Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Is there a more ridiculous political meme than the standard right wing ranting about "elitists"? It's standard issue populist rhetoric, and like most populist rhetoric it's empty of meaning at best and downright demagogic at worst. Here's a textbook example from the Washington Examiner, a whole editorial railing against "elitists" -- by which the author really just means "those I disagree with politically." The straw man makes its appearance in the very first sentence:
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards twice ran unsuccessfully for president on a platform based on his contention that there are "two Americas: the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who live from paycheck to paycheck." Edwards was right that there are two Americas, but he missed it completely on who resides where and why. One America is that of the liberal political elite that currently controls the White House and solid majorities in Congress, and dominates the traditional media, academia, and public intellectual ranks. The other America is the rest of us who are expected to shut up and do as we are told by the first America.
Riiiiight. Anyone wanna venture a guess if whoever wrote this editorial (it's unsigned) ever called the Republicans who controlled the White House and both houses of Congress from 2001 to 2007 "elitists"? I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that they didn't. Control of Congress shifts from election to election, of course. And anyone in Congress of either party is an "elitist" by any objective definition.
But that is the point here. The word "elitist" is not meant in any serious or objective sense here, it is meant merely as an epithet. It means "them" -- the nameless, faceless "them" who are inevitably to blame for...well, fill in the blank.
What is most worrisome here are the elitists' blatantly anti-democratic attitudes and authoritarian impulses. Three examples have been on raw display this week -- by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and James Lovelock, the British scientist who is revered by global warming crusaders.
Authoritarian impulses? Again, would you like to wager if this anonymous editorialist ever said a word in opposition to Bush's claim that he could unilaterally decide to lock up American citizens in military prisons forever without charges or a trial or access to an attorney? I bet he didn't. But that is real authoritarianism, as opposed to the fake examples he offers. Like this one:
Waxman threw a fit when a half dozen major corporations announced the first of a coming flood of downward revisions to projected profits because of Obamacare, the exceedingly unpopular health care measure that the California congressman co-sponsored in the House of Representatives. So he angrily scheduled a public grilling of the guilty executives and demanded that they provide in advance copies of all internal documents, including e-mails, that explain and justify their decisions. It was exactly the kind of unrestricted "fishing expedition' demand for documents -- many containing privileged commercial information -- that Waxman routinely condemned as an abuse of power when Republicans controlled Congress. Lesson: Elitists hate limits on their power.
The funny thing here is that he even admits that Republicans did the same thing when they controlled Congress. So why is he not railing against Republicans as elitists? Why is he not concluding that neither party can be trusted with power? Why is he ranting only against liberals? Because he is not engaged in any kind of serious thinking, he's engaged in polemics.
Jackson is the agency head who told Congress last year that if it didn't pass a cap-and-trade bill to regulate greenhouse gases, her agency would regulate them unilaterally. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday that when she submitted a list of detailed questions to Jackson last month about how that would be done, the EPA head "refused to answer even the most basic questions about how many stationary sources will be regulated, when those sources will be regulated, what technologies will be mandated for compliance, and how much the regulations will cost." Lesson: Elitists disdain explaining their actions.
It would be trivially easy to point out examples of agency heads during Republican administrations stonewalling Congress, but let me just point out what Lisa Murkowski, as one of those "elitists," surely knows -- that the EPA already has the authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gasses do quality as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and therefore the EPA already has the authority under that act to regulate their production.
All this talk of elitism is nonsense. Anyone in a position of power, regardless of power or ideology, is an elitist (or at least an elite). God I hate populist bullshit.
Politics
Comments
Not only does the EPA have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the outcome of Massachusetts v. EPA was that they *must* exercise that authority. Massachusetts and several other states brought that lawsuit because the EPA made a determination in 2003 that it did not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and did not need to regulate them even if it had the authority to do so.
Posted by: Jim Lippard | April 6, 2010 9:28 AM
while they're all in an "elite" class, they're not necessarily "elitist" - just as we're all of a specific race, we're not all racists.
not everyone in a "power position" seeks to protect their own interest above the interests of all others. those who do? elitists. not everyone in a position of power thinks they're better than everyone else. those who do? elitists.
populists, tally ho!
Posted by: scrub | April 6, 2010 9:35 AM
To be fair, Lovelock's comments (assuming they're the ones I think they are) can justifiably be called authoritarian elitism, although they come across to me more like despair. And he's not exactly revered by most climate scientists, although I'm sure many green activists do admire him.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | April 6, 2010 9:43 AM
Examiner Staff:
Just a regular guy, that David Freddoso
Posted by: Dr X | April 6, 2010 9:56 AM
I find the modern-day pejorative use of elitism as code arguing against politicians rejecting populist sentiments and relying on relevant functional experts.
A significant proportion of our population is uneducated, unknowingly ill-informed, and incapable of even considering what functional experts argue. They are intimidated and illiterate of pointy-headed arguments and react by dismissing the people and the principles of experts. There are plenty of examples that illuminate this observation, e.g., populist frustration that economists treat government financial management in a manner distinctly different than how a household budgets, scientists continually falsifying their worldview, the lessons of history making arguments for liberalism and progressivism while they prefer reactionary politics, etc.
