Barack Obama by himself wouldn't be that bad (see, e.g., Clinton from '94-'00). Barack with both houses of Congress will be an unmitigated disaster from which we may not ever recover.

Vote for divided government. Otherwise, we have no chance to survive, make your time!

Was '92-'94 such an unmitigated disaster? (Hint: even if your answer is yes, it would make sense to swallow the poison pill now, because Obama would likely lose the House and Senate in 2010. If McCain is elected, the Democrats have their third good Congressional election year in a row and usher the then 76 year old prez out two years later.)

1) opposes school vouchers

European voucher practice is fairly mixed. It hasn't been much of a winning issue for the Tories in Britain, and it varies in other European countries, although some (like Germany) are almost fully public. More obviously, most European countries (France being a notable exception) have no institutionalized separation of church and state; many have state churches. In such a climate, one of the primary points of contention between voucher advocates and opponents in the U.S. debate is taken off the table. So this is stop 1 on the absurd hypothetical train, revealing that if Barack Obama were a politician in a different country, he'd probably have some different policy positions on issues that don't really translate all that well between the U.S. and Europe anyway.

2) supports a corporate income tax > 30%

Maybe a nominal rate of higher than 30%, which is what we have currently. What we also have, which is not quite as common in Europe, is a bewildering maze of corporate tax loopholes that ensures that corporations pay nothing like the nominal rate.

3) wants to deploy military force within Pakistan

As someone has pointed out, a blatant misrepresentation. He has said that if we have actionable intelligence on high value terrorist targets in Pakistan and their government is either unable or unwilling to act, then the United States will act. I would hope any candidate running for President would be willing to commit to doing as much. Are we really going to let high-value al-Qaeda targets slip away because of the Pakistani government's weak grip over the northern tribal areas and occasional intransigence? I certainly hope not.

4) opposes personal accounts in partial lieu of social security

Where would this position supposedly make him too far left to compete? Germany, maybe? Almost all European countries have unemployment and retirement benefits far more generous than American benefits, paid out of general government revenues. If anything, Obama's American centrist position on Social Security (don't kid yourself, the Bush/McCain privatization view is a radical and unpopular position in the US) might make him unattractively conservative to European voters if he was running for election in a bizarre hypothetical.

5) opposes public/private health plans

What does this even mean? Public/private health insurance is exactly the model Obama has endorsed--employer-provided where possible, government-subsidized otherwise. Again, his lack of support for a single-payer system would assuredly make him too conservative to win election in the UK or most of the Norwegian countries, for example.

6) advocate of biofuel subsidies: helped push the ethanol bill through congress

I don't know...ethanol subsidization is a stupid position, but I don't see it as being confined to liberals. It's basically an easy way for a politician of any stripe to pander to farmers, and I doubt the set of incentives to do that is quite the same in Europe. Nonetheless, the EU had mandated standards for biofuel usage before concerns were raised about their contributing to food shortages. I think this rather arcane issue of energy policy is probably a little beyond most voters' interests, whether in Europe or the US.

7) does not believe that the primary responsibility of the central bank is price stability

I don't know what you're driving at here. Are you pretending that putting some additional regulatory tools in the Fed's arsenal to prevent the perverse incentives that develop when financial institutions are privately owned and subject to little regulation, but virtually assured of a taxpayer bailout if they should fail somehow undermines the Fed's responsibility to ensure price stability? Do you think there's something wrong with the Fed allowing higher inflation during a period of recession in order to combat unemployment? I'm betting it's the latter. In which case: no, actually, voters in Europe don't like high unemployment either; I'm pretty sure he'd be just fine running on a platform of higher prices as a temporary trade-off for more jobs. This is assuming he actually had some substantial influence on central bank policy, which he wouldn't in any European country (or in the US, for that matter).

Strange grab-bag of issues, seemingly cherry-picked in order to avoid issues like Iraq (where his commitment to ending the war and reducing American unilateral adventurism is completely in step with European public opinion) or the broader energy issue (where his commitment to introducing mandatory carbon caps is solidly in line with European elite opinion and not that important to average voters). And the unfortunate part is that it's a dismal failure to demonstrate that Obama is somehow too liberal for Europe. Or for the United States, for that matter. I know, I know...you're used to liberal ideas being by definition disreputable, to Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton who only succeed by adopting conservative policies. The '90s are over, friend. The Reagan Era is done. Bush and his gang have torpedoed American conservatism for the next couple election cycles. Obama is going to get elected on a doctrinaire liberal platform, and you can sit in the ruins of your permanent majority and wonder where it all went wrong.

Obama is affirmative action personified; Would he be where he is today were it not for racial preferences?

BHO advocates a expensive government funded health care (actually sick care plan). He says:

My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.

1. Does "American" include illegal aliens? He refuses to say. If it does I don't see how the term "American" applies unless one believes that anyone who crosses the border is an American.

2. If the 45 million (where does that number come from?) uninsured includes illegal aliens, that means from 12 to 20 million new people covered would include people who pay no income tax. Illegal aliens don't have a valid social security numbers; they must either commit identity theft (a felony) or work "off the books," which is tax evasion, another felony. In either case they pay no income tax. In theory an illegal alien could file a return using a "taxpayer identification number." However IRS rules clearly state the the taxpayer ID cannot substitute for a social security number. In using this number one signs a statement under penalty of perjury to the effect that he is not using the taxpayer ID instead of a SS number. Another felony for working illegal aliens.

3. BHO says that the amount of money people spend on premiums will be less. That means people's taxes must go up to cover the shortfall. If the US is going to cover anyone who can make it across the border, the cost of this program will skyrocket. BHO voted for the McCain amnesty bill which would have led to chain migration flooding the country with people who could make claims on this universal health care system. People who don't have to work an pay taxes.

4. BHO has an overly optimistic concept of preventative medicine. He seems to believe in the health care myths as discussed in the book Health Care Half Truths. For example, preventative medicine does not decrease life cycle medical costs; it can actually increase them. To understand why this happens you need to know about competitive risk and evidently BHO doesn't.

5. His plan covers pre-existing conditions, but as far as I can see, his plan does not have mandatory participation. Thus people can wait until they have an expensive illness to treat and then enroll.

In summary BHO proposes a new and very costly federal program that contains the seeds of its own financial destruction. Americans will have less health care so that millions of criminal illegal aliens who pay no income tax will have more. If an American needs an organ transplant he might find himself waiting in a longer line. If more people fully understood the implications of what he proposes BHO would not win come November.

Being a mid-westerner, Obama may have not choice, politically, about seeming to support ethanol. I had thought, however, that the subsidies die out when the price of fuel rises, and the whole deal may be a lot closer to moot than we tend to think.

At any rate, most everyone, even Congress, has caught on that ethanol from corn is a dead end.

"Just as we must value and encourage military service across our society, we must honor and expand other opportunities to serve."
I can't wait for Sen. Obama to sell that in San Francisco. Better yet, I can't wait to see him actually say it in Frisco. The derisive booing will be exceeded only by the hysterical laughter.

I like the idea of a tax credit for community service. You can already get a deduction for giving away old, useless junk that you don't want anymore, so why not a comparable incentive for giving away time and services?

Gruesomely fascinating for his view of what is not crucial to the future of our nation: the unfettered businessman.

I think the list was meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

--PtM

So where in the Constitution is the Federal Government given the power to do these things? Or does he cross his fingers when he swears "to protect and defend..."?

re:

[Jim Lindgren, July 19, 2008 at 3:17am] Trackbacks
Funding Barack Obama's "civilian national security force."-- A. Obama on National Service.
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I'm pleased to see someone connect this to Obama's pledge to increase the Americorps and Peacecorps rather than argue this is some call for a paramilitary force....

However, I think Jim might also like to reference Obama's "The War We Must Win" speech. Delivered at the Wilson Center over a year ago, the speech was written by an aide to Lee Hamilton. In this speech Obama also talks about an "American VOICE corps" that will (I assume) be created with the the increase of the Americorps and Peacecorps "volunteers". He vaguely hints at this in his Wilson Center speech.

