Jim Leach, Partisan Hack

Power Line reports how Jim Leach ‘64, currently the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has used his job as an opportunity to praise Barack Obama while delivering pretentious lectures criticizing the lack of “civility” in politics today. Leach, a former Republican Congressman from Iowa, was given Princeton’s prestigious Woodrow Wilson Award on Alumni Day last Saturday, while the far more deserving General David Petraeus ‘87 received the James Madison Medal. One cannot help but wonder whether Leach’s widely publicized political conversion played a role in his selection for the award. Recipients are chosen by the chair of the Alumni Council, the Vice President and Secretary of the University and the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. One also cannot help but wonder why American taxpayer dollars are being wasted to fund the NEH, a vestige of LBJ’s failed Great Society, at a time of trillion-dollar deficits.