Elites Just Wish We Would Go Away

Khue Bui for Newsweek

No Fools: Americans who support Palin can't just be dismissed

Starbucks Does Not Equal Savvy

What we talk about when we talk about experience

By Michael Gerson | NEWSWEEK

Published Sep 20, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008

AT the 1896 Democratic convention, a backwoods, religious no-name rose to speak. "Great cities," argued William Jennings Bryan, "rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country."

The reaction of the crowd to Bryan's gospel of populism was electric; delegates stood on chairs to cheer and throw their hats. The reaction of elites in the great Northeastern cities was less enthusiastic. A New York Times headline referred to the convention as a WILD, RAGING, IRRESISTIBLE MOB. Elite opinion on Bryan was eventually summarized by H. L. Mencken: Bryan was a "peasant come home to the barnyard."

Bryan never won the presidency in three tries. But his populism transformed the Democratic Party and informed the New Deal, making him perhaps the most influential presidential nominee never elected to office.

The closest I have ever come to witnessing a Bryan moment was Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention—the triumph of another backwoods, highly religious populist. Palin praised the honesty and sincerity of small towns; pressed her credentials as a hockey mom, member of the PTA and small-town mayor; and railed against the "Washington elite," "power brokers" and (a little close to home) "reporters and commentators." If hats had been in style, they would have been thrown.

The response in some quarters to the selection of Palin was sneering. An Obama spokesman immediately called her the "former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign-policy experience." But claims about the importance of experience are inherently complicated for both parties in this election. If Palin's governing résumé is thin, Barack Obama's is thinner. If Palin's lack of experience is meaningless, Obama's case to be commander in chief is strengthened.

But the accusation here is not really that Palin lacks experience; it is that she lacks the right experience. She attended the University of Idaho, entered a beauty contest, joined the NRA and a church where people speak in tongues and was elected to govern a state with few Starbucks. Obama rose quickly from Columbia to Harvard Law, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and joined the most exclusive club in America, the Senate. Even with no governing experience, he can claim what might be called "elite experience." And this is enough for elitists.

Both the conservative tradition and the liberal tradition contain elements of elitism, along with elements that oppose it. Traditional conservatism, with its British, aristocratic roots, has often maintained that the "best men"—people of property, education and accomplishment—should govern. But modern U.S. conservatism has generally been a populist revolt against liberal cultural and political elites.

Liberalism is also divided on elitism. Progressivism put great faith in modern bureaucratic techniques and in educated social engineers who would implement them. But modern liberalism, influenced by leaders such as Bryan, also has a strong strain of populist trust in the wisdom and decency of common people—a belief that simplicity is not always foolishness, just as sophistication is not always wisdom.

Presidential historians count experience as one possible contributing element to presidential success—but there are others. "Experience matters," historian Robert Dallek has said, "but its importance is terribly overstated." Predicting the ideal combination of background, skills and values in a successful president—or VP—is no easy task. And it cannot be argued that elite experience is somehow the key.

Cont.here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160085/page/2