His goal for America is "...to be the light of hope in the sky for the child..." looking up at the MIL HELO. He intends to carry this out by creating "America Houses" throughout the Islamic World. This is a expansive policy of American Exceptionalism, where Americans will be teaching American English and American Historical interpretations to Muslims populations.

I have been commenting on these pledges by Obama when I get a chance -for nearly a year. It's nice someone is starting to seriously question what Obama's goals are in context to his July 2 Speech, but it would be wise to also consider this speech in context to his Wilson Center speech and notice how both tie in to one another.

Obama pledges to increase the MIL by 100k, double the Peacecorps, increase Americorps, create an America Voice Corps and build America Houses all over the "Islamic World". Total increases of 350k?

1)How to pay for it?
2)How is any of this a new vision/change/post-pol rather than a relabeling of American Exceptionalism?

3)Was Americorps' original design intended to carry out domestic federal policy?

4)Is the Americorps volunteer a clever way to secure a labor pool for liberal domestic policy programs at the state level minus state min wage pay scale?

5)Will Obama recruit USMIL personal to retrain and reclassify into Ameri/peace/voice corps, thus integrating both foreign and domestic "forces" into one? (note: all former USMIL can currently apply for Peacecorps, but very rarely, can a former PC volunteer transfer to MIL)

6)Are the American Houses in the Islamic World nothing but a soft form of assimilation? Is Obama proposing such policy when pledging to teach Muslims about the goodness of America?

7)Will the progressive America backing Obama sign up to do a tour?

So where in the Constitution is the Federal Government given the power to do these things?

As a substitute for asking an obvious question about the Constitution, why don't you try actually reading it.

I think its pretty clear, but I am not going to hold your hand.

I'm not sure Obama's status is a victory for affirmative action, when the kid gloves treatment didn't stop after admission to Harvard. It actually hasn't stopped yet. So I guess if "victory for affirmative action" means "employed as mascot for right-thinking people to feel better about themselves into his mid-forties" then, yeah, maybe.

I would love to see Obama's LSAT score. He's conceded he doesn't know whether he benefited from racial preferences in getting into college and law school. Watching him talk without a teleprompter tends to resolve the question in my mind.

I'd also be interested in learning about the process leading to his election as president of the Law Review.

I would add to my post that the one time in his political life that Obama wasn't able to use white guilt to get ahead--his run against Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000--he was beaten mercilessly. Running in the most heavily black congressional district in America, that tool just wasn't available to him.

I don't fault Obama one bit for taking advantage of this by, for example, changing the name he went by once he realized the game. If anything, this opportunism is his most appealing quality, for it acts as a hedge against his utter lack of experience or serious thinking on big issues and his seemingly instinctive far-leftism.

I suspect that the key is that he is a politician.

Constantin:

I'd also be interested in learning about the process leading to his election as president of the Law Review.

I've got one word for you: Google. That election and the events leading up to it have been well covered in the press, both contemporaneously and recently. There's nothing clandestine about it.

Federal Dog,

Tell me a few things. Do you think George W. Bush "was given a lot in life by virtue of preferential treatment?"

If so, have you ever objected to it? Do you think he has gotten more preferential treatment or less than Obama?

Constantin,

Why is Obama's statement that he doesn't know if he got preferential treatment a "concession," rather than a simple statement to be taken at face value - he deosn't know. That's all.

Even though I am not an Obama supporter, one thing that has impressed me is that he did not go the BigLaw route even though he obviously had the opportunity.

There is nothing wrong with BigLaw, mind you, if that is your cup of tea and it is mighty tempting to go that route (perhaps the advance from Faith of Our Fathers made the decision easier if he would otherwise have been burdened by a pile of law school debt).

But he didn't go for the big bucks when he could--and that is commendible.

"These staggeringly huge numbers are driven in part by the large numbers of students in AmeriCorps, 1.3 million of them. If the students were paid only $4,000 each, rather than $70,000 in personnel costs, and the student program is assumed to be otherwise completely free to administer, and the rest of AmeriCorps cost $100,000 per member, then the budget increase needed would be about $100 billion."

This seems to be to reflect a profound misunderstanding of AmeriCorps, which makes me question the rest of the analysis. For most programs, volunteers work a forty-hour per week job in an organization. The jobs are in non-profits, schools, etc.--but they're not little part time things you combine with your undergraduate program. As a result, if you want to pay them $4000 per year, you're not going to get anyone to volunteer. You don't have to pay much--current pay scale runs around $9,000-$12,000 over the course of the year. But it's not just a stipend for a few hours worth of work each week. And administrators in AmeriCorps programs likely are not making $100,000.

This obviously does not address the impact of Obama's proposal--I'm not sure what my thoughts are on that aspect or how to fund it. But I was concerned about the analysis when I read the part that I quoted, unless I have some misunderstanding of what you were saying.

Mr. Obama's suggestion of a massive and expensive civilian "paramilitary" (security) apparatus, brings to mind the "war veterans" curently serving as domestic "security forces" in Zimbabwe, whose prime vocation it is to terrorize the citizenry of that nation. Paranoia, or ominous foreshadowing of things to come? I earnestly wonder.

7 or 8 of the 28 posts currently on the "McCain open thread" are either attacking Obama or responding to it. This current thread is at about 40 posts long, and includes such witticisms as "If Obama is elected people will be demanding a regime change soon after!" and "It's called THE MILITIA. And we may need it the way Hamilton described in Federalist 28 before we're done." Godwin's law was validated by post 18.

Statistical summary complete.

LM:

"If graduating in the top 10% of his class at Harvard Law School on merit doesn't vindicate any help he may have received getting there, ...?"

To draw inferences about BHO's class standing, we need accurate information about HLS's grading system and the correlation between LSAT scores and grades. If the tests are easy enough (normed to the high talent pool they have) then a student's class standing could have a large random component making the correlation between grades and LSAT weak. In other words class standing might not be an indicator of ability. Thus a good but nevertheless middle ability student could end up in the upper 10% by chance alone.

We need to know things like the typical distribution of grades on tests (to see if they're too easy) , and HLS LSAT-grade correlation. Absent this kind of knowledge, I'm not going to draw conclusions about BHO's class standing one way or the other.

Even though I am not an Obama supporter, one thing that has impressed me is that he did not go the BigLaw route even though he obviously had the opportunity.

There is nothing wrong with BigLaw, mind you, if that is your cup of tea and it is mighty tempting to go that route (perhaps the advance from Faith of Our Fathers made the decision easier if he would otherwise have been burdened by a pile of law school debt).

But he didn't go for the big bucks when he could--and that is commendible.

Why is that commendable? Not that there's anything wrong with choosing community service if that's what you want to do (*), but why is it more commendable than BigLaw?


(*) Although there's something wrong with community service when it merely constitutes lobbying the government for handouts.


And I think you meant Dreams from My Father.

Yes: I hate legacy admissions and admission based on cronyism or family connections/wealth.

Actually, Bush got a lot more benefit than just admissions. He was repeatedly bailed out of business failures, and got his deal with the Rangers because of political clout, not ability.

As much as you hate legacy admissions and family privilege, did you actually speak out about them when Bush was running? Or is this a new-found hatred?

al-Maliki praises Obama's withdrawal plan: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

And guess what? Obama has left the door open for slight changes, much to the cries of "OMG! flip-flops!"

As I've noted elsewhere, it seems to me that if we're there as liberators, we sort of should keep in mind the Iraqis wishes.

We now return to your regularly scheduled oh-so-clever mentions of Obamas middle name.

Smokey said: "In fact, they do hand out honors at Harvard; the mindset is that minorities need a leg up from all concerned." Can you name some examples of these honors HLS hands out? Particularly any that Obama received on this basis?

A.Zarkov: The LSAT/GPA correlation is generally fairly strong, although it is far from perfect. Although if you want to be very skeptical about this, why are you even accepting that the LSAT would be an acceptable benchmark?

