By Scott St. Clair | The Save Jersey Blog
If I was Steve Sweeney, I’d find Howard Dean and smack him – then smack him again.
At a minimum, the New Jersey Senate president from West Deptford Township should be seriously steamed at the way he was implicitly and condescendingly bum rushed and bad mouthed by the former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chair all for the lack of a four-year sheepskin.
This past week, Dean, who is a medical doctor, was discussing the non-issue of evolution and its impact on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential prospects on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. Out of left field, Dean said that Walker’s lack of an undergraduate degree – he quit Marquette University in good standing half-way through his fourth year to take a job with the American Red Cross – made him “unknowledgeable” to the point where he was ignorant about “what goes on in the rest of the world,” which is “pretty important if you’re going to be president of the United States.”
Crazy, huh? Watch for yourself:
According to Dean, if you don’t have a college degree you’re also likely to be a hard-right religious fanatic, anti-evolution know-nothing.
Since you don’t have one – do you even have a high-school diploma as opposed to a GED? – he means you, too, Steve Sweeney. In shooting his mouth off at Gov. Walker, Howard’s scatter-gun approach targeted every elected official in America without a college degree.
Et tu, Howard?
Since it’s well known that Sen. Sweeney has his eye on occupying Drumthwacket, the oddly-named official residence of New Jersey governors, and since it’s not unknown for New Jersey governors to be touted as possible presidential material or actually become president, it takes less steps to get Sweeney in or near the White House than are required to win the Kevin Bacon game.
But it’s not like the New Jerseyan who became president was any great shakes since it was Woodrow Wilson who got America into the very unnecessary World War I and dumped the odious Federal Reserve on us. Furthermore, his second wife, Edith Boling Galt, basically ran the country making decisions she had no authority to make – a foreshadow of a certain about-to-be-former governor of Oregon – from the time he had a stroke in October, 1919 until his second term was up in March, 1921.
There is another son of the Garden State whose name has been tarnished by Howard Dean. Former Vice President Garret Hobart – who? – didn’t have a college education, yet he was William McKinley’s first vice president, serving from 1897 until his death in 1899. Had Hobart, who was born in Long Branch and lived in Paterson, not died, maybe Theodore Roosevelt wouldn’t have become his successor as vice president after the election of 1900 and then president when McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Like Sweeney, Hobart served as president of the state Senate, albeit as a Republican representing Passaic County.
It goes on. Of the 24 Democrats in the 40-member Senate, three, including Sweeney, don’t have college degrees. Similarly, of the 48 Democrats in the 80-member Assembly, eight are likewise “unknowledgeable,” as Dean would characterize them, or public information doesn’t show graduation from a degree-granting institution.
In the Senate: Joseph Vitale (19) and Nellie Pou (35).
In the Assembly: Robert Andrzejczak (1), John Burzichelli (3), Wayne DeAngelo (14), Joseph Egan (17), Jerry Green (22) Angelica Jimenez (32), Vincent Prieto (32) and Gary Schaer (36).
If Howard Dean had his way, they’d be out of office and tossed on their ears into the street for being the uneducated low-lives he regards them.
Of course, he didn’t bother to mention that college graduates these days can’t find work and are often unqualified for the jobs that are out there. Even if you go and drop out, that may not be such a big deal in the long run. But that’s beside the point since to have a degree, per Howard Dean, makes you knowledgeable even if you really didn’t learn anything except how to party and apply for student loans.
It’s not like there’s a serious shortage of skilled trade workers in the U.S. that will only get worse as more and more of them retire not to be replaced due in large part to glorifying a four-year degree while pooh-poohing vocational education.
Mustn’t dirty your hands, after all – you’re too good for that, Junior – so go ahead and get a B.A. in philosophy or music therapy if it makes you feel good about yourself. Don’t let it bother you that these are two of the most worthless degrees ever or that they’ll bring you a wretched return on investment because, according to Howard Dean, you’ll be infinitely and eternally superior to Scott Walker.
It doesn’t matter that you won’t learn anything in college. All that matters is that you satisfy Howard
So what if, under Walker, Wisconsin flipped from being a union-dominated blue state to a red one. Or that he went eyeball to eyeball with big labor and stared down its costly abuses and stranglehold over state government. Or even that he’s now won three elections for governor over the past four years, with his most recent re-election bid seeing him outspent by his Democratic opponent while President Obama personally campaigned against him.
Scott Walker has a PhD in kicking union and Democratic Party butt and taking their names – that’s what really frosts Howard Dean.
Every liberal and his mother is trying to explain away Walker’s surging popularity to no avail, so Howard made trashing his educational background his last, desperate move. That it smeared fellow Democrats around the country and here in New Jersey, including maybe the top Democratic contender for governor in Steve Sweeney, probably didn’t cross his mind.
Why should it? According to Howard Dean, Steve Sweeney is an unknowledgeable, ignorant, hard-right religious fanatic and anti-evolution know-nothing. Who cares about people like that?
The outrage ! The drama !