Soccer Dad

Schoolyard taunting

Nicholas Kristoff celebrates the election of Barack Obama with "Obama and the war on brains."

Barack Obama's election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Certainly he did not come across in the campaign as an intellectual and my suspicion is that if he had he wouldn't have won. Why not? Here's a story that Kristof tells about another intellectual who ran for President.

At least since Adlai Stevenson's campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it's been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned. Thoughtfulness is portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. The social critic William Burroughs once bluntly declared that "intellectuals are deviants in the U.S."

(It doesn't help that intellectuals are often as full of themselves as of ideas. After one of Stevenson's high-brow speeches, an admirer yelled out something like, You'll have the vote of every thinking American! Stevenson is said to have shouted back: That's not enough. I need a majority!)

If Stevenson projected that attitude, as even Kristof admits, it would have turned off a lot of people who don't disdain intellectualism as much they disdain arrogance. But of course he isn't simply insulting the current resident of the White House, but those of us who actually voted for President Bush. I'm no intellectual but I can appreciate one, but that doesn't mean that I want one governing.

Still the idea that President Bush is "incurious" or as Kristoff put it is "uninterested in ideas" is unfair. While he can be criticized for the way he implemented it, President Bush was inspired by Natan Sharansky's "The case of Democracy." And while he was a candidate, Bush disparaged the idea of "nation building," his success or failure as President will be measured by how much nation building the United States accomplished during his term in office. Surely, though Kristoff wouldn't hear of it, President Bush has had successes, especially in Afrrica.

Kristoff writes:

As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can't think of anybody I've ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.

Of course the Middle East experts Kristoff wanted the President to listen to, told him to withdraw. Instead the President went with the surge. I'm not sure why the President's rejection of this advice is a negative.

But consider a counter argument. David Ignatius wrote last week how wonderful it was that Barack Obama was seeking advice from Zbigniew Brzezinski. Gordon Chang wrote in response, "...arter's national security advisor has not been right in years..."

(A related comment is at Daled Amos)

More important that seeking out all sorts of information is making sure that the information is good. Using Dr. Brzezinski as a source, I suppose, is good from the standpoint of an intellectual, but knowing how much (or little) to value his advice is even more important. President Bush could have withdrawn and Iraq would not now be winnable. By going against the experts whom Kristoff likes, President Bush did the right thing.

This is hardly an endorsement of intellectualism:

Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn't condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.

A ninth grade reading level versus a seventh grade reading level doesn't reflect well on President-elect Obama. For public consumption a seventh grade reading level is ideal. (I know a little bit about this. When the language checker tells me that I've written higher than a seventh grade level it's an indication that my writings was unnecessarily complex.) A leader needs to reach his constituents, not talk above them.

Finally, what really sinks this op-ed is:

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn't realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

In order to promote the value of intellectualism, Kristof brings up an unsubstantiated charge against Governor Palin as contrast. Yes, intellectualism is great, nyah, nyah, nyah. He's promoting deeper thought among our leadership by resorting to a schoolyard taunt.

Classy. And convincing.