"GSAS is not the college. The system in the graduate and professional schools does, in fact, give credentials away like candy. It's in the school's best interest to place people after graduation in positions of power and wealth that can profit Harvard in the future."

GSAS is bascially the college in the broad sense--graduate version of the same subjects. But anyway, again, specifically speaking of the law school that Obama attended, what are these credentials that are given away? And most importantly, which of these unmerited credentials did Obama receive?

"We now return to your regularly scheduled oh-so-clever mentions of Obamas middle name."

Hmmm, don't see it anywhere in this thread. But, I'm guessing you never read most of it, so you wouldn't know.

And as for al-Maliki's comments -- yeah, thanks to "the Surge," (remember, the one that had no chance of success, the one that up until a few months ago still supposedly hadn't even reduced violence to 2006 levels, the one that was supposed to create a window for political progress, but there was no political progress, the one that showed what a dismal failure the whole Iraq policy was, so that even up until last month Obama wanted to scrap the entire Iraqi government and have the United Nations oversee a whole new Constitutional Convention for Iraq?) we may (hope upon hope) actually be able to get out within 2 years of the next president assuming office -- something we should all be cheering, something both candidates would welcome, and something Obama had no hand in, whatsoever.

The system in the graduate and professional schools does, in fact, give credentials away like candy

You mean everyone at the law school is in the top 10%? How do they get away with that, I wonder.

"You mean everyone at the law school is in the top 10%? How do they get away with that, I wonder."

Simple. It's Law, not Math ;-)

zarkov:

To draw inferences about BHO's class standing, we need accurate information about HLS's grading system

I believe HLS uses blind grading. But I'm sure you have some theory about how Obama tricked the system into giving him grades he didn't deserve.

With all due respect -- I see where Mr. Obama is discussing community service type programs (expanded almost geometrically, it seems...) BUT what is with the actual LANGUAGE he used in the speech? Seems like a Freudian sharp left turn in the spiel.

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Explain to me the use of the words "national security objectives." What does he say they are? What are they as defined by others? What does AmeriCorps (domestic) or the Peace Corps (foreign) have to do with that exactly?

The 'power' and 'strength' picture the military evokes in my mind bears no resemblance to the feel good (pie-in-the sky) plan for 250,000 AmeriCorps workers. (Please ... we do not need you in our lives. Go away.)

After all, as he has consistenty reminded us, he would be the Commander in Chief -- and HE sets the Mission. (!!) He wants to be Commander-in-Chief of [militant] Community organizers, so he creates them? Weird.

Derrick and Anon21 ask:

When did he say that he wants to deploy the military in Pakistan?

He did so in a speech August 3rd 2007. He declared that would attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government. This is a pattern with him: he believes in "bullying" other nations to do Washington's bidding. e.g., in supporting his position on Iraq he often cites the benefit of making the Iraqis fearful.

I think there is a potential argument to be made that America's frequent use of soft power--such as Obama advocates--produces a lot of resentment.

Where would this position supposedly make him too far left to compete? Germany, maybe? Almost all European countries have unemployment and retirement benefits far more generous than American benefits, paid out of general government revenues.

I have to tell you I get most of my news from British publications: the FT and the economist. The former is avowedly Labor, and the latter is liberal and free-market. Personal accounts ala McCain is long-standing policy in several countries there. I am aware of such programs in: Germany, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Hungary.

Obama is very out of touch on retirement programs vis-a-vis those countries--as is most of the US based reporting on the topic.

Not to quibble, but if the tax credit for student workers isn't going to be refundable, it probably won't be as expensive as it looks. Many students are in very low brackets and don't have $4,000 of tax liability to consume the credit, after existing credits, even if it's spread over 4 years. Especially if it's fair to assume that the wealthier students are less likely to participate.

Guest suggests that I don't understand Americorps because members are poorly paid.

He is unintentionally making my point.

I think his comments might be better directed at Obama, who is proposing to change the underlying nature of Americorps by having it be as well funded as the military.

Veterans benefits are no longer in the budget of the Department of Defense.

Mr. Obama said, "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set... We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

Now granted he was talking about increasing the size of the Peace Corps, Foreign Service, AmerciCorps, and create new civilian organizations previously, so maybe it was really just a poor choice of words. If not, what does he mean? What “national security objectives we've set”. President Chavez of Venezuela has his civilian Territorial Guards Militia to suppress internal dissent and defend Chavez’s presidency. Will President Obama need a similar civilian national security force? And why are the transcripts missing that statement and why hasn’t Mr. Obama been asked about this or explained it on his own.

If one knew the details of his NATIONAL SECURITY objectives, one might feel a little more comfortable with what he said; excluding the costs you have calculated.

I went to a law school where the Law Review had spots set aside for minority students regardless of grades or write-on abilities. I'm not saying that's what got Obama onto the Harvard Law Review, or that it resulted in his high finish in his class. I do think, though, that the same institutional diversity fetish that leads to this kind of tokenism might influence seminar professors, especially, to do the right thing. This would be accentuated when the school has a vested interest in not having the president of its law review finish in the middle of his class.

If we could see something of legal substance--anything--he wrote at Harvard, it might help to answer this question.

The funny thing is, on the other thread, people are saying that John McCain's military experience isn't particularly relevant yet on this thread the argument (at least based on the comments) seems to be that people think that Barack Obama's presidency of the Harvard Law Review is somehow hugely relevant.

I do not support Senator Obama. But I am not going to question his J.D. from Harvard, his membership in Order of the Coif, or how he became president of the Harvard Law Review.

There are serious, substantive reasons I oppose Senator Obama. The debate over his time at Harvard Law School is just silly.

Harvard is a highly selective institution, (even the AA admits are good) producing a fairly homogeneous body of students with respect to ability. As such it's difficult to distinguish the outstanding students from the good, and very good ones. To do so would require carefully crafting the tests. Otherwise some of the very good students could get into the top 10% by chance alone.

Indeed, that "could" happen. And some very bad students "could" get high LSAT scores by chance alone. And John McCain "could" have been turned into the Manchurian Candidate by Viet Cong brainwashing.

You guys are wasting your time arguing with Zarkov about the LSAT. It's obvious that in his view, the LSAT is an end in itself. It's not that the LSAT is evidence of talent which might (or might not) be expressed as grades or performance in society at large. No, the LSAT is the only accomplishment which is relevant because it measures intrinsic merit -- the merit which need not be shown in any other way. In fact, it's foolish of law schools to justify the LSAT by its correlation to grades; that's bassackwards. The grades need to justify themselves against the LSAT.

constantin:

the same institutional diversity fetish that leads to this kind of tokenism … This would be accentuated when the school has a vested interest in not having the president of its law review finish in the middle of his class.

You should explain how this works in the context of a system of blind grading.

Wow. We very much are in the framework - and the meta-framework - that has resulted from the Gramscian long march. Outside the military per se, the entire U.S. government can already be conceived as a "civilian national security force." How else can it be conceived with reference to the themes Obama is imagining?

Obama's conceptions in this vein are of a decidedly corporatist nature, a type of updated Mussolini-lite, updated to au courant sensibilities, very much in the vein of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Resisting such indulgences has - e.g., from Truman to Reagan during the Cold War - helped to provide a more sound basis for genuine historic achievements in a pronounced ideologically faith based epoch.

What BHO is conceptualizing here is maladdictive at foundational levels. The U.S. is, it goes without saying, imperfect. Still, it can decide to continue to be an anchor or it can drift. That is November in a nutshell, which by no means imagines McCain to be an apotheosis or an ideal candidate, but McCain does carry some real-world gravitas and weight.

"Change" as a mantra and banner, absent the substance, is not what is needed, nor is a modified Mussolini-lite the prescription that needs to be filled.

The second commenter hit in right on the head.

Barack Obama by himself wouldn't be that bad (see, e.g., Clinton from '94-'00). Barack with both houses of Congress will be an unmitigated disaster from which we may not ever recover.

