Elitism

Shikha Dalmia discusses the ongoing battle between the intellectual "elite" and the common folk...

The most depressing spectacle on the political landscape right now (besides a potential second term for Barack Obama) is the party of Lincoln entertaining the presidential ambitions of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann—women with better hairdos than heads. One needn’t be a GOP-hater like Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd to be dismayed by the growing anti-intellectualism of the party. Even David Brooks, a conservative commentator, has observed that Republican disdain for liberal intellectuals has morphed into a disdain for all intellectuals.

But modern intellectuals, having abandoned honest inquiry for unabashed activism, must themselves bear some blame for the backlash.

The GOP’s descent into mindlessness began when the gaffe-prone Dan Quayle prodded a sixth-grader to misspell “potatoe.” The more the media lampooned Quayle, the more Republicans circled the wagons around him. Since then, Republican intellectual defensiveness has hardened into intellectual goofiness.

...But the bigger reason for this anti-intellectual animus is that every time really smart people run the country, things go spectacularly wrong. 

...The prize for discrediting intelligence, however, goes to President Obama. Unlike Bush, he wore his intellect on his sleeve, raising hopes that he could fix the country with sheer brainpower. But he has presided over a deterioration on every front: Deficits are worse, unemployment is higher, a double dip is imminent, and we have added another foreign misadventure.

So why do intelligent people consistently make such a hash of things? Because they are smart enough to talk themselves into anything. Ordinary mortals don’t engage in fancy mental gymnastics to reach conclusions that defy common sense.

There's a couple problems with Dalmia's formulation as it relates to the GOP's disdain for the intellectual elite.  First, I don't think it's fair to lampoon either Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann as dumb.  You could make the case that neither should be entrusted with the position of President of the United States, but I watched the Democratic Party nominate Kerry and Edwards in 2004, men whose hairdos really were far better than anything inside their heads.  Edwards was still a contender in 2008, and you'd have trouble convincing me that he is substantially more intelligent than either Palin or Bachmann.  And yet I never get to hear how Democrats' decision to embrace a smooth-talking huckster like Edwards demonstrates their contempt for intellectualism.

Moreover, I don't think the GOP has disdain for all intellectual elites any more than Democrats do -- they just have a disdain for elites who disagree with them and mock them as stupid for doing so.  The left has its blind spots on things that should be settled science.  The same people who regularly admonish the GOP for ignoring the allegedly settled science on global warming still believe that raising the minimum wage doesn't have a deleterious effect on low-income workers.

But Dalmia does hit upon a key point here -- that the biggest problem the intellectual elites have is their contempt for the common man.  As the article notes, Obama spent time selectively citing CBO figures for support for his ludicrous assertion that a massive expansion of availability and utilization of health care benefits would lead to lower costs, when most Americans looked at that claim and rightly called bullshit.  The elites want to trick the common man into agreeing with them, because they think they can fool them. That's not a good way to get them on your side.  And being right about a problem (say, global warming) does not mean that you're right about the solution -- and common folks will rightly view with suspicion elites who claim that carbon emissions are a crisis issue when the same elites fly all over the world on private jets to discuss the all-important issue.

You don't need to go to an Ivy League school to get a good education, and you don't need a degree from those places to prove your arguments are worthy of serious consideration.  Start with that, and the elites may get the respect they allegedly want.

The Thrill Is Gone

It's such a shame when relationships grow stale.  But it was bound to happen after so many years of married bliss.... wait, he's only been President for two years?  Well, we know 50% of marriages end in divorce...

He came across as a young man in a grown-up's game—impressive but not presidential. A politician but not a leader, managing American policy at home and American power abroad with disturbing amateurishness. Indeed, there was a growing perception of the inability to run the machinery of government and to find the right people to manage it. A man who was once seen as a talented and even charismatic rhetorician is now seen as lacking real experience or even the ability to stop America's decline. "Yes we can," he once said, but now America asks, "Can he?"


The last two years have exposed to the public the risk that came with voting an inexperienced politician into office at a time when there was a crisis in America's economy, as the nation contended with a financial freeze, a painful recession, and two wars. The Democrats were simply not aggressive enough or focused enough in confronting the profound economic crisis represented by millions of ordinary Americans whose main concern was the lack of jobs.


Jobs have long represented the stairway to upward mobility in America, and the anxiety over joblessness became the dominant concern at a time when financial security based on home equity and pensions was dramatically eroding. No great speech is going to change the fundamental fact that millions of people are either jobless or underemployed at a time when only a quarter of the American population describes the job market as good.

Zuckerman is a liberal, so he's forgiven for buying the BS that was sold in 2008.  But he isn't the only one who's feeling a bit pained, as erstwhile conservatives who once admired this President are now coming down on him like a load of bricks. Peggy Noonan eviscerates the President...

On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.


Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president.


His detachment is so great, it is even from himself. As he spoke, he seemed to be narrating from a remove. It was like hearing the audiobook of Volume I of his presidential memoirs. "Obama was frustrated. He honestly didn't understand what the country was doing. It was as if they had compulsive hand-washing disorder. In '08 they washed off Bush. Now they're washing off Obama. There he is, swirling down the drain! It's all too dramatic, too polar. The morning after the election it occurred to him: maybe he should take strong action. Maybe he should fire America! They did well in 2008, but since then they've been slipping. They weren't giving him the followership he needed. But that wouldn't work, they'd only complain. He had to keep his cool. His aides kept telling him, 'Show humility.' But they never told him what humility looked like. What was he supposed to do, burst into tears and say hit me? Not knowing how to feel humility or therefore show humility he decided to announce humility: He found the election 'humbling,' he said."