Certainly these same people who amp down their opposition when their leaders are in power, but those very leaders risk opposition from their own constituents if they get too out of line. This was most evident in President Bush's tenure and very different from President Reagan's. While President Reagan had his share of ideologues including himself as Exhibit A; he more frequently moved his positions towards that shared by functional experts, though sometimes after his conservative policies failed (some portions of his initial tax cuts). Mr. Bush on the other hand nearly always pulled any progressive tendencies of a technical nature back to match his voting constituents with the exception of No Child Left Behind, passed during his honeymoon phase. His stubbornness to not raise taxes to minimize the growth of debt and mitigate against the next economic downcycle is a prime example.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 9:57 AM
Wait, so the person in charge of the agency responsible for regulating greenhouse gasses told Congress that she was going to start regulating greenhouse gasses if Congress didn't deal with it, and that's a bad thing?
What next, I'm an elitist for telling my wife I'm going to do the dishes if she doesn't do them?
Posted by: Tacroy | April 6, 2010 10:18 AM
I have to admit the elitism meme resonates with me. Maybe because I group up "white trash." I always wish I had made WFB's comment: "I'd rather be governed by the first 2000 names of the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard."
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 10:31 AM
Not sure if this is true for the Teabaggers and Glenn Beck, but to the WNs the word "elite" is really a code word for "Jews".
Posted by: Adrienne | April 6, 2010 10:35 AM
Populism is the second-to-last refuge of a scoundrel.
(With apologies to Samuel Johnson)
Posted by: barry | April 6, 2010 10:37 AM
heddle: How about if we just act as if you were the one who said it, and ridicule you on that basis?
Posted by: xebecs | April 6, 2010 10:40 AM
heddle: WFB said he'd rather be governed by a near-random assemblage of people of whom he knew nothing; and you're wishing you'd been the one to express that idiotic longing? Wow, that's just sad.
Not sure if this is true for the Teabaggers and Glenn Beck, but to the WNs the word "elite" is really a code word for "Jews".
Today it means anyone who is more educated and articulate than Joe the Overrated Plumber; or who harbors ideas that are "foreign" to people in the aforementioned plumber's tribe; or who dares to question the absolute rightness of the glorious mythology that underlies "Real America's" rosy vision if itself. That probably still includes non-right-wing Jews, but it also includes just about everyone else who finished high school and tries to use what they learned.
Come to think of it, America may be the only country on Earth where the "elites" outnumber the "Volk" -- oops, I mean the "common folk."
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 6, 2010 10:47 AM
Ed wrote:
You don't even need to speculate on the Bush administration here. There is a bill in Congress right now, from John McCain, to grant the President exactly that power. And there is no mention of it whatsoever in the examples of "authoritarian impulses". That is the best possible example of authoritarian "elitism", it's staring this author right in the face, but they don't even notice it. And that's because they don't give a flying fuck about the things they claim to care about, the only thing that matters is spreading lies to score political points.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | April 6, 2010 10:58 AM
heddle stated:
Do you realize how absurd that statement is when measured against historical results? Would you prefer a farmer down the road perform surgery on you? Would you prefer a farmer define a reaction to the freeze in liquidity in credit in the Autumn of 2008 rather than the counsel of a set of economists and other experts who work in the field?
I heard that argument from a friend the other night. I provided about a half-dozen examples illuminating the absurdity of such a statement. Our founders started us off on the right foot because they consciously embraced elitism and their attendant reliance on experts. That was one attribute held almost in totality by all the framers (the key founders) and fealty to this approach is strongly correlative to success while opposition to it is strongly causal to failure. Citation for the framers promotion of elitism on its own, along with elitism tied to functional expertise:
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
I've been reading up quite a bit on the financial crisis of 2008 and shudder to think what a Sarah Palin or John McCain would have done and who they would have relied upon to set policy given their rank ignorance and antipathy against functional experts relative to their politcal ambitions and posture towards 'the folks'. The American people remain almost totally ignorant of the actions taken, their impact, and the likely effects of doing what anti-elitists proposed we should have done. The fact that massive damage was avoided goes ignored given the public couldn't even understand what was at risk.
History provides overwhelming empirical evidence convincingly discrediting the anti-elitist argument and the harm such positions had on other economies. Here is one good article that describes only one small aspect of the risks, the path taken, and the results that could never have been accomplished by picking someone out of phone book, Joshua Green's article on Sec. of the Treasury Tim Geithner.
heddle, your position also argues that you learned nothing from damage caused to the national interest by the Republicans in the 2000s (and to some degree Clinton) and the failures encountered in that decade by the Republicans who distinguished themselves by embracing their talking points while ignoring even their own experts' counsel, e.g., cutting tax rates in hopes of a marginal increase in tax revenues being one of dozens of examples while their own economists told them they were creating both a structural deficit and a bigger forthcoming recession, rescinding the Glass-Steagal Act (Clinton's contribution), enabling investment banks to hedge reserves outside the regulatory framework of the insurance industry with illusionary policies hedging their investments.
