Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Goes to Harvard, Is All 'Harvard, Schmarvard'

By Doug Barry | September 28, 2012 | 2:05pm

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Cristina Fernandez’s second term as president of Argentina may be fraught with capital flight, wary investors, an escalating crime rate, and bad credit rating buzz from Moody’s, but she’ll be damned if she lets some Harvard smartasses try to tell her which hemisphere she’s in. Fielding questions Thursday night from inquisitive students at Harvard University, Fernandez confronted tough questions about her presidential tenure without actually answering them, a classic political form of misdirection. For instance, when asked by one particularly impertinent Harvard student (who is from Argentina), why Argentines wishing to travel abroad have such limited access to foreign capital, or why credit and debit purchases made outside of Argentina are subject to increased taxes, Fernandez answered with this:

You are here and you are Argentine, so obviously you don’t have dollar problems. You are lucky enough to study in Harvard. You think you can really talk about these currency problems?

Take that, elitist Ivy Leaguer! That will teach you to demonstrate intellectual curiosity and keep up with socioeconomic happenings. When another student asked if Fernandez ought to be more self-critical of her second term because Argentina was saddled with a rising crime rate and an inflation kerfuffle, Fernandez said she really expected different questions from the Ivy League audience, maybe something like, “So, what’s your favorite Borges poem, hmm?”