The Education of a President…or Not

Mario Cuomo famously described the fate of candidates in a democracy who win. Having run in poetry, we must govern in prose. Mr. Cuomo was describing the communication between a politician and the voters, so Donald J. Trump is not reduced to governing in the cartoons that are required to render his briefing materials palatable.

In fact, Mr. Trump could communicate adequately the same way he could govern adequately if he chose. There are plenty of talented writers in poetry or prose who would take great pride in ghosting for the POTUS. Modern presidents have been forced to make critical decisions in matters outside their education and experience because the world has just gotten too complicated for one person to bring all the necessary expertise.

Generally, the education voters expect of presidents has increased as education has become more available. Seven presidents did not go to college and another five did not graduate. These include some of the best presidents (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln) and one of the worst (Andrew Johnson).

Now and then, we have elected schoolteachers — John Adams, Millard Filmore, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Lyndon Baines Johnson — -as well as people with professional ties to higher education.

John Quincy Adams taught at Harvard and Brown.

William Howard Taft taught in law schools at the University of Cincinnati before his presidency and Yale after, before returning to public service as a Supreme Court justice.

Woodrow Wilson said to have overcome dyslexia, passed the Georgia Bar Exam after only a year at the University of Virginia Law School, but soon decided a career in law was not for him.

Wilson entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins to study history and political science. After collecting a Ph.D., he taught at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and ended his academic career as President of Princeton.

Dwight Eisenhower served as President of Columbia University

Barack Obama was a lecturer at the University of Chicago School of Law.

On the student end of higher education, presidents from FDR to Jimmy Carter had some graduate education, although all of them did not take degrees in addition to their undergraduate degrees.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush stopped after four years, but there was not another president with no graduate-level courses until Donald Trump.

I was fooled by Donald Trump’s citation of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. One of my colleagues, when I taught at Indiana University, got his terminal degree from the Wharton School and he was plainly well educated.

I did not know that the Wharton School offers an undergraduate degree. I found out during Mr. Trump’s first year as president when I was so astonished by his ignorance of history and political science that I went to check the Wharton catalog to make sure Mr. Trump had access to the history and political science courses at the University of Pennsylvania.

By that time, I knew that Mr. Trump apparently has a dyslexia problem, but since the Americans With Disabilities Act, it’s fairly common for dyslexic persons willing to work hard to succeed in higher education. However, the only evidence that Mr. Trump is dyslexic is that he does not read and there is no evidence that he was ever willing to work hard at Fordham (where he started his undergraduate studies) or at Pennsylvania (where he finished).

He has made claims about his undergraduate grades that are plainly not true. He has never appeared on the Dean’s List or graduated with honors. His academic record is almost as closely guarded as his tax returns. Almost.

Tony Schwartz, who wrote Mr. Trump’s magnum opus, The Art of the Deal, told The New Yorker,

I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.

As evidence, Schwartz said that he spent 18 months with Trump and never saw a book in Trump’s office or apartment.

There may be an entire wing of the Trump Presidential Library for tell-all or at least tell-some books by ex-White House staffers. They seem to agree that Mr. Trump is not a reader, and “not a reader” is not just about books — it includes briefing materials.

Mr. Trump does better when materials contain lots of graphics. But, even then, the consensus of those who have had to brief him appears to be that the President of the United States has the attention span of a fruit fly.

It’s a fundamental part of the American Dream that any child who works hard might grow up to be president. A child of a single parent. A child raised by grandparents. A child educated in the public schools. A child born anywhere from the East Coast to Hawaii or on a U.S. military base anywhere in the world.

It used to be prudent to advise your child, grandchild, niece or nephew, that they might grow up to be POTUS if they study history and political science. If they can wangle an appointment to one of the military academies, that’s even better — assuming they were not born with bone spurs.

I am an American Indian born to rural poverty and I did not do well in public schools. I became a judge and then a professor and I always thought that the keys to my success were reading and writing and — because I was born without bone spurs — I was able to finesse lack of money for higher education with the GI Bill. That’s the path I know.

Now I have nine grandchildren and I’m lucky that none has asked me how to become POTUS. I no longer have any idea what I would say that could not be refuted on the daily news.

—

Previously published on Medium.com.

—

Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood