Monday, July 06, 2009

Undemocratic Elitists?

Has someone revealed themselves to be an undemocratic elitist when they expect the people selected to lead this country to be among the best and brightest, to have demonstrated competence and achievement? That is the dubious proposition advanced by Ross Douthat in his column in today's New York Times.

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

If Douthat was talking about someone other than Sarah Palin and was arguing that someone could be smart, knowledgeable, accomplished and competent without attending an elite school at least he would have an arguable point. But since it is Sarah Palin he must be claiming that someone can be a "great success" without being smart, knowledgeable, accomplish and competent. And if you doubt that he says you are an undemocratic elitist!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the problem is that voters like to support candidates with average thinking and administrative skills (Palin or Bush) rather than vote for candidates who have great intelligence and skills. Or, is it that voters don’t mind that a candidate is a tool or puppet of oil and the military industrial complex (those who are the supporters of “conservative” candidates in the Republican party)? Bush, even in his first term, openly and unabashedly designed government policy to take from the poor and give to the rich and then started a war under TOTALLY FALSE pretenses to give billions to his political backers and was still easily re-elected to a second term. Sarah Palin has made a mess with her political decisions, her administrative decisions, and her family decisions and she is still being supported as a potential candidate for president of the United States. Go figure.