Maureen Dowd, "Egghead and Blockheads": America Headed for No Desirable Choice in 2012?

In her latest op-ed "Egghead and Blockheads" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opinion/sunday/dowd-egghead-and-blockheads.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), Maureen Dowd compares the plot line of the 1962 film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" with the duel she envisages for the 2012 presidential election:

"At the cusp of the 2012 race, we have a classic cultural collision between a skinny Eastern egghead lawyer who’s inept in Washington gunfights and a pistol-totin’, lethal-injectin’, square-shouldered cowboy who has no patience for book learnin’."

Obama is "inept in Washington gunfights"? Sorry, Maureen, but given what we know at this early stage of the Solyndra scandal, I think you could have shortened the sentence to "inept in Washington," or shorter still, "inept."

I also hate to break the news to Maureen, but we have yet to see the results of a single primary. Sure, there have been polls, but the Republican convention is months away, and Perry is less than a shoo-in as his past antics become better known to the national electorate.

Dowd would have us believe that "Republicans are now the 'How great is it to be stupid?' party." She concludes:

"So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates."

I agree that the current Republican field of presidential candidates induces stupefaction: If the Republicans were only to nominate someone of substance, the presidency would be theirs for the taking. However, I also don't think it's fair to label the likes of Bobby Jindal (accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, and ultimately a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford) as a "blockhead." Paul Ryan and Chris Christie are also no dunderheads, yet not one of these three young men is willing to step forward and offer America a viable alternative to the change we once believed in.

Sad, yet can you blame them?

[As kindly observed by a reader, Mitt Romney received simultaneous JD and MBA degrees from Harvard, graduating with honors from the law school and finishing as a Baker Scholar at the business school. He is obviously no "blockhead."]