Obama seems like a guy I could have over my house for a barbeque, go to a ball game with, or to a bar and have a few beers, and he would be a cool guy to hang with, as long he avoids talking about politics. But, he is too much of a Socialist for my tastes and I can visual a wimpy America with handouts galore under his Presidency.

As such, I have to vote for the old liberal over him. It's that simple.

MarkField and Jukeboxgrad:

I never said that LSAT is the only thing that counts or there was no difference between the top and the bottom of HLS. I said that the more homogeneous the class the harder it was it make meaningful differences. I specifically said I don't know it means much to be in the top 10% versus the top 20% at HLS. Not the top 10% versus the bottom 10%. If we knew more about grading other than "it's blind" and about the correlation between GPA and LSAT at Harvard, then we better decide how significant BHO's class standing is.

"You seem to be blatantly contradicting yourself. Unless you're claiming that they went on to do those things only because they were lucky."

Not at all. These places were not as selective as HLS, which is extraordinarily selective. Look if you had 50 Nobel Prize winners in physics in a room, how would you test for the best physicist in the group? It would be really hard if not impossible. If I had a group of 50 physicists chosen at random it would be far easier.

BTW this applies to anyone in the top 10% from HLS. I really wouldn't favor them over people in the top 20% at a hiring interview.

The questions about Obama's LSAT score, his high school transcripts, his SAT score, etc., are all because his apologists are deliberately avoiding the central question: why does Obama refuse to disclose his scores/grades?

George W. Bush opened up his scholastic record. Why is Obama hiding his?

And why does the media emit the sound of crickets chirping when that question is asked?

Do they want us to buy a pig in a poke? And if so, why?

I said that the more homogeneous the class the harder it was it make meaningful differences.

Now you're contradicting yourself. The whole point of your argument is that AA allows in people who are NOT homogeneous. Any blind grading policy would separate them out.* By making this argument now, you are in effect conceding that Obama was homogeneous with the rest of the class.

BTW this applies to anyone in the top 10% from HLS. I really wouldn't favor them over people in the top 20% at a hiring interview.

Then the whole issue is frivolous. If your only point is that we should treat "top 10%" as a somewhat imprecise designation that actually includes the top 20%, that's in no way relevant to Obama's qualifications to be President or his performance at HLS.

*If it didn't separate them out, that would undermine the claims of the LSAT for predictive accuracy.

It's hard to be sure exactly what to make of this "civilian national security force" idea--especially since it was apparently a spur of the moment addition/reinclusion. People are spending an awful lot of time poring over 2 sentences when there is really very little sense of what it is supposed to mean as of yet. For my two cents, though, I wonder how much of this is a riff off of Defense Secretary Gates' comments about the militarization of American foreign policy, especially given that there is apparently a strong possibility that Obama would retain Gates as SecDef if elected.

It seems that Iraqi PM al-Maliki supports Senator Obama's Iraq pull out plan.

bad:

It's false to claim that all grading at HLS is blind. Plenty of courses can't, by definition, be done that way (e.g., clinical, skills-based courses).

Please tell us specifically which courses at HLS do not use blind grading. It should be easy for you to name them, since there are "plenty."

byomotov,

I am in agreement that Obama's years at HLS is a stupid issue. I say this as a McCain supporter. I am not faulting Obama supporters for defending him on this stupid issue. What I am saying is that those who oppose Obama should be talking about something more substantive than this.

Dave N:

I agree with you, and that's why I wrote a somewhat detailed critique of his health care plan. Let's stick to the issues. But his supporters keep promoting him on the basis of his campaign (does he really run it?) or other vague bona fides, such as his class standing.

Dave N: "BTW, I consider myself pretty normal. So do my neighbors."


Ha-ha!

My neighbors consider me a quiet guy who kept to himself. Not at all the sort you'd expect to do something like THIS.

zarkov:

How would I know the grades were reliable performance measures? … how could I be sure that outcome was repeatable?

There are employers that recruit at Harvard graduate schools, year after year. And they seek out students with high grades. They are seemingly not so troubled by these questions that trouble you. I guess that means you're smarter than they are, even though they have actual experience observing the relationship between grades and job performance. And that experience seems to influence them to believe that the grades actually mean something.

Let's stick to the issues. But his supporters keep promoting him on the basis of his campaign (does he really run it?) or other vague bona fides, such as his class standing. … His supporters seem to bring up his class standing all the time because they have little else.

You must be joking. This thread is a perfect example. His supporters here did not spontaneously raise the subject of his "class standing." You've got it backwards. The subject came up because his opponents like to introduce statements like this:

Obama is affirmative action personified; Would he be where he is today were it not for racial preferences?

His opponents seem to bring up this bogus AA claim all the time because they have little else.

PC,

German left-leaning publications would prefer things to do be other than they are. "Iraqi PM disputes report on withdrawal plan"

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continuance of security improvements, echoing statements that the White House made Friday after a meeting between al-Maliki and U.S. President Bush.

Zarkov's argument that Obama finishing in the top 10% of HLS is not proof he belongs there is not only silly, it is logically incongruous. The reason why Zarkov claims you can't tell whether a person deserves to be in the top 10% or the top 20% is that everyone at Harvard Law is so smart (something, that, as a lawyer, I can tell you is PLAINLY not true, btw). But, taking Zarkov's own example - if you have 50 Nobel Prize winners and Average Joe in a room, and they all take a test, maybe it wouldn't be easy to figure out who finished first, but it would be pretty easy to find Average Joe's place on the curve.

What I am saying is that those who oppose Obama should be talking about something more substantive than this.

Could not agree more. There are plenty of substantive areas to criticize.

German left-leaning publications would prefer things to do be other than they are. "Iraqi PM disputes report on withdrawal plan"

Yes, I saw the correction issued out of the CentCom press office.

A. Zarkov,

I'm willing to play devil's advocate to see if we can put this LSAT question to rest. First, for the purpose of this exercise a fixed percentile rank will work better than a range, so we'll start by converting Obama's class standing to an average of the range of indeterminate possibilities. In other words, since he graduated in the top 10% of his class, i.e., somewhere between the 90th and 99th percentiles, we'll call it the 94th percentile.

You say the homogeneity of the HLS student body could allow a lucky kid in the top 20% to sneak into the top 10%. OK, let's say Obama was in the top 20%, not the top 10%. That drops him to the 89th percentile. Here's the HLS page showing the LSAT quartiles for the entering Class of 2007-2008. This page has a table of the percentile equivalents for all LSAT test takers between June 1998 and February 2001. [A page with those years was just the first one I found on Google.]

"But wait," you say. Quartiles and percentile equivalents can drift a little from year to year. How do we know those are accurate for Obama's class? We don't, so even though that small potential fluctuation should be more than covered with the adjustment we already made, we'll knock off another 5 points. That takes Obama down to the 84th percentile. And even though I assume the homogeneity we adjusted for is just another way of saying there's a loose correlation between the LSAT and HLS's GPA, let's double dip and hack off 5 additional points. We can call that the "we hate affirmative action penalty." And finally, because one can never be too careful when dealing with a Stalinist like Barack Hussein Mohammed Obama, I say we ding him 4 more points, marking his adjusted class rank at the 75th percentile. That happens to be the number I was heading for all along, since HLS releases LSAT data at the 25th and 75th percentiles, but still... could I bend over backwards any farther to humor your doubts and suspicions than dropping Obama from the 94th to the 75th percentile?

The bottom line is the 75th percentile LSAT score for HLS's entering class is 175, which corresponds to the 99.67th percentile of all LSAT takers. I leave it to you to calculate how that would compare with McCain, Bush, Gore, Kerry, and/or anyone else for whom we have enough data to rough out some kind of hypothetical comparison. I'm anxious to see how many of our President(s) or major party candidates you can demonstrate by your Princetonian lights were smarter than Obama.

Shame on your insinuation. The news first came out through a statement from Ali al-Dabbagh--essentially the press secretary for the PM to the Iraqi media. That the NYT choose to exclusively quote from yet another centcom echo is their choice.

