THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 1, 2009
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There's a front-pager in today's WaPo about the political storm that has erupted in the Virginia governor's race thanks to the paper's Sunday report on Republican candidate Robert McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis from his studies in public policy and law at Regent University.
Little wonder the thesis has become a hot topic: Outlining beliefs that would have made Regent founder Pat Robertson swoon with ecstasy, McDonnell makes clear his disgust with (among many, many other things) gays, working women, and "fornicators." (McDonnell disapproved of the Supreme Court's 1972 decision legalizing birth control for unmarried couples.)
Democrats are, predictably, rushing to hang this bit of Neanderthalism around McDonnell's neck as he tries to woo moderates and female voters. Republicans, in turn, are whining that Dems are unfairly picking on McDonnell because of a 20-year-old paper. As the candidate himself complained, voters shouldn't judge him "based on a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student during the Reagan era."
I find myself torn in this fight. In general, I find the obsession with politicians' student writings excessive. Most of these papers spring from the brains of people in their early- to mid-20s who have spent the past several years in the self-indulgent cocoon of academia. I realize there's no demographic group more convinced of its inherent genius and infallibility than recent college graduates and grad students. But in reality, most people don't spring forth from Harvard or Berkeley or Florida State or Texas A&M fully formed. (Thank god.) Many even (gasp!) change their views as they trudge through the big, wide, complicated world.
That said, Republicans are hardly in a position to gripe about this tendency. Anyone recall the frenzy the Right whipped itself into over Hillary's thesis on Saul Alinksy or Michelle O's thesis on black Princeton grads? The former ostensibly proved Hillary to be a socialist and the latter revealed Michelle to be a militant whitey-hating bigot. Ah, good times.
So we're to judge Democrats by their academic ramblings but not Republicans? I think not. Moreoever, if we want to get picky, I could point out that McDonnell wasn't some fresh young thing when he submitted his thesis. He was 34 years old, more seasoned than your average student scribbler and with a fair amount of real world experience in both the military and the business world. He wasn't especially young or naive--except, of course, in the ways of electoral politics.
Now, 20 years down the road, would it be more sensible for voters to judge the candidate on his public career and political record? Probably. But I can't bring myself to feel sorry for McDonnell or waste one minute listening to the huffy complaints of his Republican defenders, whose sudden display of perspective will undoubtedly fly out the window the next time they have the opportunity to shred some Democrat's masters thesis, college application essay, or junior-high yearbook quote. Like everything else, toxic academic radicalism is in the eye of the beholder.
God help us if Joe Biden's grade-school collection of dirty limmericks ever surfaces.
13 comments
"...who have spent the past several years in the self-indulgent cocoon of academia." As opposed to, for example, the self-indulgent cocoon of blog-writing at TNR.... "I realize there's no demographic group more convinced of its inherent genius and infallibility than recent college graduates and grad students." Ditto. In fact, double ditto. Someone didn't recognise your inherent genius in college?
- SMacEachern2
September 1, 2009 at 1:48pm
College is common enough -- and college students young enough -- that I would not hold anything written as an undergrad against a person. I would hold it against neither a politician I greatly despised nor one I greatly admired to learn that she had written a senior honors thesis apologizing for Stalin or endorsing the Laffer Curve. Kids are stupid; if they weren't, they wouldn't need to be educated in the first place. Further, were I an editor, I would not regard anything written as an undergrad to be newsworthy, up to and including actual bigotry, Holocaust denial, or advocacy on behalf of the Objectivist Club or Young Americans for Freedom. However, grad school is different. To return to school at the graduate level is to declare one's competence to stand with the community of adult scholars. Holders of graduate degrees often cite their thesis work for the rest of their professional lives, even when their own scholarship has advanced upon or even reversed their graduate work -- as evidenced by the fact that McDonnell himself alerted the WaPo to his thesis by mentioning it in an interview. A graduate thesis is exactly the sort of writing that any candidate for office must be held to account for, whether it's Bob McDonnell's master's thesis or Barack Obama's law review editorials. I would have assumed this to be an uncontroversial opinion, since conservatives are so big on the concept of "taking people at their word" when they have previously said or written anything they might not now be proud to have written or said (c.f. Justice Sotomayor re: wise Latina; c.f. also Senator Webb re: women in the military) because if only the world had believed that Hitler meant what he said in Mein Kampf etc. But the whole kerfluffle misses the most important issue: How can even a crap institution like Regent University award a master's degree for a thesis titled "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of The Decade" and not lose its accreditation? The bits of the thesis I've dipped into have read like a bunch of Focus on the Family press releases stapled together. It's not a serious thesis even at an undergrad level; that such a document could earn a master's degree is a truly outrageous degradation of educational standards.
