America Our Choice Is Clear

The following post is not mine, but I wish it was.

"This is something that a friend of mine wrote to a little internet circle of lawyers and law professors... . He's a lifelong Republican and and world class over-achiever himself. After we asked him, he has consented to have this circulated without his name attached to it. It is already starting to get a pretty wide circulation, and I'm passing it on because I think he has identified something fundamentally wrong with the way people are thinking in this country today. Here it is:

"The more I think about the Palin "narrative" versus the Obama "elitism" the more depressed I get about what it implies about our country.

"On the one hand, we have a guy who is the equivalent of military nobility. His father was a four star admiral; his grandfather was a four star admiral. He did poorly in every school he ever attended, but moved along in his career as far as he did in no small part due to elite connections. He is anything but an entrepreneur, but he did marry a rich woman who keeps him up so well that he can't even remember how many houses they own.

"On the other hand, we have a guy whose grandfather on one side was a third world goatherder, and on the other side an American heartland farmer. He grew up in modest circumstances with no elite connections, but worked hard, got into some of the finest schools in the country, and used the springboard that gave him to make it to a nice standard of living on his own.

"Of the two, the one with the goatherder grandfather is somehow the elitist.

"But it's not "somehow." There is a how here. The how is that he attended and did well at demanding institutions.

"He is an achiever, and in today's Republican party those who achieve on their own are not "Horatio Alger stories;" they are "elitists." In today's populism, it's not elite birth or membership in the plutocracy that makes you an elitist. It is nothing other than competence and achievement.

"Selected to lead the attack on him is a woman who attended five mediocre colleges over six years, compiling a forgettable record even there. She has continued that same mediocrity in every facet of her life. That she is so flawed is precisely her appeal.

"We have always had mediocrities in public life; you just can't keep them out. We also have always had a Jacksonian strain that celebrates people from common origins who rise above early disadvantages and perform in a superlative manner.

"This is different. So far as I know, this is the first time that, in this country, being competent and good at what you do is considered a detriment. This is the first time that mediocrities are selected not despite being mediocre, but because they are mediocre.

"What all this tells me is that the problems of the past eight years run deeper than George W Bush. I no longer think he was an unfortunate accident. There is a narrative here, a narrative that penalizes being thoughtful and accomplished, and rewards those who do poorly.

"How we will compete in the world, against an ascending China and a resurgent Russia, when we pick people specifically because they are dopes escapes me."