I wonder if the AP uses the same translators as Der Spiegel? After the Iraqi national security adviser said Iraqis would not accept any security deal without a time table[0] for withdrawal, the White House said it was a transcription error.

[0] - which is completely different than a "time horizon"

Justin:

"The reason why Zarkov claims you can't tell whether a person deserves to be in the top 10% or the top 20% is that everyone at Harvard Law is so smart..."

What I actually said was that in a homogeneous class of high achievers it would be hard (but not impossible) to reliably determines who belongs in the top 10% and who belongs in the top 20%. In other words, it's hard to make fine distinctions among homogeneous groups.

"... if you have 50 Nobel Prize winners and Average Joe in a room, and they all take a test, maybe it wouldn't be easy to figure out who finished first, but it would be pretty easy to find Average Joe's place on the curve."

It would, but that's not what I said. I said it would be hard to design a test that would consistently identify the 5 highest performers. On any one test the top 5 scores and who got them are known. But unless we repeat the test we don't know if the upper 10% are reliably determined by the test. For example, suppose we test them again with a different, but equivalent test and now the physicists who previously got the 5 highest scores, now get the 5 lowest scores. Obviously the test is not reliable, so we have to redesign it. But unless we do repeat measures we wouldn't know that.

PC,

This article about covers it.

Its amazing reading that; it just drives home that the American press really isn't "unbiased"--it shows in the choice of quotes and the phrasing. When you goal is to be fair and balanced, it helps to be a foreigner without partisan affiliations.

Dr T:

"Two things frighten me most about Obama: He talks as if he, as President, will have almost unlimited executive power. His plans to use the Presidential power to expand and strengthen the executive branch and to establish a nanny state controlled by militant and heavily armed federal nannies."

Is this a joke? Where have you been for the last 7 years during which the current Vice-President, President, and their various appointees and supporters have followed exactly these policies? Suspended animation? No-bid non-competitive (anti-"free market") cost-plus contract i.e., Halliburton and KBR (the "electrocution specialists"), under which perofmrance is irrelevant, are the epitome of the "nanny-state", yet these are now the norm for the administration. Have you missed Blackwater's domestic operations, the TSA, ICE? Your fears are the current reality. Thanks.

"Smokey &Zarkov -
It is quite apparent you've never been to law school."

Flattery will get you nowhere.

Two things frighten me most about Obama: He talks as if he, as President, will have almost unlimited executive power. His plans to use the Presidential power to expand and strengthen the executive branch and to establish a nanny state controlled by militant and heavily armed federal nannies.

Accepting your framing, this is different from McCain how? Look up Matt Welch's articles at Reason Magazine which exhaustively document McCain's governing philosophy and support for federal regulation of basically everything he personally disapproves of and get back to us.

If, as Obama says, "American people are not the problem, they're the answer", then I ask, "just who is the problem"?

Dave N.,

I am in agreement that Obama's years at HLS is a stupid issue. I say this as a McCain supporter. I am not faulting Obama supporters for defending him on this stupid issue. What I am saying is that those who oppose Obama should be talking about something more substantive than this.

Yes. I understood your position. It's not you I was criticizing.

If, as Obama says, "American people are not the problem, they're the answer", then I ask, "just who is the problem"?

Republicans.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

PC, here's a quote from the Der Spiegel article, emphasis added:

Iraqi PM Maliki: "The casualties have been and continue to be enormous. But anyone who was familiar with the dictator's nature and his intentions knows what could have been in store for us instead of this war. Saddam waged wars against Iran and Kuwait, and against Iraqis in the north and south of his own country, wars in which hundreds of thousands died. And he was capable of instigating even more wars. Yes, the casualties are great, but I see our struggle as an enormous effort to avoid other such wars in the future."

As your biblicist-like faith in Der Spiegel and al-Reuters is so absolute, at least for the time being, don't be so selective.

And of course there is absolutely no discussion of Obama's proposal for a 16 month timeline for withdrawal - beginning back in January, 2007. A proposal he advanced because - in language that broached no doubt whatsoever - there was no way Petraeus's surge strategy was going to work. (Perhaps the trick is to propose a 16 month timeline about once every six months? Like a broken clock, bound to get it right eventually ...)

And let's say Obama had been in power back in January, 2007. In that vein, let's say Petraeus advanced his idea for the surge strategy - but an Obama presidency nixed it - reassurring the public in those same, unqualified, absolute terms that it was time to commence a sixteen month withdrawal, rather than commencing Petraeus's surge strategy. What do you imagine the outcome might have been? Genocide, similar to what occurred in Vietnam, post-1975? Something less than genocide but incredibly murderous nonetheless? You think al-Qaeda would have simply walked away from Iraq in that atmosphere? How about regional and wider stability issues, how do you think those would have fared? You think it all would have turned out swimmingly, because Obama's rhetoric would have carried the day?

MartyA - Wait until you get whiff of Barack Hussein bin Laden Osama's plan for black helicopters, the Amero and invading America with UN troops. Did you hear that Michelle Obama killed Vince Foster with a terrorist fist jab?

Michael B - I'll make sure to not trust ibn-Associated bin-Press as a news source either. What would you recommend? Fox &Friends? Perhaps World Net Daily?

Your proposal involving declaring something every 6 months is intriguing. Perhaps we could say a war with Iraq would take 6 weeks, but certainly no longer than 6 months. And it will pay for itself. But if we run into any snags with that plan, we can just say we are turning a corner and need another 6 months. Rinse, repeat until we are at the 6 year mark.

As to following Obama's advice to withdrawal rather than surge, I think it would have been disastrous. Soon after any sort of defeatism driven retreat we would have had al Qaeda in Iraq's navy, filled with jihadist strike forces, sitting off our coasts. Our cities would be overrun by fanatical Islamists, Sharia would rule the day, and Obama would finally be happy.

Clinton originally signed the no bid Haliburton contract. Bush renewed it.

It is hard to get good help in a war zone.

We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Giving nuclear weapons to the Peace Corps and machine guns to teachers in East LA?

Hopefully they'll be as well-funded as needed for the job they're doing. We're not going to be building weapons systems for them except maybe for gym class.

PC writes: Wait until you get whiff of Barack Hussein bin Laden Osama's plan for black helicopters, the Amero and invading America with UN troops.

That's horribly cute, but regarding the second see this and this. Regarding the last see this.

LM:

Asked for it and here it is. I will calculate the the probability of getting lucky.

Let X= true level and Y= measured level. The true level could be a latent variable such as the student's g factor or his LSAT which approximates his g factor. It could also refer to a students true skill level. For Y we can use GPA. The problem can be stated as follows:

We want P[Y gt y1 | X lt x2] where P[Y gt y1] = .9 and P[X lt x2]= .9. Thus y1 is the grade that gets you into the upper 10%, and x2 is the level that corresponds to the bottom 90% skill level. The conditional is the probability of over achieving by getting lucky. In this model a perfect grading system would reproduce the order statistics for the skill level.

We assume the grading is unbiased. So Y= X + e. Here e is the error term, so if e = 0 the grading system would be perfect and the correlation between X and Y would be 1. If the mean of e is zero then the grading system is unbiased. For convenience, we set the mean of X and Y to zero.

Now we need distributions for X, and e. To make things less complex, I'm going to make e have a normal distribution with some standard deviation s. I let X have a normal distribution with mean zero and standard deviation 1. Thus s is a "signal to noise ratio." The smaller the value of s, the greater the correlation between grades and true skill level. In fact, r^2 = 1/(1+s^2). If X and e have the normal distribution then so does Y. Thus X and Y are jointly normal. The covariance matrix has all 1s except for the (2,2) element which equals 1/r^2. Now that we have the joint distribution in a simple form we can get the answer with 2 integrations. The first we can carry out explicitly and get a closed form answer, the second must be done numerically. If you want the details email me and I will send you the Mathematica notebook. Thanks to Mathematica the whole thing can be done in less than 10 minutes. Here are the results.

