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

[Linda Ryan]

Then push that little delete button! Politics are bound to come into every
aspect of our lives - including the arts. Why shouldn't we discuss it? I
loved Martin's Friedman's post on the current debate, BTW!

--Linda Ryan

-----Original Message-----
From: neohiopal-bounces+pommy=neo.rr.com at listserve.com
[mailto:neohiopal-bounces+pommy=neo.rr.com at listserve.com]On Behalf Of Brooke
Willis
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 4:47 PM
To: neohiopal at listserve.com
Subject: Re: [NEohioPAL] A thoughtful opinion written by a Republican
pundit,NY TIMES Op-Ed 9/15/08


Please please please let's not start this....
We get plenty of political opinions in our regular e-mail these days.
Thank you.


On Sep 17, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Matthew Wright wrote:

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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