And yes, I am conflating elitism with functional experts, purposefully because it's functional experts and those that depend on their findings such as the Democrats that are the groups currently being attacked by Sarah Palin and her ilk. As a scientist you should know better and appreciate education and process over celebrated ignorance.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 11:56 AM
100% accurate. Such populist sentiments are often masked as "common sense," as if such a thing objectively exists.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | April 6, 2010 12:03 PM
Sadie Morrison stated:
Actually its often not even masked. Sarah Palin focuses on 'unpopular common sense' in her book. Her example is the purchase of Alaska where she lies (as usual) that the purchase was unpopular when in fact the only real challenge against its purchase was held by one mere newspaper publisher with a personal grudge against one of the leading advocates. The proposed treaty sailed through the ". . . Senate by a vote of 37-2, with no significant expressions of opposition during the floor debate" and the President signed-off on its purchase. Citation and quote-source
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 12:34 PM
Re "elitism" being a code-phrase for rejecting informed opinion:
Which brings us back around to the importance of evolution in the larger scheme of things. One of the strategic benefits of the Right's war to reject the teaching of evolution is that it's a wedge issue where voters are driven to make a commitment against accepting science and informed sources in favor of "common sense." Since "common sense" tends to be remarkably similar to "what my Pastor, drinking buddies, and Rush tell me" it makes for a compliant and unthinking electorate.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 6, 2010 12:39 PM
Re Heddle @ #7
I'm sure that Prof. Heddle considers Ms. Palins' opinion of the periodic table at least equal to his own (Prof. Heddle is a professor of Nuclear Physics with a PhD in that area). End snark.
Posted by: SLC | April 6, 2010 1:03 PM
Michael Heath,
I was only semi-serious, but this is a bad analogy. Surgery requires skill. Politics, in my opinion, to first order requires not skill but ethics. I have every reason to believe that a farmer down the road, picked at random is more ethical than, say, Robert Byrd. At least I'd be willing to take those odds.
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 1:34 PM
Maybe that farmer would be more ethical. For a while. He's not going to stay unless he's at least as inethical as his successor.
If all you want is moral purity you're in pretty serious trouble given the nature of any public anywhere. And he's probably incompetent, which unlike you is a trait I have 0 faith in eliminating. Why?
Oh, little things like global warming, which the ignorant keep thinking is a trick because the Oil and Gas noise machines tell them so.
Posted by: Rutee | April 6, 2010 1:43 PM
I don't think heddle is saying he would rely on non-experts in every facet of this life.
And I think the sentiment against "elitism" is really aimed at compassion. That you would rather have someone in power that understands your plight, empathizes with you, and takes that into consideration when they make decisions. You could make the argument that even if a politician is very smart, how can he do the right thing for his constituents if he doesn't know what that is. Or maybe, knows what the right thing to do is, but would rather use his power for his own personal gain.
Having said that, a couple of observations. Even if most people feel this way, that is not who we elect. It seems that despite the rail against "elitists", people would just rather be served empty platitudes and cliches like "I will lower taxes" and "He's a socialist!".
Second, the way the term is lobbed around, it's often just directed at people who are well educated, with no evidence offered that the person is "out of touch". As if education somehow precludes empathy and that well educated people are less able to understand "average people". Obama is elitist, but McCain isn't? Why, because Obama went to Harvard, it just makes no sense.
And third, why would you feel more comfortable with the first 2000 names of the phone book? Survey after survey shows that a scary amount of people don't know basic things like US geography or even how many senators we have. Random people governing would be a disaster.
Bottom line, while power without compassion is bad, I actually think a compassionate person in power who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing is worse. At least the guy without compassion will occasionally do the right thing out of pure self interest.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | April 6, 2010 1:48 PM
Rutee,
???
We have any number of global-warming denialists in office. Counter example: FAIL.
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 1:49 PM
heddle | April 6, 2010 10:31 AM:
Good thing you don't have any elite abilities, qualifications, or job titles, such as Associate Professor of Physics. Then you'd be one of the people at which this "elitism meme" is aimed.
Posted by: llewelly | April 6, 2010 2:22 PM
Heddle, who votes said denialists into office? On whose account do they deny objective reality? Counter-counter example = fail.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | April 6, 2010 2:23 PM
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/04/blueblood_wannabes.php
Posted by: Jim Ramsey | April 6, 2010 2:25 PM
heddle @ 18:
I find this an incredibly naive and a fatally defective response for a couple of reasons:
First it ignores the fact that data and information used by elected officials to take positions comes from staff and functional experts who are hired by the elected official or in Congress' case, comes through committees where the members vary in their literacy to the functions monitored or legislated in a given committee.
I have zero confidence an anti-elitist would adequately and consistently staff these positions, whether it be for a committee staff or in the case of the President, positions such as Chairman of the Fed or the Secretary of the Treasury. In fact President Bush had a tremendously difficult time staffing the SECTREAS position when Hank Paulson finally took it because he hired two previous incompetents who were still superior to him and then abused them. In defense of President Bush who is far closer to elitists than Sen. McCain and Sarah Palin's anti-elistism, he did pick huge winners in Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson. I shiver thinking of who McCain would have picked for SECTREAS.
Second it assumes our farmer will maintain the degree of ethics he started with in spite of the fact he's going to have to spend his free-time in perpetual campaign mode raising funds just like his colleagues. In fact the framers used your analogy to make the exact opposite argument, that the Senate should be the residence of elites who could afford to take a dispassionate perspective of the country immune from the pressures that come from politicians who need to leverage the power of the office to make a living. One only need look at Sen. McCain and Sarah Palin as two prime examples of anti-elitists who sold-out or never possessed any scruples. I'd bet money the elected officials who were experts in some professional field have far more scruples than Joe the Plumber primarily because they've had some experience in dealing with such. Of course their are exceptions - Senator and Doctor Tom Coburn is a perfect example of an educated know-nothing.
