"Where were you?" - Barrow

I see nothing wrong with the President asking: "Where were you?" It's just a rhetorical question. But if it matters to you that much or you probably don't want to eat the corn, just say ah ya yuh deh! You needn't provide any alibi for it. 

The question shouldn't be tabooed or rendered obsolete just because we don't like it, especially when what makes it relevant is becoming the newest cool: folks turning selective amnesiacs, marked by unthinking recklessness and disdain.

Now about the academic supremacy that he touched on and the sake of clarity... for my part that is, intellectualism and elitism are different. The elitist is an intellectual snob, one who acts as if he and his should hold a monopoly on whatever oxygen there is in the world of governance.

In my opinion, part of being a genuine intellectual is overstanding the fact that there are as many ways to information and knowledge as there are people, and that the knowledge I derive from a different source or from practice and pure reason is as good as your book knowledge.

That said… me? I'd rather our presidential candidate be a citizen, have reasonable period of residency and years of age, but most of all be moneyed. Politics is NOT cheap; that's a universal phenomenon. If you don't have the dough to run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.

The idea that we must raise the academic requirement for presidency is specious, however good it may sound. It's more than probably intending to limit contest to those who think they represent the choicest of what this nation has to offer, and that those who don't have academic titles by their names are all downright morons... that feeling of superiority is not just an illusion, it's BS.