I wrote my Politico column today on the flap over Scott Walker’s lack of a BA:
Do we really believe that Scott Walker would be any more or less impressive if he had — to choose from some of Marquette’s current course offerings — finished up his final credits by acing such classes as Economic and Social Aspects of Film, Sociology of Gender and Sex, and Principles of Peer Facilitation Among College Students?
Perhaps, if he had been more diligent in his studies, he would derive great pleasure from being able to read Flaubert in the original and discuss with fluidity the 1966 coup in Nigeria that brought to power Maj. Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. But clearly none of this interested him, as indeed it wouldn’t interest anyone but the most devoted Francophiles or Africanists.
As a practical matter, Walker used college as vocational education for what was his true passion: politics. He told John McCormack of The Weekly Standard that attending Boys State and Boys Nation during high school fueled his interest in running for office. So he took up political science. But studying political science has about as much bearing on becoming a politician as studying marine biology does on becoming an Olympic diver.