More on the Rick Perry is Dumb Meme

Ace of Spades is noticing the same new trend in the Mainstream Media, specifically, the lefty political blog, Politico, where the blogger argued for the proposition that Perry is unintelligent by noting that -- I kid you not -- although he had been an Air Force pilot for five years, all he did was follow flight plans:

Where exactly does this guy think a flight plan comes from if not the pilot who has ultimate responsibility for the flight? I don't think being a pilot means you are a genius but it does mean a couple of things...

To fly a plane like a C-130 you have to understand how multiple systems work and interact with each other. You don't have to be an electrical engineer but you have to have a working knowledge of electrical systems. You don't have to be physicist but you have to have a passing familiarity with the physics of flight. You don't have to be a meteorologist but you have to have an understanding of weather and the mechanics of the environment you are going to fly into.

When you learn to fly, you get to learn a good bit about a lot of things. You might not be an expert on any one of these things but you have to be able to grasp the basics, how they interact with each other and how to balance competing challenges and limitations.

More importantly, as an intellectual exercise learning to fly (especially at the military level) means havi8ng a disciplined mind. You get hit with a lot of information and you have to be able to retain it, prioritize it and most importantly, when push comes to shove, be able to use it in the proper way.

That's actually not bad training for an executive when you think about it.

All of that is exactly right.   Who is the Left to tell us that Perry's background as an Eagle Scout, yell leader at Texas A&M, door-to-door salesman while he was in school, commissioned officer and pilot in the Air Force (with overseas tours in Europe and the Middle East), and cotton farmer up until the age of 34 somehow isn't "intellectual" enough for national politics?   By the time he was 34 and entering politics in the Texas House of Representatives, he had done all those real jobs and was married and had a baby son; his second child would follow soon after.   To me, that sounds like a grown-up who's had some significant life experiences and work experiences.  

Meanwhile, at age 34 Obama had graduated from college, gone to law school, practiced a little law (not much), been a community organizer in Chicago, and gotten himself a position as a part-time lecturer at a law school.   He was married, but he had no children yet.  Yet based on those "accomplishments" he had managed to get a book contract for his first "memoirs."   Other than the chutzpah to write his memoirs after not having done much to remember, how exactly is it that Obama was more accomplished as of that age than Perry?   What exactly is the evidence that he was smarter?   Because he'd gone to Columbia and Harvard Law?   Because he'd taught at the Uniersity of Chicago?   If you leave out the names of the schools, his record was actually pretty meager.   Really, is that all the Left has left -- snobbery because he went to cooler schools?

Show me the transcripts!

Sheesh!