There are plenty of examples we can use to validate these conclusions. Consider how Sen. McCain handled the credit crisis, he virtually spazzed out on what position to take based on the needs of his campaign and his desire to attract anti-elistists where then Sen. Obama spent his time soliciting and questioning the experts in spite of the fact bailing out the banks was also unpopular with his own populists as well as mainstream liberals.
Today's anti-elitists did the same on healthcare reform, I never heard one, not one, argument by a Republican Congressional leader that was buttressed by what healthcare economists understood while most of the Democrats positions were built upon their findings. In fact I became convinced that neither Mitch McConnell or John Boehner even had a clue to the economic ramifications of the competing proposals, in spite of the fact that there were a plethora of great ideas by non-liberal economists that could have been promoted by the Republicans, i.e., how to protect or even enhance healthcare provider profit margins, superior tax policy to fund health insurance, how to stabilize supply of healthcare services, and finally how to drive down malpractice rates and therefore malpractice insurance premiums. But because the anti-elitist Republican leadership took the know-nothing approach advocated by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers, they put themselves in a corner where the only available hand they could play was obstructionism rather than guaranteeing reform that better addressed the cost of healthcare and the economic viability of universal coverage.
So no heddle, looking merely at ethics doesn't even begin to weigh the entire breadth of professional challenges faced by modern-day politicians. In fact I know of no credible expert remaining who will now defend short or intermediate length congressional term limits given the utter failure of state legislatures who instituted such, e.g, my home state of Michigan. It's considered a failed experiment because the know-nothings coming in became term-limited out prior to their even getting up to speed on how to be a professionally competent legislator.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 2:25 PM
Is it more important that the captain can navigate (or is willing to listen to someone who can) or that he's trying to reach your destination? The truth is that both are necessary. There can be no doubt that in the field of public policy there are various strategies that can be attempted ranging from the sound to the disastrous. The skill to tell one from the other is at least as important as the desire to do good by the people.
Of course all that is beside the point - the farmer down the road is not running for office. The question is do you think Sarah Palin and all the other populist demagogues are any more ethical than the "elitists" they decry? If so I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. Even if you do judge ethics to be more important than skill you shouldn't fall for the canard that lack of the latter implies abundance of the former.
Posted by: DaveL | April 6, 2010 2:28 PM
Michael Heath,
This description makes me more committed to my quasi-position. (I say that as someone who has, on a number of occasions, briefed congressional staff experts.)
Sadie Morrison,
If what you say is reality--then either the politicians are also denialists--so no improvement--or worse they are panderers. Counter3 example: FAIL.
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 2:48 PM
What always cracks me up about conservatives barking "elitist!" is that it's a claim intended to basically say, "oh, so you think you're better than me!?" It doesn't need to be taken very far to be seen as Political Correctness in the sense of "oh you think you know more than me but we're just as equal." So cries of elitism from conservatives is acting out of political correctness, something they rail against constantly. Comedy.
Posted by: Brando | April 6, 2010 2:56 PM
Heddle: Politics, in my opinion, to first order requires not skill but ethics.
I would like my legislators to understand the most likely security, economic and social consequences of the legislation they vote for, including treaties (which, think about it, will in part be crafted by very smart people from a competing nation). I would like my representatives to be able to run intellectual circles around their competitors (ambassadors, corporate CEOs), rather than other countries reps running circles around ours. I would no more choose to trust an uneducated person with my government than I would represent myself in court, for the same reason: the people who have interests opposed to my government are going to employ very smart, very well educated representatives who know exactly what they are doing, and I'd be an idiot to choose a lawyer/government representative who was utterly outclassed.
Call me elitist, but IMO that requires more education than what a typical US high school diploma delivers.
Posted by: eric | April 6, 2010 2:56 PM
eric,
Geez--and I'm the naive one?
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 3:08 PM
Ethics won't get a politician anywhere (at least, anywhere worth going) if he/she lacks the requisite skills.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | April 6, 2010 3:13 PM
Politics doesn't require skill? Nonsense! Politics requires what are known as "people skills"; persuasion, compromise, and occasionally coercion. It is applied psychology. It requires the ability to get a group of people with disparate, often contradictory, interests to work toward your desired goals. It also requires the technical skills to play the game using the rules at hand. Consider the recent health care reform issue. The Congressional leaders had to manipulate the debate so that members with particular concerns, such as Stupak and Sanders, would agree to the bill. They also had to have a mastery of the parliamentary process. Even in smaller groups, such as clubs and homeowners associations, the people who are successful are those who have these skills.
Posted by: Origuy | April 6, 2010 3:15 PM
"I would like there to be...", of course, does not equal "I know that there is...". Part of the reason why eric is saying the first and not the second is because the continual anti-elitist drumbeat has succeeded in making a lot of people vote against more competent and qualified candidates.
As for me, never been part of any elite. Probably never going to be. Always been a member of what they call the working class, except that nowadays a lot of us can't find work. And yet "elitists" as a dog-whistle drives me up the fucking wall. Why? Because it's only ever used against clever people. Any working-class person should be really offended by this; the implication of the statement is that people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder are stupid, nasty and ignorant, and they should take it as a compliment when wealthy, well-educated hacks and politicians point it out.
