McCain: Legacy Student

I have long held that legacy admissions are a stupid idea. The long and short of it is that it is dumb and also ethically objectionable to let a kid into a school because one of his parents went there. Consider the most famous living legacy student, George W. Bush: an arrogant elitist of middling intelligence, he went to Yale, received poor grades, and has emerged not only as one of the worst two or three Presidents in history, but as the leading anti-intellectual of his era.

So it's funny that McCain is also a legacy student. He got into Annapolis because his dad and grandfather both went there. My dad argues that this isn't the same thing as with Bush, because the elder McCains were 4-star admirals who served their country well and deserved some slack for their offspring. That's probably true. But then McCain had numerous discipline problems and finished 884th in his class. That was out of 889.

On the one hand, this raises serious questions about his ability to be Commander-in Chief. Obama may be untested, but is that worse than being tested and failing horribly? A single class at a single military academy produced 883 people demonstrably better qualified to lead our military.

On the other hand, maybe McCain is capable but just wasn't trying. That's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect if he were a privileged, coddled asshole who didn't even have to try to get into a top school. It's just another way that McCain is ridiculously like Bush, and it's another great example of why legacy admisisons are a really terrible idea.