Patterico's Pontifications

8/17/2009

Barack Obama, the College Years (Updated)

Filed under: Obama — DRJ @ 4:13 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The L.A. Times interviews Roger Boesche, one of Barack Obama’s professors at California’s Occidental College, who gives us a very brief glimpse of Obama’s early college years:

“Over the years, Obama has cited Boesche as one of his most influential teachers, but the two had had only sporadic contact via e-mail.

Thursday they met again at the president’s invitation. Boesche, back in his Eagle Rock home Saturday, said Obama jokingly recalled that pesky “B” Boesche had given him on a paper on European political thought. The president, Boesche said, also reminded him that he had turned down his appeal for an “A.”

“He still didn’t agree about that grade,” said Boesche, laughing.”

What did Prof. Boesche think about his student’s potential?

“Asked if he had seen the makings of a president in his young student nearly 30 years ago, Boesche said he could not claim he had. He urged other professors and teachers to “realize that in any class you could have a child, a young man or woman, who could do incredibly great things in the world. So teach as well as you can.”

Now about releasing those transcripts, Mr. President …

H/T Eric Blair.

UPDATE: JVW alerts us to this follow-up at the Top of the Ticket. Here’s JVW’s comment:

“So you’re saying that even in his college days the 44th President believed that his every thought and word was a pearl of wisdom that could not possibly be evaluated as anything other than perfect in form and scope?”

I love days like this when you guys do my work for me.

— DRJ

27 Responses to “Barack Obama, the College Years (Updated)”

  1. Transcripts? TRANSCRIPTS!? We don’t need no stinking transcripts!!! He’s the freakin Messiah!!! Zieg Heil, Zieg Heil, Zieg Heil Der Fuhrer, Herr Obama!!!

    J. Raymond Wright (e8d0ca)

  2. The transcript thing is interesting, DRJ. My guess is that we will be able to tell before they are released.

    For several weeks before the release of those transcripts, pundits will write essays exploring the concept that “grades are not the measure of a man or woman” and similar Deep Thoughts.

    The Columbia University years need comment, as well as Harvard Law. You would think that people would be lining up to pontificate over Their Colleague, the President.

    I’m sure it the lack of those “tell alls” is due to everyone’s belief in privacy. Right?

    Eric Blair (0b61b2)

  3. There is a follow-up story from earlier today with a pretty bitchin’ comment submitted at 12:49 pm (if I do say so myself).

    JVW (111cb0)

  4. Thanks, JVW. I’ve updated the post with your link … and your comment.

    DRJ (d8773e)

  5. Looking at it now, the “update” to which I linked isn’t really so much an update to the original post as it is a rehash. Do you suppose that particular blog item really needed to be repeated from “L.A. Story” to “Top of the Ticket,” or was the Dog Trainer just looking to pad their respective blogs with duplicate items? I by and large think that Andrew Malcom does a pretty good job with “Top of the Ticket,” but every now and then he seems befuddled with the generally accepted rules of blogging.

    JVW (111cb0)

  6. I guess it could be Malcolm wants links — it’s an interesting story and the L.A. Times may be the first/only paper to have an interview with the Professor — or it could be something he wants people to see. The Top of the Ticket probably has more readers from outside the LA area than the Local Section.

    DRJ (d8773e)

  7. Anyway, it was worth the link for your comment.

    DRJ (d8773e)

  8. BHO’s been a legend in his own mind for so long it’s not surprising he was asking for grade changes and STILL remembers them. Let it go, dude.

    He’s like the high school quarterback thirty years later still going on about that one throw. YAWN!

    Vivian Louise (c0f830)

  9. when kids ask to get their grades changed in college what you’re seeing is the continuance of a pattern of entitlement

    That’s just what I think.

    happyfeet (d8cd81)

  10. I wonder what Mr. SEK thinks.

    happyfeet (d8cd81)

  11. Mr SEK and Rich Puchalsky and Karl “I am not a pron star” Steel think you are all racists.

    JD (9e0d25)

  12. Every law firm I worked for, even one as small as 10 partners, would never hire an summer intern without seeing their grades. To get hired out of law school we had better see the transcripts.

    But the media was fine in promoting him for POTUS. I hope we can at least find out the serial number on the TOTUS.

    MU789 (28ca5f)

  13. BHO’s been a legend in his own mind for so long ….

    Therein lies the root of his problem, and it’s why he is shocked and in seeming disbelief to discover that not everyone else sees him in the same light.

    Dana (57e332)

  14. I actually wonder if he’s insecure, hence his need to be seen as perfect and infallible. Secure people don’t mind being wrong now and then.

    DRJ (d8773e)

  15. I don’t see him as insecure and that’s what’s so fascinating. He seems so wrapped up in his own mystical aura and belief that he is the ‘one’, that the possibility of him being wrong now and then just doesn’t even occur to him.