As Ed's noted, no-one ever called George W Bush an elitist. Why was that? It wasn't because he lacked power. It wasn't because he was born into a humble family. It was because he was, or at least tried to appear, stupid. He mangles his words, therefore he is one of the people. How patronising is that?
If one of these columnists who smear everyone with a bit of smarts as an "elitist" heard about my cultural tastes, they'd assume I was the biggest, wealthiest snob ever. I think Jacques Rivette is a great filmmaker: I think Michael Bay sucks. I think Italo Calvino is a great author: I think Nicholas Sparks sucks. I have a subscription to Harper's Monthly, yet have never read a supermarket tabloid. And yet I am and always have been poor as dirt. The idea that clever people are all "elitists" is a nasty slur on the upper classes; it's even worse on the lower classes.
Posted by: Der Bruno Stroszek | April 6, 2010 3:25 PM
It says a lot that the unnamed writer had to go so far afield as to pick Lovelock, who is pretty much irrelevant in terms of US policy.
Posted by: Jon H | April 6, 2010 3:28 PM
heddle clearly needs to learn the difference between politics and governance.
Posted by: gary l. day | April 6, 2010 3:32 PM
heddle claiming he rebutted eric @ 30; his entire rebuttal attempt:
Perhaps you should more broadly articulate exactly how your argument is superior to eric's. From my perspective he devastates your argument for one simple reason, we can at least qualitatively if not empirically demonstrate that politicians belong to a professional class and the more competent one is at it, the better the results. Lou Cannon's and Robert Caro's biographies on Ronald Reagan and LBJ respectively vividly illuminate the failures of relying on "common sense" and how both either honed their own skills or became more ardent in increasing the quality of their appointments and delegating authority to these experts.
JFK's appointment of Robert McNamara to SECDEF is another prime example. Listening to the archived tapes of LBJ questioning Mr. McNamara on the war soon after taking over as President exposes McNamara's complete incompetence at running Defense or a war given Mr. McNamara's background had nothing to do with the military.
Your vaguely described example of speaking to congressional staff also appears to reject your own argument, i.e., you seem to imply these staffers were either not well-versed on the topic or incapable of considering an expert's counsel, which is what you are explicitly promoting while the rest of us advocate for functional excellence, the exact opposite of populist arguments against elitism.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 3:39 PM
Politics, in my opinion, to first order requires not skill but ethics.
If you don't have skills, your ethics won't mean shit, because you won't have the skill to make sure the right things get done.
Oh, and when a Palin supporter starts talking about ethics, do we relly need to bother with a serious response? Skills belong in the corridors of power; starbursts belong in the bedroom.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 6, 2010 3:46 PM
"Politics, in my opinion, to first order requires not skill but ethics."
Would you be equally willing to suggest that running a major corporation doesn't require skill? The complexity of such a task is dwarfed by the administrative challenges of running a government.
But perhaps you mean "politics" in a Machiavellian sense, as in winning support and compelling cooperation from other politicians on your agenda. In that case, you'd not only have things wrong, but backwards.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | April 6, 2010 3:47 PM
DBS: "I would like there to be...", of course, does not equal "I know that there is...". Part of the reason why eric is saying the first and not the second is because the continual anti-elitist drumbeat has succeeded in making a lot of people vote against more competent and qualified candidates.
Yes, exactly. To toss Heddle a bone, it would be naive to think that an educated politician will understand everything that goes across his/her desk, or that education guarantees success, or that there aren't very smart, savvy, competent politicians without formal education. They won't, it doesn't, and there are, respectively.
But IMO it is still true that your best bet for a good effective government comes from politicians who have education commensurate with the job they are doing. Again to use the legal analogy - maybe I'd do a hell of a good job defending myself in court. Maybe the lawyer I choose will turn out to be lousy. I can't be certain of the outcome before I make the decision. But if I have to bet my money (or my life) on which one is going to do a better job representing my interests, the smart money is on the attorney.
Of course I strongly encourage heddle to base his vote on ethics. Go for it, man! In fact I hope your entire district and state agree with you. I can think of no better outcome than if his district and state chooses their representatives based on ethics and personality while my district and state chooses ours based on intelligence, competence, and education. No better outcome for me, that is... :)
Posted by: eric | April 6, 2010 3:50 PM
Definition
elitist: one who uses his/her head to think rather than the gut.
[to be more neuroanatomically correct, the frontal cortex rather than the limbic]
Posted by: natural cynic | April 6, 2010 4:00 PM
eric,
Yep-- you are right about that. West Virginia always "wins"--and if that means you want a Senator like Byrd--you're welcome to him.
Michael Heath,
It wasn't a subtle point but you seem to have missed it--but to spell it out: your concept "experts in government" is flawed--because we have no guarantees that we have experts in government. And, even worse, we have no guarantees that they will use their expertise for the good of the people, as it were. If you have confidence in bureaucrats and politicians, you are of a different cloth than I. (It think you think that WFB's point was meant to be taken literally--it wasn't--it was a comment about the type of people in our system who seek high office.)
gary
Probably that is true.
Tyler,
It does require skill because you have to turn a profit. In government, you just have to get reelected.
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 4:19 PM
Heddle: It does require skill because you have to turn a profit. In government, you just have to get reelected.
I would personally say that their task, their job is to increase the prosperity of their constituents, which is very analogous to what a CEO is supposed to do for their shareholders.
