Achievement vs. Potential

I have Ladyblogged once more; as usual, after posting anywhere, it occurs to me what I really meant to say, so here goes: the problem with an elitism that favors only the top minuscule percent is not only that there's no clear-cut way to measure who is 'best,' from birth to the end of one's career, across all fields. It's also that overemphasis on an uncategorized 'best' amounts to an emphasis on potential over achievement. In a sense, all achievements one has while still a student (the SAT, Harvard alumni status) are about potential, whereas all postgraduate accomplishments fall under the category of achievement. It seems silly to me to consider standardized tests about 'potential' and grades about 'achievement,' since both are ultimately about assessing what one will accomplish in a situation that is neither a test, nor a classroom.

Which, like everything else under the sun, brings us back to La Palin. The problem is not that she failed to exhibit potential at various points along the way, say, by earning a Rhodes Scholarship or what have you, but that she failed to achieve anything VP-worthy in her post-education life. Doubtless those who show the most potential tend to do the best later on, but clearly the most successful are not, in all cases, the same as the valedictorians. But there should be options open to prove one's self along the way. If Palin had, no one would care about her time spent at who knows how many colleges for however many years. But she is not the exception to the rule, so indeed, even those of us who could not in a million years, on the basis of our high school records, have made it to Harvard, kind of wish she had. Or at least that she'd performed accordingly.

That was a whole load of nonsense. What will follow, assuming I have time, is an explanation of why, grace a notre amie Palin, Jews are going to be voting for Obama with so much enthusiasm, I can't even begin to explain.