For a correlation of r= .5 the changes of getting lucky is 4% (rounding). For r= .8, 2%. If the grading system were nearly perfect with r= .95, 0.3%. For a class of 800 expect about 32 for r= .5. Even with nearly perfect grading, we would expect about 2. We would need to have r greater than .97 to have no lucky guys-- not achievable.

Of course this is a highly simplified model and only provides an approximation to reality. Nevertheless it makes it credible that some HLS can make the top 10% and be somewhere in the bottom 90%. Of course the lucky ones would tend to be near the top of the bottom 90%. No doubt a median student has almost no change of getting lucky, and I said that. We could do additional calculations and see how low you can go and still have some reasonable chance of getting lucky.

This also shows how a law school could get some of its lower potential students into the top 10%: degrade the correlation. How would it do that? Have a few easy course or non-blind courses. I could calculate how many would be needed. In this way it might get just a few of the better AA admits into the top 10%.

Now I did this quickly and I could have made an error. If I were doing this for real (got paid) I would check everything much more carefully. Nevertheless it confirms my intuition that a few of students in the top 10% are there by luck.

A. Zarkov,

Nevertheless it confirms my intuition that a few of students in the top 10% are there by luck.

Doesn't it also confirm my assumption that even if we stipulated for argument's sake that Obama was one of those, the likelihood remains exceedingly high that his performance would correlate to an LSAT score well into the 99th percentile? In other words, leaps and bounds above what we can extrapolate about McCain, Bush, Gore and Kerry from what we know about their test scores and/or academic records?

Nevertheless it makes it credible that some HLS can make the top 10% and be somewhere in the bottom 90%.

Let's be clear as to what you've shown.

It is likely that some number of students whose LSAT scores are not in the top 10% of their class will have grades in the top 10%. In fact, I'd say it's a virtual certainty. Big whoop. Who didn't know that?

You have not shown that result is a matter of luck rather than ability.

You are arbitrarily and unreasonably designating the LSAT score as the true level and grades as the measured level. Why? No reason except it lets you throw up a smokescreen of statistical terminology and calculations.

Here's a clue, Zarkov: LSAT scores are measurements too. They have error.

LSAT scores are used by law schools to predict applicant performance. They don't do that perfectly. Furthermore, once you have the actual performance - the academic record, you don't need the predictor. Once the game is over you know the score. You don't have to speculate on it.

Of course, you may claim that the LSAT predicts professional performance rather than law school performance. But it still has error, just as grades do. I ask you again, as I did above, why a one-day test is a better predictor than a three-year academic record.

Daedalus:

Who is the real Barrack Hussein Obama? The one who attended a radical church for 20 years, or the one who just conveniently rolled his pastor under the bus? The one who associated with radical terrorist bombers for many years, or the one who denies that anything happened? The one who supported no amnesty for telecommunications companies, or the one who voted for the current FISA bill that gave them amnesty? There are many, many more of these flip flops. I just wish I knew who the "REAL" Obama was so I could make a better decision.

Yes, I can feel you struggling with whether or not to give him your vote.

He is truly a politician in the mold of Bill Clinton, do and say anything to get ahead.......truly a scary person.

... but if you only "knew who the "REAL" Obama was" you might want him to be President, right? What a shame he deprives himself of votes from open-minded swing voters like yourself by hiding his light under a bushel.

LM:

"Obama was one of those, the likelihood remains exceedingly high that his performance would correlate to an LSAT score well into the 99th percentile?"

No it's not exceedingly likely at all, or even likely. We could even calculate the actual probability by reversing the conditioning. We could calculate the probability that someone in the upper 10% had at LSAT score well below the 99 percentile. Moreover here is no reason to limit this to a single class. Over a period of 20 years (say) there must be quite a few graduates in the top 10% with with LSATS significantly below the HLS median and BHO could very well be one of them.

I have shown the sensitivity of GPA order statistics to the the correlation between GPA and LSAT. Moreover HLS or any other school for that matter can degrade the correlation. Many schools are extremely embarrassed that their AA admits tend to be a the low end of the grade distribution.

A. Zarkov,

"Obama was one of those, the likelihood remains exceedingly high that his performance would correlate to an LSAT score well into the 99th percentile?"

No it's not exceedingly likely at all, or even likely.

I'm decades removed from Statistics, or for that matter from any math beyond arithmetic, and for that I've been known to resort to a calculator. So humor me and explain how your comment above reconciles with:

Of course the lucky ones would tend to be near the top of the bottom 90%. No doubt a median student has almost no change of getting lucky, and I said that.

... and the fact that the median LSAT at HLS is above the 99th percentile?

That means you'll have to settle for the vice-presidency.

Addendum to prior post.

The US armed forces give high school and college graduates the AFOQT another g-loaded test. Obviously they think a one-day test adds significantly to the information they get from high school or even a college records. If the grades were better they would hardly go to the expense of administering the test.

So the real question is, which is more heavily g-loaded, the LSAT or law school GPA?

No. The real question is which is a better predictor of performance. (Another is how much error there is in LSAT scores). Even The Bell Curve, hardly a non-controversial work, doesn't claim that g-factor is a perfect predictor. Performance in a complex job depends on lots of qualities other than g-factor, including conscientiousness, social skills, etc.

It's not hard to think of law school as a job. Obama obviously performed well. So however good the LSAT as a predictor may be in general, then if he had a relatively low score it made a bad prediction. You're a statistician. Surely you understand that possibility.

Some BHO supporters assert that his class standing necessarily implies that he has a very high LSAT score because of blind grading. I've shown that's not so.

Some do, but that's hardly the main argument here. I don't care at all what his LSAT was, for example. But some of his opponents suggested that he only got into HLS because of AA and must have had poor LSAT's. One reasonable response is that however he got in he performed extremely well. The way to evaluate his performance is to evaluate his performance.

If you want to argue that that doesn't mean he had a very high LSAT, fine. But again, all you're saying, despite the talk of what you've "shown," and your talk of distributions, etc., is that variables that are not perfectly correlated are not perfectly correlated.

All your conclusions stem from your belief that LSAT is a perfect indicator. Once you make this unwarranted assumption, which you do at the beginning, the rest is just for show. But the assumption is just false.

Even if he was an abysmal high school and college student and he got bumped along because of AA, he has managed to do pretty well for himself. (How many other members of Obama's class are Senators?)

Isn't he a senator because someone illegally released his senate opponent's divorce file? And he was a state rep because he got everyone else disqualified?

After reading this endless thread speculating about Obama's undisclosed high school transcripts, SAT, LSAT, etc., I haven't seen an answer to my question repeated twice way upthread:

George W. Bush opened up his scholastic record. Why is Obama hiding his?

...*crickets*...

Some BHO supporters assert that his class standing necessarily implies that he has a very high LSAT score because of blind grading.

Actually, nobody is making this assertion. It's the ODS sufferers who keep raising this issue.

The Bell Curve, hardly a non-controversial work

Indeed it is. For a thorough fisking, see here and here.

The real question is which is a better predictor of performance.

Exactly. As I pointed out above, Zarkov is consistently treating the predictor (LSAT) as the determinant. It's the other way around -- once we know the grades, the LSAT is irrelevant.

Does anyone know how many states require a presidential candidate's full first, middle and last names to be on the ballot?

That's James Earl Carter, Jr.

Which should have told us we were being had, since that's nothing but an anagram for "Reelect Jar-Jar's Arm".

That's James Earl Carter, Jr.

Which should have told us we were being had, since that's nothing but an anagram for "Reelect Jar-Jar's Arm".

No fair injecting humor into the discussion.

July 20, 2008 4:45 PM

Today on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that "the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.

IANAL. But I'm not sure how that full-decade thingy would work.

On the affirmative action issue, I would make these points:

1. I see some of the top African American resumes when some apply for law teaching. Typically, the top black candidates get MUCH higher grades in seminars and other non-blind graded courses than in first year classes or big electives.