Besides which, I'm scratching my head about how to combine your posts 7 and 41. Are you basing your vote merely on who attempts to get reelected in the most ethical fashion? If not, then your argument against the need for skill in @41 is irrelevant, as it depends on a job description which you don't yourself actually believe.
Finally, I'll try and find some middle ground. The population per district is around 650,000 (there are three states smaller than that, but they have more than 600k people, so its close). Given that size, don't you think it should be possible to find a few people who are both ethical AND educated rather than merely ethical? If I agree with you that greater education is an entirely unnecessary - yet still beneficial - property in a politician, then can you agree with me that there is no reason to settle for an uneducated representative?
Posted by: eric | April 6, 2010 5:01 PM
Caveat: my source for population/district was a 2003 table. The numbers have almost certainly gone up. But that doesn't negate my point.
Posted by: eric | April 6, 2010 5:04 PM
eric,
I almost always base my vote on who promises, more credibly, to reduce the size of government. When my candidate loses I am mildly disappointed--but not nearly so much as when my candidate wins.
Do you really believe that--even if it is as the expense of other citizens in other states? That is, when the unlamented Paul Murtha brought home money to build an overdesigned airport in Johnstown PA--do you think of him as successful? I thought of him as a scumbag. I guess he was a successful scumbag.
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 5:28 PM
heddle, before dragging Robert Byrd and John Murtha into the discussion, was apparently implying the collective ethical judgment of 2000 of Harvard's faculty would be lower than that of 2000 random people. Right?
Posted by: foggg | April 6, 2010 5:54 PM
heddle @ 41:
Nice strawman but it represents nothing I stated. We were discussing who we should vote for, not what currently exists and describes our current government. You took the anti-elitist position and claimed "I'd rather be governed by the first 2000 names of the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard." I argued we should vote for professionals who leveraged functional experts.
Your observation regarding the competency of congressional staffers appears to validate you've gotten your wish rather than me relative to how we actually do vote for and how they staff. That's was already my position prior to the generation of this thread and why I couldn't figure out how you rebutted eric given that the GOP has virtually zero leaders promoting elitist values and we know that both the far left of the Democratic party and most of its southern politicians share that populist sentiment, e.g, Robert Byrd. That leaves a minority of Congress and we know some of those also favor populist sentiments - contra for example to Barack Obama whose attempted to recruit the best and brightest technocrats. So again, you continue to walk right into not my punches, but your own - three times on this one matter alone.
I must also point out the irony in your arguing for ethics over competence while having been a Sarah Palin supporter when it mattered most, even after her history and character were revealed prior to the Nov-08 election.
While it's true she's distinguished herself in her incompetence, the same can be said regarding her sense of ethics - particularly regarding how she treated those who worked for her, with her, and even her demonstration of dishonesty beyond what I ever imagined a politician could ever get away with and remain popular.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 6:04 PM
foggg ,
No. You mistaking a rhetorical device for a literal argument. I wouldn't literally want 2000 random people instead of the Harvard faculty. (Both options are nauseating.) But, with just a little effort, I could find 2000 without PhDs whom I'd prefer over the Harvard faculty. There are still a lot a small-government personal-liberties, non-social-conservative conservative types--they just don't fit in either party.
Michael Heath,
How's that working out? (Really, I can't believe you are actually using the "best and brightest" phrase with a straight face.)
Posted by: heddle | April 6, 2010 7:03 PM
"It does require skill because you have to turn a profit. In government, you just have to get reelected."
So in other words, the fact that incompetent people often get into government is the reason why government administrators don't require any particular competence. Doesn't that seem just a mite circular to you?
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | April 6, 2010 7:28 PM
Heddle,
Just some problems with you using this Buckley quotation.
1. Buckely wasn't arguing against college & university professors, or even Ivy League ones. He himself was a Yale alum, and due to this background, his comment was an anti-Harvard quip due to the rivalry between the two schools.
2. Related to that, it's also ironic that you make that quote mean what you think it means, because William F. Buckley was quite likely the most elitist of all the conservative pundits/politicians. As I mentioned, he was a Yale alumnus, and he also just happened to be a Skull & Bones member as well. That's to say nothing of his writing style.
Posted by: Jaxebad | April 6, 2010 7:34 PM
Buckley also helped drive the John Birchers out of the Republican Party. Now they're back.
Posted by: Jim Lippard | April 6, 2010 7:40 PM
Re Heddle
Steven Chu?
Posted by: SLC | April 6, 2010 7:42 PM
*Pbbt!* Elitists.
Dunning–Kruger in 2012!
Posted by: Modusoperandi | April 6, 2010 7:47 PM
heddle @ 47:
Brilliantly given my context, the Geithner appointment and the link I provided as support @ 13 in support of that point. I assume from your rhetorical question you know nothing about economics or keep up on the subject, otherwise you wouldn't have walked into another punch launched 38 comment posts ago. What Geithner and Bernanke have done with the banks and the results will be an economic case study for decades if not 50+ years on what to do in future liquidity crises, especially if asset values are in a state of flux. That doesn't mean we're out of the water yet given that the stimulus while successful is probably insufficient given the depth of the recession he inherited coupled to our not yet seeing what financial regulatory reform will look like; but the innovative private-centric approach to bring liquidity back to the markets was as brilliant as what Rubin/Summers/Greenspan did in bringing killing the debt crisis in the 1990s in Mexico, Russia, S. Korea, and Latin America.
