National Insecurity

Richard Cohen this morning hits on one of the more constant memé's of my own through the years, the curiously baffling need for us to insist on our leaders being (or acting) as stupid as possible.

He was, to my mind, the perfect senatorial candidate - familiar with both domestic and foreign affairs, well-traveled, well-educated and coming from a family whose accomplishments had to amount to a rich legacy. Yet, because Bennet faces a primary, and if he survives that, a general election, none of these things could be mentioned. In the current political environment, it behooves the wise candidate to hide his qualifications. We have come to value ignorance.

Bennet's reticence about his stellar qualifications represents something sad - the collapse of the elite. People who should know better - who, in fact, do know better - slum with political primitives, thinking they can be wallflowers at the tea party, and still go home with their integrity intact. The elite - often wrong, often unwise - are scorned not for their mistakes but for their very credentials. In this way, the average person gets a government in his own image - a standard no one would seek in a dentist.

I've said it a thousand times, nobody gets bent out of shape when their surgeon knows more about surgery than they do, but for some reason we're miffed at the idea that someone could know more about legislating and governing than we do, and so we're determined to make sure whoever's in charge is theoretically no better than ourselves. Which might work when it comes to choosing who you hang out with at the bar, but might come back to haunt you when it comes to anything else, including choosing the people that make decisions on a daily basis that actually affects our lives.