Thanks, Peggy. To quote Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, "Once again, things that could've been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!" In fact Noonan does a nice job warning the Tea Party and its GOP adherents about the dangers of candidates whom the broader electorate might view as unqualified, with a big arrow pointing to Sarah Palin.

Well, where the hell was that warning in 2008?

Listen, on the issue of Sarah Palin, there are all sorts of issues related to her and 2012 and whether she should be the GOP nominee or not.  But going back to 2008, I'm still appalled by people who believed that Obama was qualified and able to handle the job of President, yet were distressed by the prospect that Palin might someday ascend to the job were something to happen to John McCain.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to conclude that Obama might have the chops to handle the job, but I would have enjoyed someone providing some evidence to back up that conclusion.  Recall that part of the case for excusing his lack of executive experience was the inane claim that he was doing a fine job helming a Presidential campaign.  Yes, I know he graduated from Harvard Law School (based on the author of this blog, that's not exactly an impressive achievement), was a community organizer (so are Boy Scouts), state Senator (good prep work for Illinois politics), and served in the U.S. Senate for less than one term.  But no one worried that the guy they were electing to the office of President had arguably the same level of experience and qualifications (if not less) than the VP candidate on the other ticket that everyone derided.  Hell, part of the reason Joe Biden was viewed as a good pick for the ticket was that he lent the ticket gravitas.  What does it say when you're bringing Joe Biden in to impress people that you're up to a job?

No, the real reason President Obama passed the test with Washington's elite is that he was one of them, whereas Palin was not.  He backed that up with much of the rest of America by giving pretty speeches and coming along at the right time.  And now we're paying the price for treating the 2008 Presidential election with the same level of careful examination as high school kids do when picking a yearbook editor.

By the way, on Noonan's last point... I don't watch Mad Men, despite hearty recommondations that I do so from people I trust.  But I think I understand what Instapundit and others are saying when they refer to this as the "Don Draper Presidency."  I'm just wondering how this show will end.

I'm Not An Elitist, Although I Play One On TV

The blogosphere is having a big debate about elites and their role in society.  It started with Ron Brownsetin at National Journal and Jon Chait at The New Republic lamenting what the left sees as improper climate change skepticism by conservatives here in the U.S., whereas conservatives in other Western nations, particularly in Europe, are far more willing to accept the case for climate change.  Ross Douthat demolishes Chait's belief that the predominance of libertarian economic dogma in U.S. politics is the driving force.  As Douthat accurately notes, the real reason for more skepticism among American politicians is because American democracy is far more responsive to the people -- and in both Europe and the United States, the populace at large are equally skeptical about the case for climate change.

This led to a bit of honesty from Ezra Klein, followed by the usual tripe...

This isn't a very popular statement, but there is a role for elites in public life. Just like I want knowledgeable CEOs running companies and knowledgeable doctors performing surgeries, I want knowledgeable legislators crafting public policy. That's why we have a representative democracy, rather than some form of government-by-referendum. But of late, the elites in the Republican Party are abdicating their roles, preferring to pander to the desire for free tax cuts and the hostility to Al Gore than make tough and potentially unpopular decisions to safeguard our future.

Forget the last sentence, which is the usual hyperbole of liberal certainty that they're right and conservatives are just denying reality by refusing to agree.  The first three sentences are a fascinating way of summarizing modern-day liberal governance.  Jim Manzi's response is fantastic and worth reading in full, but here's a great excerpt...

Bill Buckley famously said that he “would rather by governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the Harvard faculty.” So would I. But I would rather fly in an airplane with wings designed by one competent aeronautical engineer than one with wings designed by a committee of the first 20,000 names of non-engineers in the Boston phonebook. The value of actual expertise in a technical field like wing design outweighs the advantages offered by incorporating multiple points of view.


The essential Progressive belief that Klein expresses in undiluted form is that crafting public policy through legislation is a topic for which, in simplified terms, the benefits of expertise outweigh the benefits of popular contention. Stated more cautiously, this would be the belief that the institutional rules of the game should be more heavily tilted toward expert opinion on many important topics than they are in the U.S. today.


This would be a lot more compelling if the elites didn’t have such a terrible track record of producing social interventions that work.

Bingo.

Let's start with an admission.  Look, I love the Tea Party's energy, I love its ideas, I love its objectives, I love its candidates (by and large), and I love the fact Tea Party adherents are by and large bracingly honest.  This is a citizen movement where citizens are actually demanding better, and participating more.  That's a good thing in just about every way.  At the same time, I'm someone who is wary of populism, and the Tea Party is a populist movement, even if it's the rare movement that is both populist and largely libertarian.

But I'd rather live in a country governed by Tea Party populists than Ivy League elitists.

This is not a rebellion against expert opinion so much as a belief that experts are far more likely to be inflexible and more convinced of their own brilliance, without a real world appreciation of why their approach may create more problems.  In addition, since the experts are so brilliant, I'd rather have them convincing the non-expert leaders than the non-experts trying to convince the experts why they are wrong.   Megan McArdle says this to some degree as well, but I think it really is the key for my own preference.

As for the public's preference... look, democracy can be a bitch, because you're stuck with the decisions of an electorate that by and large may not pay attention to what's going on enough to be able to agree with your brilliant idea.  But if you're so smart that you can solve all of the problems, you should be smart enough to convince your fellow citizens of your brilliance.