I'm also impressed the President with Stephen Chu guaranteed $52 billion in loans to restart the nuclear energy industry and Arne Duncan's education efforts focused on best practices rather than financial and ideological constituents. Also Obama's keeping Gates and his management of the wars and foreign affairs has been brilliant given the caliber of his people and his delegation of power to them.
Heddle - I'm now starting to better understand how you could have supported Sarah Palin in 2008, I had this perception you were far better informed than you appear in this thread. It appears you merely rely on heavily repeated talking points.; saying them or listening to them a lot doesn't make them any more accurate relative to reality. I suggest reconsidering your news and analysis sources.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 8:10 PM
I don't think you posted here back then, but there was a thread in which Heddle "explained" at some length that the populist appeal of Sarah Palin was rooted in, well, faith. If I remember correctly, his explanation amounted to "We just love her. From our guts." It was a lot like Colbert's Bush roast at the Washington Correspondent's Dinner, except not satire and therefore not that funny.
Anyway, I doubt you'd be feeling surprised now had you been present for that discussion.
Posted by: Leni | April 6, 2010 8:41 PM
Leni @ 54,
I was both here, commenting and have been present for years prior to that. I remember heddle's position on Palin vividly, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if I was one the one who badgered him to articulate why he liked her. I found his answer stunning, I could not rationalize how a scientist would make such an argument. It simply didn't logically compute. Therefore I assumed and still do his motivation remained private, which is fine. He and I use our real names and there's plenty of opinions that I hold I don't share here either.
So my being unable to reconcile his position with Ms. Palin all this time was within the context you bring up. David Heddle is certainly one of the most intriguing characters that participates here given positions he takes which are difficult at best to reconcile. Perhaps more so for me since I think of myself as a pretty simple guy where my position on A wouldn't cause someone to be surprised I also support position D. Given my simplicity, I'm always intrigued by people who have more complex views, are honestly seeking objective truth, and where it's more challenging to reconcile those views while on such a search.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 6, 2010 10:13 PM
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The absolute last thing I want in a politician is starry-eyed cluelessness.
What's most amusing about this is seeing it come from a professed conservative, since the canonical complaint about liberals is that their hearts are in the right place but they have no understanding of How The World Really Works.
There are checks and balances against evil intentions, but against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 6, 2010 11:41 PM
In partial defense of heddle, I think there is no basis for preferring either the first 2000 names of the Boston phone book or the faculty of Harvard. Academics know their own particular fields, and think--because they're smart and educated in one narrow area--that they must really understand how to run the world, too. I do my best to avoid talking to my colleagues about politics, because they're ignoramuses. I prefer to talk to them about their area of expertise--that way I learn something and don't have to put all my effort into correcting their errors.
Simply put, being intelligent and educated is not in itself sufficient for understanding either how government actually functions or how to design good public policy. Even being an expert in say, AGW, wouldn't mean you knew how to design a functional and effective policy to deal with it. Specialized knowledge is required, and even then it's tremendously easy to f*** up in the design of policies.
And when it comes to actually being successful in passing legislation, spend some time talking to someone who's been a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill--promise them anonymity--and you'll quickly realize that the average academic would be bewildered and repeatedly outfoxed. I've sat in enough faculty meetings to know that most academics have the political savvy of a turnip.
Posted by: James Hanley | April 6, 2010 11:56 PM
"In partial defense of heddle, I think there is no basis for preferring either the first 2000 names of the Boston phone book or the faculty of Harvard."
The mean intelligence of the first population is likely to be far below that of the second. Governing may not be a discipline of particulars, but it is still incredibly complex and people with greater intelligence can, on average, navigate complex tasks more adeptly.
Or in other words, being smart and educated may not be a sufficient condition for being a good governor, but it is certainly a necessary one.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | April 7, 2010 12:26 AM
This:
One America is that of the liberal political elite that currently controls the White House and solid majorities in Congress, and dominates the traditional media, academia, and public intellectual ranks. The other America is the rest of us who are expected to shut up and do as we are told by the first America.
Plus this:
What is most worrisome here are the elitists' blatantly anti-democratic attitudes and authoritarian impulses... Three examples have been on raw display this week -- by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and James Lovelock, the British scientist who is revered by global warming crusaders.
Makes me wonder if the author is aware that the UK no longer has a role in the running of what is now the USA? Or perhaps there are too few of the liberal political elite that a foreign scientist has to be drafted into the American political class to make up the numbers?
Posted by: Eamon | April 7, 2010 2:30 AM
From Tyler DiPietro @58,
Tyler, what I like about your comments is that they always make me like you, even when I disagree. And I really really want to agree with a claim like this, but as an empirical matter I remain very doubtful. One case in point as an example: Ronald Reagan. Reagan was not even remotely as smart as Clinton or Carter, but he handled the presidency better and was a more successful policymaker. Granted, I don't want someone who's deeply stupid, or wholly deficient in education, but there are so many other attributes that contribute more to being successful as a politician. I suspect you're implicitly holding those constant, and evaluating based solely on the distinction between the two variables, degree of education and degree of native intelligence. But I see no evidence that the variables that make one a successful politician have any correlation at all with intelligence and education. In fact given that academia often rewards those who don't play well with others (who are good at shutting themselves up in their offices or labs and working alone), interpersonal skill may be negatively correlated with educational level.
