Well, preppie conservatism never would have gotten very far without a few cowboys and average C students. Maybe he remembers.
Posted on 09/16/2008 3:50:52 PM PDT by Petronski
THE CONSERVATIVE ELITES ATTACK!
In today's New York Times, David Brooks launches a critique of Sarah Palin, essentially concluding that her populist appeal is dangerous and ill-conceived. He yearns for the day when "conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement," one that stressed "classical education, hard-earned knowledged, experience, and prudence." Brooks, like a handful of other conservative intellectuals, believes Palin "compensates for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."
Well, at the risk of appearing brash, let me say that I am glad to see my old friend finally pushed to the point where he has to make an overt defense of elitism, after years of demonstrating covert support for elitism. We conservatives who believe Governor Palin represents a solid vice-presidential pick should be extremely comfortable engaging this issue.
Brooks's main argument against Palin is that she lacks the type of experience and historical understanding that led President Bush to a 26 percent approval rating in his final months in office. Yet the notion that the Bush Administration got into trouble because it didn't have enough "experience" is absurd. George W. Bush was governor of Texas for six years. His father was president. His primary advisors on matters of foreign policy were Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. In 2000, it could hardly have been possible to find a more experienced team to head up a GOP administration. Brooks's notion that the Bush Administration was "the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice" is simply ludicrous. Does anyone believe that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld count as "anti-establishment"?
Of course, we could also consider the Nixon Administration. Who had more experience than Richard Nixon? How'd that work out? What about George H.W. Bush? How did his administration do? What about Herbert Hoover — who had vast experience both in terms of dealing with foreign countries during World War I and in terms of dealing with the U.S. economy as secretary of Commerce? How did he do? The truth is that Brooks's basic claim — that experienced leaders are necessarily better than inexperienced leaders — simply doesn't hold water.
Now let's look at the broader issue of elitism versus populism. For Brooks to be right, his elites have to make better policy judgments than average Americans. But he overlooks the fact that in America we have a particularly bad elite, an elite that holds most Americans in contempt and has no sympathy for the history and traditions that make us great. And that elite has been wrong on issue after issue for most of the last 40 years. Who was more right about the Soviet Union, the elites or the people? Who was more right about the need to cut taxes in the 1970s, the elites or the people? Who was more right about the need to get tough on crime, the elites in black robes with life tenure, or the folks cheering for Dirty Harry? Who would Brooks trust to decide critical issues regarding the War on Terror today, the voters or the inside-the-Beltway types who lose sleep over tough interrogation tactics? Elites — particularly our American elite — are much more likely to go for the latest fad, for seek to apply whatever notion is currently trendy in the salons of Europe. To find true Burkean conservatism in this country — to find citizens who are both respectful of our country's traditions and anxious to see our country remain a world leader — you have to turn to the voters.
The truth is that it is no longer possible to govern this country through a conservative elite. We have a radical elite, an elite that believes in climate change, gay marriage, unrestricted abortions, and the United Nations. We have an elite that intends to make massive, liberal changes to every aspect of American life. This elite ruins almost everything it touches — from the schools, to the media, to the universities. Giving more power to the elites means watching the United States become more and more like Europe.
Populism rests on two great insights. First, it understands that the people (taken as a whole) are often wiser and more prudent than the elites. Average people are almost always respectful of tradition, while elites tend to act like an angry mob trying to tear down the old idols. Second, populism understands that it's not enough to actually have the right policy ideas, you have to have the will to take on the elites who will try to prevent those ideas from going into place. In order to get anything accomplished, the GOP is going to have to use public opinion to override the objections of liberals, including liberals in the media.
Does Sarah Palin have the political skills to successfully govern this country from a populist perspective? It's far too early to say. She is certainly the most promising such figure to come along since the elites were denouncing Ronald Reagan. And therefore we should all wish her well. It is silly to criticize her at this early stage until we know a lot more about her abilities as a leader. I am glad to say that her instincts appear to be sound.
My GGMother lived from Lincoln to Nixon.
Her father my GGGfather voted for the first Republican national office seeker. Its been that way in the family ever since.
Her son my Gfather became a rabid Reaganite after seeing him during the Goldwater campaign, supported him thereafter and was elated upon seeing him elected POTUS before he died.
My dear GGmother believed T.Roosevelt was the greatest President in her lifetime by far (even after Dwight and Eamie Eisenhower sent her a personal 95th birthday card).
I suspect that Sarah Palin is going to be the T.R. of the 21st century.