- rhubarbs
September 1, 2009 at 1:50pm
Perhaps we should also recall that the GOP, when it couldn't find any "student writings" of Obama's to use against him, tried to use his father's MA thesis to smear him! These jerks should be given no quarter.
- ironyroad
September 1, 2009 at 2:33pm
Ten years from now, I'm really going to regret my senior year thesis, Tractatus Logico-Suckiticus: A Unified Theory of Why Women, Gays, Farmers, Asians, Rich People, Gun Owners, Cubans, Auto Workers, and Blackton Can All Kiss My Hairy Ass. Nah, who am I kidding. I'll never regret that.
- ratnerstar
September 1, 2009 at 2:48pm
sorry ratty, but your writing it on the bathroom walls of your local elementary school, in crayon, and what you just wrote above being the sum total of your Senior thesis for High School, it is not surprising that you never did graduate from High school. As to me, I would have been happy to give you an A for it, if only to stop you from being a 28 year old Senior.
- blackton
September 1, 2009 at 3:06pm
What vile slander. I certainly did not write my thesis in crayon; I used a Sharpie, for permanence. In fact, you can still read my oeuvre, quite clearly, on the third stall, first floor, east wing restroom of John Eaton Elementary School. Surprisingly, the Washington Post has showed little interest in pursuing this story. That's the media for you!
- ratnerstar
September 1, 2009 at 3:18pm
*Could we please see the comments of others, and the main article, while we are writing? I wish to malign ratty and blackie and am precluded from doing so, in the absence of their drivel before me. And my memory is not what it used to be - it never was what it used to be - so I cannot misquote out of context intentionally, and thus have to do so providentially. Could you please, please correct this silliness.* Rhubs, is his usual manner, hits the nail right on the head and rams it through to the point, piercing the veil of nonsense and slamming hard the logic against the other silliness, the "debate" as to whether the rancid musings of a 34-yo oik should be used against him in his rancid and hypocritical run, twenty years hence, for political office. [Apologies for the multiple-mixed metaphor, but these endless conservative oikishnesses (now, there's a word worth the coining) drive a man to lexicological madness.] I still milk my graduate thesis (and, later, book) for all it is worth, nearly twenty years later and despite the fact that it is about as timely as Ptolemic astronomy - and likely less accurate. And Irony, too, in his usual manner, goes to the nub of the matter. There is a certain "wtf-ness" to the liberal hand-wringing on whether they should bring these matters up and use them against Republic Party apparatchiks. I mean, honestly, after Hitchens' scandalous attack on Michelle's Princeton thesis, why would liberals give any quarter at all to right-winger on these matters? Go for the shin and the groin in quick succession and don't think twice about it. As Malone said to Ness, "Would you rather it be you?" Ratty: "A Feminist Analysis of the Dune Chronicles". Top that, if you dare.
- icarusr
September 1, 2009 at 3:53pm
Fornicators? What's McDonnell got against the GOP Senate Caucus?
- dubyadoubte
September 1, 2009 at 3:58pm
*Multiple comments, a direct consequence of not having the comments in front of me as I write ...* Ratty: "I used a Sharpie." Obeid Zakani is one of Medieval Iran's funniest comic writers. Here is a story that appears à propos ... "I once pissed upon a mud wall, and rubbed the member against it for want of a rag. Sheikh Ali Touran passing by upon the instance, remarked thinking himself clever, 'Obeid, take care not to make a hole in the wall.' I said to him, 'O' glorious Sheikh, fear not, for IT is not as SHARP as you have experienced'."* [emphasis added] * There is no homosexuality in Iran, of course, and there never was. This story is a calumny and no doubt concocted, in 1257 AD, by MI6, the CIA, Mossad and international Zionism to besmirch the character of Iranians, Obeid and the said Sheikh Ali, who did not have a reputation, in his time, of liking sharpies.
- icarusr
September 1, 2009 at 4:03pm
I was about to respond to a comment, but now that I'm in the "reply" box, and can see nothing of the thread except the photo, I'll confine my remarks to the girl on the right, who looks kind of cute.
- jhildner1
September 1, 2009 at 4:19pm
How does Regent University even have an accreditation to lose? Does it? I agree with Rhubarbs completely. Give him the hammer (if not the sharpie).
- JEFF FREY
September 1, 2009 at 10:51pm
I agree with Rhubarbs's post except him saying that kids are stupid which is why they need to be educated. That conclusion does not follow from the premise which itself is misconceived in confusing stupidity with not knowing. I for one will stand behind my own thesis down to its letter: "Why It Is Fundamental to the Survival of Canadian Liberalism that all Good Looking Liberal Women Sleep with Itzik Basman".
- basman
September 2, 2009 at 12:38pm
OK, basman, what did your committee think about that thesis? It could have been subjected to sharp questioning at your defense!
- JEFF FREY
September 2, 2009 at 5:38pm