And most smart ass people don't like other smart ass people.

If true, it reinforces the observation that "higher education" teaches more about what to think than how to think!

mix it in now with what they want to hear and you see Obama and his popularity, it's not very hard to be a smart liberal, it's hard to actually think.

we gonna have to change a sucker born every minute to a plethora of liberals graduate every fall.

It is easy to glean from your comment and definition that there are no conservative intellectuals.

Triumph's spoof does have a grain of truth. Their are certainly intellectuals of all political stripes, but the Republicans of late have run using an anti-intellectual strategy.
When was the last time you heard a conservative deride higher education, say surrounding the term with ""?
When was the last time you heard a liberal do the same?
When was the last time you heard a conservative call someone an ivory tower intellectual?
When was the last time you heard a liberal do the same?
This rhetoric should be set aside by all reasonable people.

Can someone tell me when our society started to view education and intelligence as undesirable qualities?

This has a long history--but in more modern times, the assault against the intelligensia is a product of the Conservative backlash of the 70s and 80s.

The problem with higher education--and intellectualism in general--is that it is based on an epistemology that seeks to question, probe, and explain. This is the foundation of the scientific method of inquiry that dominates social and natural sciences.

Once you start from the premise of questioning and probing phenomena encountered in the world, you invariably come up against entrenched interests. You can look all the way back to Socrates, as an example.

Since conservatism is fundamentally about "conserving" social conditions and structures of power, the sites where the questioning of these things take place need to be demonized.

What conservatives have done quite nicely, is to tap into human insecurities by providing an antithetical narrative which offers solid answers about the world--as opposed to the intellectuals' questioning. Hence, you see conservatives turning to such tropes as simpleminded nationalism and religion as counternarratives.

Luckily, more people can easily digest "get the evildoers" than they can a complex, historically-accurate portrayal of foreign conditions that an intellectual might give.

Intellectuals raise questions. Raising questions is not helpful. It causes us to think. Thus we need to provide an "easier" set of criteria for evaluating candidates. It is much better for conservatives when the electorate evaluates candidates on the basis of "who you would like to have a beer with" than on their actual policies.

Frankly, most voters are unqualified to make reasoned judgements about complex issues like health care provision, foreign policy, etc... They are qualified to judge which candidate "seems nice" or "approachable," etc...

And it's not just people like floyd and Triumph either, look at Gonzales and FL. congressman Bob Allen, they see "I'm not immoral, I'm just a complete idiot" as a good excuse, and reason enough to remain at their job.

Obama hasn't been around major politics long enough to pick up a lot of baggage. Hillary carries tons of it, Gore carries quite a bit-and some of it similar to Hillary's, and Edwards ran with John Kerry, and many conservative educated people see through his "two Americas" crap as the hokum it is.

I think it is essentially that Obama seems to be a nice man, he definitely comes across as educated, and he doesn't come across as smarmy-something Hillary and Edwards both seem to reek.

Obama’s Appeal to Highly Educated Americans

The highly educated also preferred John Kerry and Al Gore in the last two elections. It seems that the more education you get, the more liberal you get--probably due to the fact that professors' liberal politics are likely to rub off on you, the longer you stay in school.

Luckily, we only have about a 27% college graduation rate, so these pointy-headed elites are a minority. The people who reject fancy-pants book learning form the majority, thus their preference for less cerebral candidates like Bush.

The less educated will likely be attracted to candidates with more superficial approaches--like Romney or Guiliani.

Let the educated elites have Obama, the rest of us have the numbers! It worked with Bush. There is little likelihood that the pattern won't continue in '08.

There is nothing wrong with education, whatever it's source.

Are you the same floyd who also posted this:

If true, it reinforces the observation that "higher education" teaches more about what to think than how to think!

because they don't seem like compatible thoughts to me, and were posted only an hour apart.

Could there just possibly be a politically correct influence on the answer. To show you aren't prejudice against the color of Obama's skin you need to say you have a favorable opinion.

Or maybe smart people like other smart people?

Again, all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.

Of course this doesn't explain why Hillary doesn't have a similar PC inoculation. Perhaps because there is a lot more history with Hillary that shows regardless of he chromosome status, she would not make a good president.