How far back in a candidate’s history do we want to travel?
It’s pretty clear that kindergarten behavior is off-limits, although there are several people running for important offices this year who remind me of a preschooler I once knew who hated sharing so much that whenever other children came to play he’d pile everything he could get his hands on, down to large pieces of lint, in one huge mound and sit on it all afternoon.
…has memory loss:
On Sunday, the Clinton campaign issued a press release suggesting that Obama was being deceitful when he told voters in Boston that he has “not been planning to run for president for however number of years,” citing news reports that Obama wrote “essays” in kindergarten and third grade, titled “I want to be a president.”
“I’m sure tomorrow they’ll attack him for being a flip-flopper, because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut,” Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said Monday, in response.
Everything is fair game. Being born on the wrong day is fair game. There is nothing people won’t stoop to unless they decide to be high-minded. But that is the exception, not the rule. Also, contra Collins, the “whole point” of college is not to a be knucklehead. There are classes where they teach stuff. They are not the “whole point” either, but they ought to be part of the conversation. The fact that George W. Bush was a terrible student was important information. The fact that John McCain was almost expelled from the Naval Academy and graduated near the bottom of his class was important information. Really, the fact that Obama wanted to be president from a young age was important information, just not in the way that Hillary intended. It meant he took himself seriously, which is a trait we should want in a leader.