2. For Obama to graduate with high honors, even if he had stellar grades in seminars he would have to have done well in blind-graded courses. IMO, that means he is very smart in conventional terms, probably smarter in academic terms than any president of the last 40 years (with the possible exception of Clinton, who did well at Yale, but not as well as Obama did at Harvard).

3. The Harvard Law Review has affirmative action on its law review (and I believe had it then). I have not heard whether Obama benefited from AA in making the review, but it is a reasonable possibility, since most extremely smart students at Harvard nonetheless do not make the review.

4. Accounts of how Obama was elected President of the review suggest that he won because of support from the swing group--conservatives--who were persuaded that he would deal fairly with them.

5. Contrary to suggestions above, the Harvard class is not homogenous and it is unlikely that most African American students there have LSATs even close to the top of the bottom quartile listed for Harvard in US News (listed above as 175). I vaguely recall in the 1980s (when I was at the University of Connecticut) that only a few dozen African Americans a year scored above 600 on the old scale of the LSAT. I believe that the median at Connecticut was about 650 and the medians at top 5 law schools were well over 700. So the median African American accepted at Harvard in the 1980s would probably have had LSATs about the same as (or lower than) the median white student at Connecticut, though probably much better grades.

6. When I was at Chicago-Kent in the early 1990s, I remember the dean of a top-5 law school saying that no African American had ever gotten good grades at his school (by which I took him to mean grades such as would make the person a likely candidate for Kent to hire if he or she were white, ie, top 10-25%). He said that the LSAT/GPA credentials of African American students at his school were then comparable to those of white students at Kent.

7. As Rick Sander has found, median African American grades in law school would place at the 7th percentile in the white student distribution, which supports the data of a wide difference in entry credentials.

8. By any standard, Barack Obama did extremely well in law school. As David Schraub pointed out above, Obama would have to be counted as a success for Affirmative Action, someone who succeeded to an extraordinary extent when given a chance.

Bush's grades were leaked by someone at Yale. I don't recall if any desks were cleaned out as a result. I suspect not, but I would be pleased to learn that I'm wrong.

Mark Field:

"The Bell Curve, hardly a non-controversial work..."

The theory of relativity was also controversial at one time. Simply choosing to make something controversial does not automatically invalidate it. Tell us what material fact asserted in that book is incorrect, and why you think so. Otherwise you're just ankle biting. Have you even read the book? BTW just because one can find critical remarks about something with a google search proves nothing. But as I said if you don't like TBC, then read The g-Factor. Same stuff at a higher level. The material in TBC is mainstream psychometrics-- that's why a large list of researchers signed a letter that appeared in the WSJ backing it.

So Obama, having been on a whirlwind trip to distant parts, will claim unlimited expertise and boundless prescience in foreign affairs, Iraq, Afghanistan, European politics... Did I miss anything? He has already begun spouting off about military strategy in Afghanistan. This is no doubt based on his extensive knowledge and experience in both the area and subject.

I have known "bright" people, quick studies with excellent grades who had difficulty differentiating one end of a screwdriver from the other in its application. Obama strikes me as one who is satisfied with superficial understandings guaged on their adequacy to serve his ambitions. That is a dangerous type of person to have in a position of authority.

Ah, lovely to see that even on this academic blog populated by somewhat intelligent conservatives everyone is mired in a discussion about affirmative action. Among conservatives, any discussion of a successful black person wouldn't be complete without contemplating whether his success came at the price of a more "qualified" white person having a go at it.

At least no one here is silly enough to "wonder" why blacks don't vote for conservatives.

One other observation. James Lindgren says this: "I remember the dean of a top-5 law school saying that no African American had ever gotten good grades at his school (by which I took him to mean grades such as would make the person a likely candidate for Kent to hire if he or she were white, ie, top 10-25%)."

If this is so, I suspect you remember incorrectly; although African-Americans tend to have far poorer grades than whites and Asians in law school, there are certainly numerous instances of African-Americans who achieve great success in law school. For instance, the last two years African-American graduates of Harvard Law School clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court; both were magna cum laude graduates, meaning top 10% of the class.

I suppose some people might think they got A+'s in enough clinicals to get up to magna and got B's in all their required classes. There are, however, plenty of instances of African-Americans achieving great success in fields in which high abstract intelligence is necessary. For instance, at some point in the 1990s, an African-American man (Jonathan Farley) graduated with the second-highest GPA in the entire Harvard undergraduate class (I believe he had 3 A-minuses and 29 A's) despite majoring in pure mathematics, a very intellectual demanding field.

Just as a quick correction, people are assuming that because Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude, he graduated in the top 10% of the class. That is false; that became the standard for magna cum laude in 1999. Prior to 1999, there were absolute GPA cutoffs for each honor, which resulted in many more people graduating with honors.

So maybe half of Obama's class or more got MCL? Can anyone find out what percentage got it in his class so we can shut up all those fools who keep repeating that he was in the top 10%?

It's interesting to me that the majority of Conspirators support a volatile septuagenarian of limited intellectual capacity, over an obviously more intelligent and younger person of the same professional background.

Marx was a pretty bright guy. How did that work out?

Federal Dog--Exactly. Where's the evidence? Obama did well in higher-ed. True. But no one is saying that he is not intelligent. Does the fact that McCain had a very poor class rank at Annapolis mean that he is less intelligent than Obama? He was certainly a less serious student. But that's all I can conclude from this evidence.

I think this is one of those cases where "obviously" means "what I'm about to say is not at all obvious."

MarkField,

Yeah. g is a myth. Now about those Ashkenazi Jews.

Marx was a pretty bright guy. How did that work out?

Groucho was one of our most beloved entertainers.

But you should have named the bright Ted Kaczynski if you were going to do a troll post.

The theory of relativity was also controversial at one time. Simply choosing to make something controversial does not automatically invalidate it.

I gave you two links. Did you read them?

Your counter-example is silly, btw. Science ultimately works because researchers come to agree on a theory. That did happen with relativity. Although the theory of "g" is now 100 years old, there is no such agreement.

Yeah. g is a myth.

True. And apparently only those with IQs above a certain level are capable of understanding that.

I would like to interrupt this fascinating discussion of Harvard Law School's grading policy to ask whether the following characterization of Obama's views is accurate?

[Obama] does not believe that the primary responsibility of the central bank is price stability

From Wiki (sourced):

"The purpose and functions of the Federal Reserve System include:

1. To prevent banking panics
2. To serve as the central bank for the United States
3. To strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government
supervising and regulating banking institutions
protect the credit rights of consumers
4. To manage the nation's money supply through monetary policy
maximum employment
stable prices
moderate long-term interest rates
5. Maintain the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk in financial markets
6. Providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation’s payments system
facilitate the exchange of payments among regions
to be responsive to local liquidity needs
7. Strengthen U.S. standing in the world economy"

Hmmm, don't see it [gratuitous mentions of Obama's middle name] anywhere in this thread. But, I'm guessing you never read most of it, so you wouldn't know.

Guess I sure look pretty prescient now. Stick to writing music, David Matthews. Oh wait, on second thought, please don't. Weak blog comments do much less damage to popular culture.

Let me chime in that I'm also not thrilled about this strategy for comments. It leads to multiple conversations happening at once and drowning each other out. I'd favor each post having its own comment thread.

Srsly said:

Let's get real people - Law School isn't that intellectually challenging; an obsessed moron could do quite well at a top 10 law school. I have 10 times more respect for an average physics/math PhD than I do somebody on Yale Law Review who clerks for a SCOTUS judge.

I can back that up from personal experience. I did extremely well on my LSAT, and just 'good' in the first half as 1L. Then, I realized that the 'A' in 'IRAC' does not actually mean "analysis" (in the sense I learned as an undergrad philosophy/religion dork) but rather just "transition sentence between rule and conclusion." From then on, I dumbed down my exam answers, making them broadly conclusory and dismissive of any serious counter arguments. I jumped to the top of my class (even 1st in class).

