managed to finish her Ph.D. in anthropology and that his father completed a master’s degree in economics from Harvard in 1965 should be added to the calculus (I note the year and discipline because it was before widespread affirmative action and in a field where failure is a non-trivial possibility). It seems likely that of the four nominees of the major parties Obama is probably the brightest, and, the fact that all graduated from university suggests they are smarter than the norm .2 Intelligence has been an interesting variable in the American presidency. Some of the early holders of the office, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were intellectuals of serious caliber. There have been cases where very bright candidates lost to duller ones who were still more political clever and adept; Herbert Hoover vs. F.D.R. and Richard Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy come to mind.
1 – Because intelligence is heritable the fact that neither Track nor Bristol seem college bound, and that Bristol’s significant other seems to currently be a high school dropout, should be added into any calculation of Sarah’s IQ.
2 – McCain’s class rank is a serious variable, but, the fact that Megan McCain did manage to graduate from Columbia, albeit with a degree in Art History, does imply to me that he is above average in intelligence.
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