https://ricochet.com/scott-walker-college-degree/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterThis conversation was inevitable, but I’m a little surprised it came up this early. Al Hunt, writing at Bloomberg, notes that Scott Walker dropped out of Marquette University about a year short of earning his bachelor’s degree and wonders if it may affect his presidential prospects. Good columnist that he is, he then fails to answer the question whatsoever, noting only that “Americans celebrate higher education” and that “More than 40 percent of voters have a college degree.” (In other words, a majority don’t). Thanks, Al. Crackerjack work.
If anything, this strikes me as an asset for Walker.
If his adversaries want to use this as a cudgel, they’ll have to make the case as to why his record is compromised on the basis of the fact that he never finished intro to sociology. Go ahead and embrace that argument. And be sure to do it loud enough so that all of the middle class and white working class voters who are now up for grabs can hear it. Please explain why the Republic will crumble if we don’t send a fifth consecutive representative of the Ivy League to the Oval Office.
There’s nothing wrong, of course, with higher education. As someone who has a couple of degrees himself, I’m certainly not advocating a society-wide strike against the academy. But there is something wrong with the notion that those credentials are the sole measure of intellectual seriousness. If Democrats — a party that has to turn to the Harvard Law faculty to find a populist figure — want to make that case, we should welcome the debate.