    Dana (57e332)

  16. GWB v. BHO
    An interesting study of contrasts!

    AD - RtR/OS! (a26a7a)

  17. Hmmm, somebody trying to get their stories straight maybe, build up some ‘facts’ of the narrative before the transcripts get leaked?

    Gonad the Testicularian (eb9ede)

  18. Definitely typical Obama timing. This past week was not exactly ‘free and open’ for ringing up old college professors. Beer Summit II? Get everyone talking about anything but the actual agenda. Rome burns while zero fiddles with his college grades. Just another distraction.

    Vermont Neighbor (fd2bc3)

  19. Even then, he was using politics to substitute for achievement.

    luagha (c03f69)

  20. IF ever there were a case against Affirmative Action it’s Hussein Obama.

    krusher (5ed94c)

  21. Even though I am not a fan of the current occupant of the White House, I am very familiar with students trying to nudge their grades upward. What I usually do is ask such students to provide written (meaning typed) support for their proposed grade change, based on the assignment requirements and specific aspects of the grading rubric.

    Most students won’t do that. They want the grade change because of their own inflated self-concept: they consider themselves to be “A” students, regardless of their performance.

    What is interesting to me is when students grade each other, they are far, far harsher and more exacting than I am. I think that is because despite selfish acts (like trying to “work” the professor into a grade change), the students want their grades to mean something concrete.

    To be sure, sometimes professors make mistakes, and those mistakes need to be fixed. That’s fine. It’s the “I deserve a better grade because I am an ‘A student'” attitude that grates.

    That may be in play here.

    I also think that the President’s bringing up the “B” after so many years may have been a weird attempt at humor.

    Gosh, I hope so. Right?

    Eric Blair (76bb2a)

  22. if you spent $30 MILLION a day every single day for 2000 years it would still not equal to obama’s $23.7 TRILLLION in financial bailouts

    … the main reasons why people get poorer are because of higher taxes and inflation.

    Dave (6bcacc)

  23. It is strange that he brought this up many years later.

    I don’t think Obama thought of himself as a good student. His memoirs note that he was a poor one, after all.

    Perhaps he was just annoyed by this grade after all those years, and needed the A to keep a GPA based scholarship or something. I don’t think he was trying to preserve his 4.00 average.

    We should be allowed to see his entire transcript. It’s a shame our reporters only dig up these kinds of things if there’s an (R) involved.

    Juan (bd4b30)

  24. Vivian Louise wrote:

    BHO’s been a legend in his own mind for so long it’s not surprising he was asking for grade changes and STILL remembers them. Let it go, dude.

    And I thought it was annoying when those few-and-far-between HS seniors would sue school districts because an A- grade spoiled their chances to be valedictorian! The dude is the motherfather “Leader of the Free World” and he’s still bagging on his prof for a “B”?

    Look at the toothy grin and say “Awww, he’s just kidding” if you like; I don’t think so. If anything, the last two years should have taught you that this guy never forgets a perceived slight.

    L.N. Smithee (8ce8bd)

  25. Regarding BHO’s transcripts: Remember that Princeton initially embargoed Michelle Robinson’s racially-charged 1985 thesis until the day AFTER the November 2008 election (despite the fact the actual article contains her signed release on page 2).

    Here’s Jennifer C. Braceras’ 2000 take on Al Gore’s false image as a multi-degreed intellectual in the Boston Globe, September 7, 2000 (h/t, Conservatives4Palin.com):

    Of course, the stereotyping of conservative candidates as dumb and liberal candidates as “brilliant” is nothing new. During the 1950s, the media lionized Democrat Adlai Stevenson as an intellectual, while ridiculing Republican Dwight Eisenhower as an ineffectual simpleton. Back then, the members of the press knew full well that Stevenson attended Harvard Law School and, yet, had not received a degree. But the media gave Stevenson a pass. (Sound familiar?) Had resourceful journalists investigated, they might have learned (as we now know from Stevenson’s biographer John Bartlow Martin) that Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold had hidden Stevenson’s transcript in a locked cabinet in his office. What was he hiding? Stevenson, the so-called “thinking man’s candidate,” had, in fact, flunked out of Harvard Law.

    L.N. Smithee (8ce8bd)

  26. Obama and his wife are simply afirmative action candidates. Having said that its amazing that so many of our “elites” manage to attend top universities with below average grades and test scores. Gore didn’t break 1,000 on his SATs, Bill Bradley a Rhodes scholar didn’t break 900. I believe Bush didn’t break 1,100. God knows what Kerry scored but I bet it wasn’t much over 1,000. I bet Obama didn’t break 1,000 nor his lovely spouse Lt Worf.

    Thomas Jackson (8ffd46)

  27. Barack Obama is a good president. he is perhaps the most tech savvy president in the US.

    bodydetoxgirlie (4b14e8)


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