http://m.lenconnect.com/article/20150214/OPINION/150219302/-1/sportsMegan McArdle:
Who needs a diploma to be president?The Washington Post has a lengthy article on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walkers college career and his decision to drop out of Marquette University during his senior year. I read it carefully, and I think that this piece raises a pretty important question about his p**********l campaign.
Namely: Who cares?Were talking about events that happened almost 30 years ago
None of them are illegal, or even, frankly, very interesting. (He got a D-minus in French!) So why are we talking about this?This is not the first time Ive heard that Walkers status as a college dropout must mean theres something wrong with him. Decent, hardworking, upper-middle-class people who write for good media outlets graduate from college, dammit. If Walker didnt, that must tell you something ominous about his character.
Now, maybe Im partial, because I myself racked up a few Ds in college, and for much the same reason that Walker seems to have: I didnt go to class enough. Unlike Walker, I pulled it together, got my grades up and got my diploma on time. But it was touch-and-go for a while.
Does that tell you something about my character? Yes, I think it does at the age of 20. But, sadly, that was a couple of decades ago, and Ive changed a bit since then.
When I was finishing my book, which involved a months-long stream of 18- hour days, my mother took me aside and said, You have to stop working so hard. Youre wearing yourself out. All I could do was laugh, and after I said, Mom, when I was 20, could you have imagined yourself saying those words to me?, she laughed, too.
My employers dont have to look at my college record to assess my critical-thinking sk**ls or my work ethic. I guess they could look at my grad school transcript, where I did pretty well, or better yet, they could look at the work I have been putting out pretty steadily since 2001.