[NEohioPAL] A thoughtful opinion written by a Republican pundit, NY TIMES Op-Ed 9/15/08

[Matthew Wright]

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 15, 2008
Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in the heat of  
this election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The  
narrow question is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice  
president? Most conservatives say yes, on the grounds that something  
that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few  
commentators, like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and  
Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in different ways that she is unready.

The issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there.  
This argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a  
leader and what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.There was a time  
when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a  
frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical  
egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood  
up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and  
prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has  
been thought and said.
But, especially in America, there has always been a separate,  
populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect  
but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the  
universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.

The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor  
simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor  
instinct.

This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the  
belief that time in government destroys character but contact with  
grass-roots America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has  
produced Sarah Palin.

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to  
do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in  
the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the  
liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman  
because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve  
never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never  
summered in Tuscany.

Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters,  
her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided  
attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why  
regular people need to take control.

And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard,  
Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified  
citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not  
believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted  
rough and rooted people like Palin.

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived  
through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was  
anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive  
practice.

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.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader  
possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the  
study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances  
to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and  
who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have  
rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders  
without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will  
pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the  
Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average  
leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best  
prepared.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a  
corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act  
of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national  
issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like  
President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience  
with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the  
establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it  
corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of  
authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence,  
but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug  
condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination  
in the first place.


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