Everybody in your law school is roughly in the same ballpark intellectually. What sets the grading curve is simply who can write in the clearest manner for a drunk law professor who is running out of time to finish grading a giant stack of exams written by obnoxiously arrogant students. Simple and superficial is better.

Was I 'smarter' when I was first in my class versus when I was towards the middle? Nope, I was actually writing at a lower level (and writing as if I assumed the reader was mentally retarded - that helped too).

BTW, I put my LSAT score on my resume, and got a top 50 firm job.

"I have 10 times more respect for an average physics/math PhD than I do somebody on Yale Law Review who clerks for a SCOTUS judge."

Last week I had a long conversation with an IP lawyer here in Silicon Valley. He's worked both sides the street being a former electrical engineer from the aerospace world. He said basically the same thing. Moreover he said law and finance (especially finance) are attracting the best students away from science, engineering and mathematics as discussed here. He also said something very troubling-- he and the other engineers at his aerospace job relied heavily on the basic work done by prior generations of engineers. He changed careers because he saw the handwriting on the wall: today engineering is a poor career choice.

"Aside from the concerns about what exactly the "civilian national security force" would be responsible for and what powers they would have, how can he possibly find funds for this in the budget? What else gets cut?"

The question politicians want to avoid because the answer is either more debt or more inflation. When the bond purchasers disappear, the answer will be inflation and lots of it to cancel the debt. Then you start all over with a new set of unfunded promises.

One Senator has the guts to say the emperor has no clothes.

HLS Student:

I am VERY happy to hear that some African American students have earned truly stellar grades at Harvard in recent years.

Your comment in part makes my point about how well Obama did at Harvard.

At the top 5 law school I talked about (not Harvard), the dean in the early 90s said that no African American had ever gotten (very) good grades at that school. Although the dean didn’t put it in these terms, his comment would imply that up until that time, no African American at his school had ever graduated cum laude. I expect that, because Harvard and Yale skim off many of the very top minority students, the experience at that school might have been different than at other top law schools, even twenty years ago.

This emphasizes just how extraordinary Obama’s graduating magna cum laude at Harvard is. In traditional academic terms, Obama did better in school than any president in the last 40 years. And he writes extremely well, better than most of us Volokh Conspirators.

Srsly said:

Let's get real people - Law School isn't that intellectually challenging; an obsessed moron could do quite well at a top 10 law school. I have 10 times more respect for an average physics/math PhD than I do somebody on Yale Law Review who clerks for a SCOTUS judge.

Eli said

"Well, so much for our courteous hosts, obsessed morons everyone (well less, a couple of economics types in there)"

and Smokey left em on the floor laughing

Huh? That weird comment doesn't appear to have any relevance to the comments above, or to anything else. It's just an insult.

The boy needs to see the sarcasm flag

Jim Lindgren,

I'm throwing my two cents in in favor of the multiple-post thread, if, as I'm assuming, it's related to keeping the thread open longer than usual. I've found it pretty frustrating to be in the middle of an exchange and have it shut down. So if having only two threads to moderate obviates that, I'm all for it.

In fact, these threads could become like soleras of old sherry, periodically topping them off with newer vintages, but retaining the original identity.

Since I have no IQ test results, and it is not clear whether IQ test scores correlate with what we call intelligence, I'll revise my comment.

A majority of people self-identifying as Republicans believe Obama is smarter than McCain.

Nothing in the linked article says anything close to that.

Eli Rabett:

"Well, so much for our courteous hosts, obsessed morons everyone (well less, a couple of economics types in there)"

That's 'sarcasm,' huh?

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

Have another drink.

A. Zarkov:

"Don't those contradict?"

No, one statement refers to the past, while the other refers to the future.

Thanks

Sorry this subthread is a little stale.

zarkov:

Perhaps not on this particular thread. But on other threads his supporters do bring it up in response to his lack of experience.

You were responding to this comment of mine:

His supporters here did not spontaneously raise the subject of his class standing. You've got it backwards

Let me restate our disagreement in the form of these two statements:

A) Obama supporters typically mention his class standing in response to claims that he lacks experience.

B) Obama supporters typically mention his class standing in response to claims that he lacks merit and got where he is on account of affirmative action.

You have claimed A. I am claiming B. I've looked around a bit (at VC) and I can find no evidence to support A. So if you can find some, it would be interesting to see it. However, I do find evidence to support B. What I see is that Obama supporters mention his class standing in response to comments like this:

… if Obama releases his high school transcripts, and his SAT scores, then each of us can decide for ourselves if he got into Harvard based on merit, or if he will be our first Affirmative Action president.

And this:

If anyone got an advantage from being born black it is him.

And this:

Does anyone know if he would have gotten into Columbia or Harvard if he wasn't half black?

In those threads, his class standing was mentioned, but it was subsequent to the comments I cited, and seemingly in response to those comments. I was not able to find an example of A. Can you?

Anyway, let's consider something else you said:

If you read carefully all I said is that we can not assert with high confidence that anyone in the top 10% of HLS must necessarily have gotten a very high LSAT, say greater than 172. That applies to BHO and any other specific person. … We must judge BHO on his accomplishments in his chosen field after graduation.

You're basically saying that Obama's academic performance doesn't mean much because "we can not assert with high confidence" that he also had "a very high LSAT." But you seem to be acknowledging that we can assert with confidence that he had a high LSAT. So what's the big deal? That we don't know for sure ("high confidence") that it was "very" high?

With or without the LSAT, it seems pretty clear that he's one of the smartest presidential candidates in modern history. The energy devoted to trying to chip away at this reality is a vivid indication that his opponents have very little to work with.

jukebox--

A) Obama supporters typically mention his class standing in response to claims that he lacks experience.

Well, his supporters have cited his intellectual "superiority" to McCain, and used McCain's poor class-rank at Annapolis as evidence. This line of argument certainly implies (A). Right?

You're right about Bush's record, of course. His Yale transcripts were leaked.

hoosier:

Well, his supporters have cited his intellectual "superiority" to McCain, and used McCain's poor class-rank at Annapolis as evidence. This line of argument certainly implies (A). Right?

It seems to me that his supporters (like me) cite "his intellectual 'superiority' to McCain" because intellect is inherently important in a president (especially after 8 years of the opposite). I don't see it coming up "in response to his lack of experience" (which is what Zarkov claimed).

And Zarkov's claim was even more specific: not just that Obama's intellect, generally, was cited "in response to his lack of experience," but that Obama's class standing at HLS, specifically, was cited "in response to his lack of experience." I think Zarkov was claiming we've seen exchanges like this:

- he has no experience
- but it's OK, because he's smart
- please prove he's smart
- his class standing at HLS is proof of his intellect

But I haven't. I've seen exchanges that look like this:

- his success is due to AA, not merit
- his class standing at HLS is proof of his intellect

Not really the same thing.

I'm not saying that first exchange has never happened (here or elsewhere). But when I look around, what I see is the latter. As always, I'm sincerely grateful to see evidence that has escaped my notice.

Good point, but don't forget the very famous Harvard MBA who has done plenty of sucking, and has also been on a couple of quadrennial ballots.

"I saw Barack Obama on a Gay Porn Site"

Thanks, that's brilliant stuff. But you have to realize that we live in a post-satirical era (and that's why the New Yorker cover was problematic). What some people are saying with a straight face comes awfully close to what you said. Like this:

Jeff Rense is covering the stories that the MSM is ignoring. Last night Jeff Rense interviewed Reverend James Manning. Reverend Manning states with authority that he has proof that Obama and Jeremiah Wright are closet homosexuals and that Obama is a drug user. Reverend Manning found out about the homosexual aspects of Obama and Wright before he learned of Larry Sinclair’s allegations of drug use and gay sex with Obama in November 1999. Reverend Manning further states that the reason Obama stayed at TUCC for 20 years was because he was engaging in gay sex with Wright. If you missed the interview last night, you can listen to it here

Manning was also on Hannity's show (on that page is a video of Manning that's pretty entertaining). He's also been on Fox's John Gibson radio show.