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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=319155311-18092008>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!</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=319155311-18092008></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=319155311-18092008>--Linda
Ryan</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=319155311-18092008></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
neohiopal-bounces+pommy=neo.rr.com@listserve.com
[mailto:neohiopal-bounces+pommy=neo.rr.com@listserve.com]<B>On Behalf Of
</B>Brooke Willis<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, September 17, 2008 4:47
PM<BR><B>To:</B> neohiopal@listserve.com<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [NEohioPAL] A
thoughtful opinion written by a Republican pundit,NY TIMES Op-Ed
9/15/08<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>Please please please let's not start this....<BR>We
get plenty of political opinions in our <I>regular</I> e-mail these
days.<BR>Thank you.<BR><?/bigger><?/bigger><?/bigger><BR><BR>On Sep 17, 2008, at
3:56 PM, Matthew Wright wrote:<BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?color><?param 8080,8080,8080><?smaller>By
<?/smaller><?/color><?color><?param 0808,4343,7676><?smaller>DAVID BROOKS<?/smaller><?/color><?/fontfamily><BR><?fontfamily><?param Arial><?color><?param 8080,8080,8080><?smaller>Published:
September 15, 2008<?/smaller><?/color><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>The
elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The
elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Georgia><?bigger><?x-tad-bigger>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.<?/x-tad-bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily><BR><BR>______________________________________<BR>NEohioPAL
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