Can I Get Two Hamiltons for a Tubman?
Good heavens. This could be the most spectacular currency ever! 
Yes, Harriet Tubman was a pro-gun Republican. Biographer Kate Clifford Larson has noted Tubman was comfortable with guns: Harriet Tubman carried a small pistol with her on her rescue missions, mostly for protection from slave catchers, but also to encourage weak-hearted runaways from turning back and risking the safety of the rest of the group. Tubman carried a sharp-shooters rifle during the Civil War. Harriet Tubman's pistol and saber are on display at the Florida A & M University (FAMU) Black Archives in Tallahassee, Florida. With an image like that, people would work harder just so they could have more Harriet Tubmans in their pockets. We Can't Afford to Keep Obama's Policies or His Persona in the White House A point or two to add to this morning's column on the Kobayashi Maru choice that is Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump . . . It's a big risk to count on Hillary Clinton learning from the Obama administration's mistakes. Perhaps the biggest reason for optimism is Bill Clinton's surprisingly regular off-the-cuff statements hinting he thinks Obama has largely failed, too. He said at one stop, "Millions and millions and millions and millions of people look at that pretty picture of America [Obama] painted and they cannot find themselves in it to save their lives." Then he said the country needed to "put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us" -- later explaining he only meant the GOP opposition of this era. Then at an appearance in Philadelphia, he said, "Unlike when I became president, a lot of things are coming apart around the world now." But if Bill Clinton wants his wife to run against the status quo, so far she's largely refusing. In fact, she offered a renunciation of her husband's policy on crime, policies that largely worked in the mid-1990s. Is there any reason to think a Hillary presidency would represent a big change from the Obama years? There's little reason to think Hillary Clinton is willing to really fight Democratic-party interest groups, even when they're the driving force behind a good portion of the country's problems. She's never going to seriously challenge the Black Lives Matter narrative of racist cops murdering African-American youth with impunity. She's never going to argue political correctness, speech codes, or runaway university administrators are ruining higher education and churning out a generation that struggles to cope with the basic challenges of adulthood. She's never going to argue that the border must be secure and that those who come here illegally must be deported. But if Hillary Clinton offers an unspoken promise to continue the Obama policies, Trump will continue the Obama persona in the presidency. Trump often pushes back against the Left, but he brings his own cult of personality to America's public life. When it comes to criticism, his skin is as thin as Obama's. The current president once warned a rebellious Democratic lawmaker, "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." Trump would be even more vindictive; as he said of Paul Ryan, "I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him, and if I don't -- he's gonna have to pay a big price." If you thought Obama's "I won" was an arrogant dismissal of those who disagreed or the need for consensus-building, wait until you see Trump in action. Trump says Obama "led the way" on executive orders and seems to be eager to emulate the far-reaching, imperial interpretation of the president's powers. There's little reason to think Trump would be any more respectful of the Constitution than Obama. Obama, whose administration famously jailed a YouTube filmmaker after the Benghazi attacks, would be followed by a president who accused Pamela Geller of being a "publicity seeker" who needlessly "taunted" Muslims. (Trump detests political correctness for limiting his speech, not other people's speech.) Obama revealed in interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg that thinks most other world leaders are foolish and midjudge their own self-interest; Trump thinks almost everyone around him is "stupid" (and demonstrates his confidence in this by telling them obvious lies). Trump is the one man on earth the Obama could call an egomaniac. The redefinition of the presidency as a pop-culture celebrity would only accelerate under Trump. It was shabby and cheap, watching the President of the United States give his first comments about an Islamist terrorist attack in Brussels to ESPN while watching a baseball game in Cuba, wearing shades. 
Trump wouldn't make that mistake, but he would probably continue as a ubiquitous presence on the non-political morning news shows, daytime chat shows like The View, evening cable shows, late-night shows like Jimmy Fallon . . . I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a president who isn't on my television, in non-news, non-political programming, seemingly all the time. What Is the Objective of Higher Education? Somebody really didn't like yesterday's point, "Universities and colleges need to stop thinking that their job is to fundamentally transform American society and its values and get back to the basic job of preparing young people to work for a living." The contention was, "The 'basic job' of higher ed isn't prepping for work but educating for life as a free person. Worker prep is for trade schools." I disagreed, contending, "Even a 'free person' has to make a living after graduation." This led to some pretty furious denunciations like, "Your sentence is a perfect illustration of why conservatism is dying as ideology. Liberal arts is supposed to educate whole person," and, "Some believe purpose of life is to buy a McMansion and fight for status. Eric Hoffer's life would confuse them." Dear God, that's reading a lot into one sentence. No one is saying throw out all studies of history, literature, philosophy, art and the humanities. No one is saying that higher education has no role in nurturing the soul and instilling a greater understanding of the world. It's just an acknowledgement that at some point, the formal, full-time or near-full-time education process ends, and the student has to go into the real world. And when they do, they need a job. They need a way to pay rent. They need a way to buy food. And -- particularly if the U.S. taxpayer involuntarily loaned them a small fortune to pay for that education! -- they need to pay back those student loans. If I were snide, I could say the sentence "worker prep is for trade schools" is "a perfect illustration of why higher education is dying as an institution." But I don't think that's quite what my critic was saying; I think he thinks that the college student should already be prepared to work, i.e., have a strong work ethic. We'll come back to this point in a second. Are liberal arts colleges doing a good job of educating the whole person? That's a long and complicated debate; I suspect quite a few Morning Jolt readers would argue, "no." It's also probably harder to measure. Readiness for the working world is a little easier to measure: According to a recent McKinsey study, only one out of four employers believes that traditional universities are "doing an adequate job of preparing graduates for the workplace." A similar study from Instructure revealed that "only 8% of managers say entry-level employees are very prepared to contribute immediately at work." That study further found that "most entry-level employees aren't meeting management expectations." Then again, maybe there's more intersection between the two realms of education than we think -- if your liberal-arts curriculum really educated you as a whole person, it's probably taught you the important lessons of knowing what you don't know, patience, good listening skills, an eye for detail, and an appreciation for experience. And if you didn't develop any of that, you're probably going to have difficulty in the workplace: "This is the most affirmed generation in history," said Cliff Zukin, a senior faculty fellow at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, where he is also a professor of public policy. "They were raised believing they could do whatever they wanted to, that they have skills and talents to bring to a job setting. "And when they're lucky enough to get a job they're basically told, 'Be quiet, you don't really know anything yet.' For a lot of them, this is a tremendous clash between their expectations and the reality of the job." ADDENDA: Dear media: Never, ever, ever bet on a "new" Donald Trump or a changed Trump, or a more presidential Trump. He is who he is. Here's the Washington Post, Tuesday evening: Stepping out with his family to the brassy strains of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," Trump sounded like a more disciplined candidate as he claimed victory in a short statement at his Midtown Manhattan skyscraper, Trump Tower. Gone were Trump's signature personal insults; he referred to "Senator Cruz," not "Lyin' Ted." And then, Wednesday in Indianapolis, in Trump's first remarks of the day: "In the case of Lyin' Ted Cruz -- Lyin' Ted -- he brings the Bible, holds it high, puts it down, lies." BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski did a nice job last night detailing all the times the media has saluted the new, more presidential Trump . . . only to see Trump revert to his old self within a day or two.  | 
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