I would argue that just having a general orientation toward desirable policies, even without above-average intelligence or education, in conjunction with real political skill, is the best we can normally hope for in a politician.
Posted by: James Hanley | April 7, 2010 6:26 AM
heddle @18, Politics, in my opinion, to first order requires not skill but ethics
Oddly, I was discussing that very question the same day with my friend who formerly was a legislative aide on capitol hill. In a nutshell, we both believe the opposite. The context was a discussion of my college's new "Institute for Ethics," and a brownbag lecture series in which the director was having faculty give talks about how ethics relates to their discipline. I was expressing my fear that he would ask me, as a political scientist, to give such a talk, and that I would only be able to discuss the irrelevance of ethics to political science (as I teach it, which is an effort to understand how the political world really works).
Both the former legislative aide and I agreed that ethics is, on the whole, a desirable quality in and of itself, but as a practical matter, quite useless in politics. Ethics never, by itself, leads to any political victories, and can actually be detrimental because the ethical person can be at a competitive disadvantage. It's like playing pickup basketball when there are no referees, and no agreement by the other player that any of their actions might constitute fouls. You can't beat them unless you play their game.
Hubert H. Humphrey was a nice ethical guy who got himself elected to the Senate, where Lyndon Johnson--who probably couldn't have spelled the word ethics--dominated. LBJ liked Humphrey, a lot, but HH chafed under LBJ's constraints and occasionally tried to escape and win a victory against him. He never succeeded because he didn't have the natural instincts for the type of devious and aggressive behavior that would allow him to be an effective legislator. And when LBJ, as president, finally decided it was time to push for real civil rights legislation, he did so out of a deep moral conviction, but the way he pursued it was far from a model of ethical behavior, as it involved a combination of threatening to destroy political careers and aiding and abetting southern Senators in lying to their constituencies. And I say bully for LBJ. Humphrey, the Orator of the Dawn, the Democrats' greatest congressional civil rights advocate, could never have defeated the southern filibuster.
There's a word that perfectly describes ethical politicians: Ineffective.
Posted by: James Hanley | April 7, 2010 6:40 AM
Heddle @44 Do you really believe that--even if it is as the expense of other citizens in other states? That is, when the unlamented Paul Murtha brought home money to build an overdesigned airport in Johnstown PA--do you think of him as successful?
Partially I do, partially I don't. I think most pork probably consists of unwarranted handouts geared towards short-term support with no thought towards long-term prosperity or growth. Such pork includes most of the 'bridges to nowhere' that you're talking about, so I'd agree with you that the congresscritters making such demands aren't doing their job well.
But I absolutely do think that its the job of a district or state representative to argue and legislate for their district's/state's best long-term interests. And yeah, if some bit of legislation consists of an "unavoidable" tradeoff* between two states' interests, I expect my state representative to go to bat for MY state. How could it be otherwise? We have a different elected official who's job it is to represent the national, non-local interest. He's called the President.
*Of course, I also expect my rep. to be smart enough to determine when a tradeoff really is unavoilable, and come up with win-win solutions when it isn't. Its yet another reason why I think educated reps are important, and your voting strategy is a poor one. If some advisor says to a rep. "choose A or B," your rep. of choice might make the best ethical decision between the two, but I want mine to be smart enough ask "what about C, D, or E?"
Posted by: eric | April 7, 2010 9:28 AM
Heddle,
Charming as your inane visions of a Cincinnatus figure arising to save Rome are, perhaps you should just shut up unless you have anything substantive to say.
Posted by: Coryat | April 7, 2010 11:20 AM
James Hanely,
You can't really believe that in an absolute sense. Maybe you mean: if their only attribute is that they are ethical? Certainly people can be ethical and effective. Of course I know they have warts--but I would consider people like Moynihan and Goldwater to be ethical (relatively speaking) and effective -- while people like Byrd and Stevens and Murtha are/were unethical and effective.
Coryat,
Bite me. This ain't your blog. Just skip my comments--unless the ability to skip a comment is too taxing for you--in which case I have no advice.
Posted by: heddle | April 7, 2010 11:47 AM
Lol, ok Heddle, be all that you can be. I suppose there is a certain morbid humour to be found in watching your flailing.
Posted by: Coryat | April 7, 2010 12:05 PM
heddle,
No, I 75% do mean precisely that. If a politician always behaves ethically in the legislative process, that politician will almost always be ineffective. Amendments get put onto bills by people working behind the scenes most of the time. I know of a case where a congressman wanted, at the urging of important contributors, to add a particular amendment to a bill, but he and his staff were being watched by the staff of a congressman who expected it and would quickly oppose it. So the first congressman's staff slipped it to the staff of another congressman (whose district included the parent company of said important contributor, a connection that was not common knowledge), and he put it in the bill while no one was watching him. Congressman B's staff called A's staff all in a fury, calling them dishonest sons-of-bitches (which was basically true), but it was too late for them to mobilize against it.
Legislative work is a game. In basketball, someone who commits a foul that isn't called doesn't go to the ref and ask them to call it and award the other team free throws, and the guy who gets the foul call on another player by flopping doesn't admit they flopped and ask the ref to rescind the call. To do so would be to your own detriment, while to commit those little dishonesties helps you win the game.
I'm sure Moynihan knew how to play the game very well. He was not just smart, but clever, and in D.C., cleverness generally is more valuable than smarts.
Posted by: James Hanley | April 7, 2010 3:22 PM