The only problem, in fairness to David Brook's original article Why Experience Matters, is that while he may essentially have said this, he did not, in fact, say this.
I know it is unfair to rain on such a great parade and suggest what we criticize a man for what he actually said rather than what someone said he said, even if the someone is Laura Ingram.
“It seems, Laura bought the false premise that Brooks offered, which means he basically won the argument before it started.”
Not President.
(P.S. Obama is a two-bit,two-faced neighborhood enforcer (I mean community organizer) who will step on anyone he has to to win. If you count that, then it doesn’t matter about experience)
Well, preppie conservatism never would have gotten very far without a few cowboys and average C students. Maybe he remembers.
Why, that sounds just like David Brooks. Who'da thunkit?
Brooks is wasted by Laura.
True. :)
Obama is a communist whose loyalty to the country is very much in question as far as I’m concerned. That coupled with being an enforcer for the Chicago vote fraud machine disqualify him from holding any elective office as far as I’m concerned.
I think it’s ludicrous that we have discussions about whether the VP is qualified anyway. The top of their ticket is completely unqualified, yet we spend hours upon hours discussing the qualifications of the bottom of ours.
I think that is fair, actually. Now, I would point out that she is only running for VP, and the same arguments apply to 0 who is running for P, and our real candidate is McCain who has a wealth of experience.
See post 16. I too confused David Brooks with David Brock. I don’t recognize either as a conservative.
Anyone who uses the words ‘excessive decisiveness’ together doesn’t deserve to be commenting on anyone else’s ability to lead.
David Brooks long ago drank he NYT kool-aid.
In Burke’s day, the elites consisted of men the caliber of Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith.
I would hate to see a debate between minds of this caliber, and say, mental midgets like Noam Chomsky and Anderson Cooper.
No, I take that back.
I would love to see that debate.
Reading classical philosophers in the original lanaguages is a very different thing from actually being Alexander the Great or Caesar. Many of the more traditional conservative intellectuals took this route....not to mention the highly-educated set who wrote the Constitution and formed the first Federal government.
If Brooks actually was conversant with classical Greek, he probably could not have resisted pointing out that ‘palin’ means ‘backwards’ in that language.
“David Brooks is no conservative. Like Andrew Sullivan, his politics are driven by his sexual (dis)orientation.”
Did you mean David Brock? If not, I was unaware that Brooks was gay.
Brooks is gay? I just thought he was an unbearable snob.
“And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.”
What is Brooks talking about in this quote?
Let’s not confuse management techniques with leadership. It is not a parlor game, and the essential element is moral decisiveness which the Dems, from Carter on, have completely thrown under the bus. I really don’t know if it is “complex deliberations” anymore than whether a smart mathematician makes a good leader. The Governor has moral fiber and a strong backbone, palpable courage, and people will willingly follow her into battle - that’s a leader - Brooks is talking about a computer programmer, (or a law lecturer), someone who will reboot your machine when it is down. (Clinton 1 or Obama) Those people you hire, a leader has to make decisions and live with them. A manager takes polls and then votes “present”. A leader risks his presidency and fights a pre-emptive war because the consequences of not doing so are unimaginable, a manager blows up an aspirin factory and declares victory.
“I think it’s ludicrous that we have discussions about whether the VP is qualified anyway.”
They can’t say Obama is more experienced than John McCain.
They can’t admit that their NO 1 guy has less executive experience than their NO 2 guy.
They can’t admit that choosing Obama ONLY because he ‘claims’ to be ‘black’, or ‘Black’ (there is a difference, btw), might have been a mistake.
Frankly, it would have been nice to have an experienced African-American in any slot, in any party. There are many well qualified minorities and women in our present government.
Instead, the Dems got Obama. Who isn’t even really African-American.
He has a relative that is a Rabbi, and Obama ain’t a Jew either, but he’d like them to think he is.
“Populism rests on two great insights. First, it understands that the people (taken as a whole) are often wiser and more prudent than the elites.”
What a silly generalization. Populists have quite the history of making idiotic choices and have damaged the liberties of this country. See the direct election of Senators, the introduction of the income tax, govt control of private property including railroads. A more recent example would be George Wallace and his support for segregation and Jim Crow.
No sale. If this is what populists have to offer, I’ll look elsewhere for leadership.
There's no evidence Obama ever read Plato in the original Greek or Biden. In fact, most liberals in the "elite" are unlettered. They banned the "dead white western males."
Who among the liberal elite is "educated"?
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