Kerry Iz Dum

Soxblog called it a while ago. He deserves a link now that he's been proven so right:

But today, proof has come and Soxblog has been vindicated. The Boston Globe obtained a copy of Kerry’s undergraduate transcript and it is inferior to Bush’s (even though the Globe insists on calling them “virtually identical�). The Globe refers to Kerry as a “lackluster� student; not to quibble with Globe reporter Michael Kranish’s choice of words, but four D’s in one’s freshman year (as Kerry received) suggests a performance considerably more execrable than “lackluster.� Yes, “execrable� would have been a better word. Other more apt words would include “awful�, “pitiful�, and, yes, “sub-Bushian.�

...

But the reason the inquiry regarding Kerry’s grades was important was because, as the Globe acknowledges in today’s story, “During last year's presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.� An interesting use of the passive construction there, no? Whoever could have been doing such “portraying?� Why, none other than left wing publications like the Globe and the Times!

My point wasn’t that Kerry’s performance at Yale proved that he was intellectually inferior to Bush. My point was that there was absolutely no reason to believe that Kerry was an intellectual giant. ....

And yet the Globe and others portrayed Kerry as an intellectual behemoth because…well, I think we all know why.

Read the whole f'n' thing.

And Taranto writes:

So Kerry was almost as distinguished a scholar as the schoolmate who went on to become president of the United States. That doesn't seem so bad--but for candidate Kerry, it would have been devastating. After all, much of Kerry's appeal, such as it was, rested on intellectual snobbery. His supporters described him, in the words of a March 2004 New York Times report, as "an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process." In this view, Kerry's nose for nuance contrasted favorably with Bush's simplisme.

But what if Kerry simply lacked the ability to express himself clearly? Consider his answer when asked in a September 2003 debate to reconcile his vote for Iraq's liberation with his subsequent opposition: "The vote is the vote. I voted to authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make two points if I may. . . ."

He went on in this vein for 248 words (quoted in full here), and only someone with a superior intellect and too much time on his hands could possibly have made sense of his answer. "People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can't understand," IQ expert Linda Gottfredson told the Times' John Tierney last year. The revelation that Kerry was no better a student than Bush suggests that this is just what happened.

Is Kerry dumb? Of course not. C grades aren't an indicator of stupidity, particularly not from Yale, back when you actually had to earn a B or A. And grades generally don't mean much.

But... but... but...

It's sweet to read that these Intellectual Titans the liberal media keeps pimping -- first Gore, now Kerry -- are either slightly better or slightly worse academic achievers than the sub-cretinous chimpanzee currently flinging monkeypoop in the Oval Office.

And just to pile on: Here's Kausfiles:

Would the revelation of Kerry's mediocre grades have been enough by itself to cause him to withhold his records for such an embarrassingly long time? Is he that vain and insecure? I think so!

But, as he notes, vanity wasn't necessary to make this decision. Half of Kerry's appeal was that he was a veteran. The other half of his appeal was that he was, we were assured, much smarter and more "intellectually curious" than Bush.

Getting worse grades than Bush would have made that case a bit harder for the MSM to make.

posted by Ace at 11:31 PM

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