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Revenge of the Nerds
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
As Obama stocks his administration with eggheads, both right and left are backing away from the anti-intellectualism that has dominated politics for 50 years.
By electing Barack Obama, the American people have proved a lot of political clichés wrong: that Americans wouldn’t elect a black man, or a northern Democrat, or a senator, or someone without extensive national security experience in a time of war. But there’s another cliché that has also bitten the dust, even though it hasn’t received much attention. By electing Barack Obama, Americans have showed that you can win the presidency without appearing dumb.
For more than a half-century, anti-intellectualism has had a pretty good run in presidential politics. In fact, Republicans would never have gotten where they are without it. In the 1950s, when the modern conservative movement was born, the right had a problem: It was seen as elitist, a hangover from the depression years, when Thomas Nast-style plutocrats opposed social security, labor unions and federal aid to the poor. Conservatives needed a way to turn the tables, to show that liberals—those self-proclaimed tribunes of the common man—were the real elitists. That’s where anti-intellectualism came in. If FDR had practiced class warfare, the Cold War right turned to brain warfare instead. William F. Buckley, founder of the right’s flagship publication, National Review, began going around saying that “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama doesn’t temper his intellectualism by embracing his inner Bubba.
In the early 1950s, Richard Nixon slyly fused anti-intellectualism and anti-communism, calling Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson a “Ph.D. graduate of the College of Cowardly Communist Containment.” And in his 1968 presidential bid, Alabama Governor George Wallace condemned “pointy-headed professors” who were imposing their liberal ideas on the segregated South. But it was under Ronald Reagan that the anti-intellectual era in American politics truly began. Reagan harbored strong ideological convictions, but an astonishing unawareness of basic facts. At one meeting in 1983, he amazed a group of congressmen by denying that America had bombers and subs that carried nuclear weapons. (In fact, bombers and submarines constituted two-thirds of America’s nuclear triad). His advisors proved so unable to get him to read his briefing materials that some of them began conveying the information in cartoon form.
America loved it. In the 1980s, the economy boomed, Soviet communism fell and Reagan became one of the most beloved presidents in American history. Compared to his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, a speed-reading workaholic who often corrected aides on their grammar, and who presided over stagflation at home and humiliation abroad, Americans found Reagan’s sunny ignorance a welcome change.
In this way, as in so many others, George W. Bush followed the Reagan script. In the 2000 campaign, he famously flubbed a quiz on world leaders and talked defiantly about “Grecians” and “nucular weapons.” He said he knew he was going to win when he read a New Yorker profile in which Al Gore cited the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
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cassandravert
Good article. I noticed the same things, both the rise of intellectualism and the lack of comment about it.
Distrust of intellectuals has dominated over more than 50 years. I don't know if it's particularly American or just human nature, but even if we change for a time, we can't seem to fully escape it. I admit I don't quite understand it. I'm very pleased to finally have someone smarter than I am running things.
"A party of the working class cannot be dominated by former editors of the Harvard Crimson."
Any party whose ideology does not let it lead with its best and brightest, no matter where they come from, has mortally wounded itself.
dm10003
we're a nation of peasant blood but we're always struggling to climb.
CatoTheCensor
Bobby Jindal? That dog won't hunt, to quote the ever-folksy right. His involvement with David Barton, his support of teaching creationism in schools and his anti-choice-without-exceptions stance might well have taken him places, before W, if he'd been old enough to make a go of it. As it is, history's finally passed the radical right by, the ship has sailed, and the Republicans are going to have to find themselves a centrist with a brain or continue their wanderings in the wilderness.
estcruzer
I wonder if there is a strong connection between this anti intellectualism and the decline of education in the US? Something to ponder - be careful what you promote, you just might get it.
edededed
I truly hope this becomes a trend
overdue
@estcruzer:
Culd you pleze eksplane? you're sentancces are to long!
Maryam
It's amusing that trust fund babies who mangle the English language are considered the "regular guy" while someone from a middle class background who worked and studied hard to get to where they are today is ridiculed. What the last couple of elections have shown us is that there is just something fundamentally wrong with the way this country perceives intelligence and merit.
Servius
Obama is the culmination of anti-intellectualism. Economic understanding in this country is abysmal and the President-Elect is no exception.
I see him taking an ordinary recession and turning it into a Great Depression the way FDR managed to.
mesquito
It's a whole new paradigm. ("Paradigm" is a word that intellectuals like me use. If you don't understand it, you should even be voting, much less reading Beinert.)
MildlyAmused
I don't really think that American's distrust intellectuals or don't value intelligence as a virtue. The problem is that too often, what the media elite define as "intellectual" or "intelligent" is simply a mirro reflection of their own limited world view or what they perceive as the right pedigree. In other words, if someone holds a conservative world view then they are automatically viewed as less intelligent or if someone is from the South or God forbid, religious, then they simply can't be as smart as someone from the Northeast or an Ivy League school. What I will say is that Americans are highly skeptical of patronizing elites who think that they know what is best for others and who reflexively look down on people who don't share their workdview or pedigree. I personally value intelligence very highly but I value courage, integrity, honor, and personal accountability even more in my leaders. Given the choice, I will always choose a leader who has these latter virtues over the person that doesn't know matter how smart. Let's not forget that serial killer Ted Bundy and Unibomber Ted Kazynski were both geniuses.
lamar95
The last time we had a group of intellectuals in the White House was during the Kennedy administration. They were going to tackle communism in Southeast Asia and poverty in America.
How did that work out?
BillSanford
The writer strikes me as being part of the "in the Tank for Obama" media. Nothing to say except glowing accounts of greatness unobstructed by achievement or facts.
Face it, Obama is a junior Senator from Cook County, Chicago. He has no great recored of academic achievement, or political acumen. His Cabinet, so far, is a rehash of the Clinton years. Yet, he would tell you that "this is Change".
No, I think the writer, Mr. Beinart, is pretty much In the Tank.
BarneyPilot
Great article! For the past 8 years, I've wondered if I had lost my mind. I'm a relatively liberal military soldier. I now avoid discussing politics. There's so much "emotional" information floating around that's inaccurate. We're living in an endorphin based culture where facts don't seem to matter as much as the viewpoints spewed by arousing and highly-caustic orators. I think the moment John McCain asked Sarah Palin to be his running mate was the moment I thought I needed to go to the crazy house. Nothing in politics was ever going to make sense to me again. Even when I asked some of my conservative friends about Palin, they'd predictably replay, "ain't she great!" For eight years I thought I've been in a weird version of the Emperor's New Clothes. I'm so happy Barack had the guts and intellect to say the current administration is naked!
jstocks
I am guessing that Mr. Beinart has never read "Reagan In His Own Hand."
jstocks
I am guessing Mr. Beinnart has never read "Reagan In His Own Hand"
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