People who emphatically disapprove of Donald Trump — in short, Trump-haters — are likely to be college graduates, whereas people who are quite devoted to him — Trump-lovers — are likely to lack a college degree.
This differential is commonly used by Trump-haters to argue that they are right and the Trump-lovers wrong. “After all,” they contend, “if we’ve had more years of education, especially higher education, it follows that we are smarter than our less educated rivals, and if we are smarter, it follows that we are far more likely to be right in our evaluation of Trump and his fitness to be president. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
This is essentially the same argument that has been used for decades to “prove” that abortion is morally justified. “We pro-choice activists are usually college graduates, often with degrees from the very best colleges and universities, and we commonly have professional careers, whereas anti-choice activists are commonly nothing better than high school graduates and stay-at-home housewives. How could a housewife from Smalltown High School know more than a professional woman from the Ivy League? Don’t make me laugh.”
Granted, college graduates are more likely than mere high school graduates to have better information about natural science and history and psychology — but does this make them better qualified to elect a president of the United States? That is far from certain.
In 1936, it is almost certain that college grads preferred Alf Landon, the Republican candidate for president, to FDR. In those pre-Gallup days, think of the famous Literary Digest poll of its readers, who were far more likely than the average American to be college graduates. The poll seemed to show that Landon would win an overwhelming victory over Roosevelt. In fact, however, FDR won 46 out of the then 48 states.
Now, if there were such an art or science as “how to elect the right person to the American presidency,” and if this art or science were taught in every American college or university, and if the typical college alum had not only taken this course, but gotten a good grade in it (A or B-plus), then we could be pretty sure (but even then not certain) that college grads would make a better choice for president than would mere high school grads.
Alas, there is no such art or science.
Perhaps we had better create one. Maybe we could undertake a great national project — like the one that produced the atomic bomb in 1945 or the one that put a man on the moon in 1969 — and in the foreseeable future, we could take the needless right to vote away from non-college grads, with the happy result that in the future the nation will always choose the better candidate for president.
We should also keep in mind that a college education, besides exposing students to knowledge they might not otherwise be come across, also exposes students to misinformation and intellectual foolishness that would probably not be available to the average young person outside a college campus. The danger of this miseducation comes not from professors of mathematics and the natural sciences; their subjects don’t usually lend themselves to political manipulation. The danger comes from ideological professors of literature, philosophy, and the (so-called) social sciences. It also comes, probably more influentially, from fellow students, students with an ideological bent. It should be noted that these student ideologists are more likely to bend left than right, leftism being temperamentally more suited to the rebellious adolescent mind.
Well, then, if we cannot base our confidence in college-educated voters on their intellectual superiority, perhaps we can base it on their moral superiority, since it is obvious (isn’t it?) that ethically superior voters will do a better job at choosing a national leader than ethically inferior voters — who, despite their moral imperfections, must be allowed to vote in a democratic society.
But are college-educated Americans in fact morally superior to those who never made it beyond high school?
In some ways, it may be acknowledged, the college-educated behave better than their less educated fellows. Usually they have better manners, because they are more likely to travel in occupational circles in which a premium is placed on politeness and good manners. Again, they are more likely to be up to date on what counts as offensive speech race-wise or gender-wise or religion-wise or sexual orientation–wise. Rarely, then, will college grads be caught making gross generalizations about blacks or gays or lesbians or transgenders or Arabs or Muslims. Many college-educated persons believe that this verbal restraint, even when not accompanied by an inner mental restraint, makes them morally superior to their fellow Americans who sometimes slip into such gross generalizations.
And when college grads commit crimes, these are more likely to be nonviolent white-collar crimes, whereas the high school–educated man is more likely to punch his fellow worker or shove his girlfriend. Besides, the working-class man has no more than a very few opportunities to commit a white-collar crime.
But if wrongdoing begins — as St. Paul and St. Augustine and ten thousand other wise men have believed — in the darkness of the human heart, then all of us are sinners, and the man with a Ph.D. may be as wicked as the man who has never read anything more weighty than a comic book.
For all I know, there may be many good reasons for not voting for Donald Trump. But that the average Trump-supporter has fewer years of schooling than the average Biden-supporter is not one of them.
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