Reply #7: Diversity includes class [View All]

Most Americans who attend college attend public colleges. When our entire national leadership is made up of people who attend schools which are the province of the connected and affluent, then we are in danger of having leaders who do not and can not fully appreciate the experiences of most people.

For years, the Washington chattering class smirked at Joe Biden and questioned his intellect, despite his obvious deep grasp of foreign policy and jurisprudence. I am convinced that a lot of this had to do with the fact that Biden' sheepskins are from the University of Delaware and Syracuse University, one public, the other private but non-elite.

In my own political life I've run into this. The NH Obama campaign (during the primary) was clearly biased in favor of people with Ivy League and quasi-Ivy (Stanford, Georgetown, Amherst, etc) backgrounds. If you went to the University of Arkansas or UMass or UNH, you were lucky to get the time of day from the campaign "leadership".