I've never met Mitt Romney personally, but I suspect he's probably a reasonably bright person. Dummies don't usually get two post-graduate degrees from Harvard.
But these assumptions are frequently tested. Take Romney's reading comprehension skills, for example.
The good news is, the Republican candidate has a habit of buying books and citing them on the campaign trail. The bad news is, he doesn't seem to understand what he's read. This came up a few months ago when Romney seemed badly confused about Noam Scheiber's The Escape Artists. He then struggled with the point of David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Daron Acemoglu's Why Nations Fail.
And then there's Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which Romney cited in Israel as part of his criticism of Palestinians. As the Republican told supporters, the Pulitzer Prize winning book "basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth."
Diamond wrote a New York Times op-ed to question what in the world Romney is talking about.
That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents' sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore, which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples. (As I learned this week, Mr. Romney also mischaracterized my book in his memoir, "No Apology: Believe in America.") [...]
Mitt Romney may become our next president. Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, and fail to understand history and the modern world? If so, he will preside over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history.
Ouch.
Adam Serwer joked, "Next time, Mitt Romney should cite books by dead authors so they can't publicly rebuke him for misinterpreting their books."
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I seem to recall one debate where he didn't characterize his OWN book correctly. Remember the $10,000 bet he offered Rick Perry, and he was wrong?
Typical GOTP'er they hate eduation and learning and don't encourage others to do so either.
Steve, just a note I've known people with 2 or 3 degrees, I've found that many don't have the common sense of a tse-tse fly. Just saying....
Advanced degrees- indeed, even an Ivy League BA- do not make one a "thinker".
Case in point: Gore Vidal skipped college altogether.
And then there is GW Bush- BA from Yale, Masters Degree from Harvard.
"And then there is GW Bush- BA from Yale, Masters Degree from Harvard".
If Dubya isn't the poster child of our nations failings in education then Romney surely must be.
The institution or school where you are getting the education is only half of the equation. One must also be willing to put in the work, (ie going to class, doing the homework,) and also have a desire to learn new things and have one's own ideas challenged. If you don't have those things, the best schools in the world can't help you.
Yes Bush went to Yale, but its clear he and Romney have no desire to learn or challenge their beliefs. What they had was given to them by their parent's positions of privilege.
Was it the Texas GOP taking a stand against 'critical thinking'?
Comprehension is one thing daddy can't buy. He can buy the grades and the diploma but none of the actual learning involved.
Perfect summation in three sentences. Thank you, Mr. Diamond.
I have, actually, read Mr. Diamond's book, and have recommended it to many people. It is basically an examination of how the civilizations of the world came to be the way they are. As an example, he is able to explain why the "new world" was colonized by Europe instead of Asia, due to the whim of an Chinese emperor who didn't like boats or sailing. Mitt's education is sorely lacking in many areas.
You might want to do a bit of extra reading: Jarrod Diamond is notorious for how much he gets wrong, with that particular book being a particularly good example.
Anybody that had seen the PBS shows on Diamond's theses knew Romney didn't know what he was talking about. So tell us something new.
Mitt Romeny got his own Marshall McLuhan moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY
What do you expect from a guy who reads Cliff Notes on those books?
RobMe probably read the Cliff Clavin Notes.
I suspect that even if he read it, he was more likely to announce something that fit what the right-wing had pulled from the book, as twisted as those conclusions often are. Anyone checked the right-wing consensus on the book? Seems I read something after his comment about the Palestinians that suggested he was in line with right-wing thought on the matter.
I think Jared was a bit defensive. Yes, there was no mention of iron ore distribution in his book, but Romney was generally right, the book spends most of its time noting the most notable differences between groups of people was the resources they had available.
What no one seems to have noted, however, is Romney is reversing himself here. Before he said it was "culture", now he is saying it is resources.
Yep - and not just resources, but (as Diamond would argue), the shapes of the continents and the cumulative historical impacts of 1000s of years of agriculture and technological development. But Diamond's argument, as a whole, is intended to show why Europeans, over a period of the last 500 years, were able to conquer places like the Americas, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa. His argument works only on a global spatial scale, and over a time scale of 1000s of years. (Diamond himself would probably admit that it doesn't help much in explaining the Israel/Palestine problem.) Considering the fact that Israelis and Palestinians basically live in the same place, there should not be much difference in their access to resources, and so the difference in wealth needs another explanation.
If iron ore isnt important, why is steel mentioned in the title? Checkmate, guy who wrote the book.
Always nice to see a mini-minded moron show up and demonstrate the public celebration of ignorance too great to know how ignorant it is, and how stupid one has to be to flunk the IQ test low enough to be one of you whackjobs. Seriously, morons like you are an embarrassment to the species.
Hmm, I appear to be worse at internet sarcasm then I thought. Ah well, live and learn.
Because iron ore is abundant, but the technology for making steel (as discussed in the book) is not.
Sorry, Tattwood, missed it by that much.
I think Diamond should be the moderator, for one of the Presidential Debates. ☺
Tattwood: read the book - steel manufacturing is taken as a key indicator of an industrial society: it is what a society can accomplish when it has a centralized government and a powerful military. In contrast, New Guinea and Australia have some of the world's largest copper and iron resources, but the native people never developed steel.
He is just trying to beat "my pet goat"
Carry on Mitt for as Poe said...
'I have great faith in fools - my friends call it self-confidence. "
As someone who has heard Diamond speak and read the book for anthropology class I find Romney's remarks stupid and offensive. He talks out of his ass about everything and the fact that he can't comprehend the meaning of a book this distinct is painful. He has no intellectual skills and should not be allowed anywhere near the white house.
Is it possible rich people can buy a degree from a prestigious institution without doing the coursework themselves? Just askin'.
The key thing that Mitt overlooks: Israelis and Palestinians LIVE IN THE SAME PLACE! And if he thinks that just living someplace is enough to get access to its resources, he should consider something more crucial than iron ore in the region -- water. He might be surprised to learn that Israeli policy has a bigger impact on water resources than hydrology: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/israel-rations-palestinians-trickle-water-20091027
Though, in Romney's...ugh...defense... He doesn't say that the economic difference between Israelis and Palestinians comes down to resources. I guess reading comprehension is good for everybody!