We Don't Need No Education?

David Brooks has written another insightful editorial piece on the current state of the election campaign, and the issues involved therein. I strongly encourage you to read the whole article, but I think a line worth quoting comes toward the end of his article: "Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared."

If we have learned the lesson from the Bush years, writes Brooks, we should not fail ourselves in this election by putting into office those candidates who "are like us" and "share our values," but who nevertheless lack the wisdom and education necessary to lead a nation and direct a complex administration.

"It turns out," says Brooks, "that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence." We don't need more shoot-from-the-hip nonsense, or more apocalyptic talk about the importance of not blinking. We need good sense. We need the steady perception of well-trained eyes. A rigorous, well-respected, and demanding (e.g. "Ivy League") education is a significant help here, not a handicap.

Brooks is, by all accounts, a conservative intellectual. He falls in with the likes of George Will and David Frum - two people he specifically mentions at the start of his editorial. Thus, it is somewhat surprising to read such criticism of the Republican ticket here (though, to be fair, his main target is Palin, not McCain).

This is, after all, the same Brooks who had originally celebrated Palin, and in previous articles had sounded excited about the McCain/Palin ticket. After Palin's announcement as VP-candidate, he wrote that "she seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent" ("What the Palin Pick Says," 9/2/08). After her speech at the convention, he proclaimed her as the revelation of "the new" in the Republican party, and wrote that "her words flowed directly from her life experience, her poise and mannerisms from her town and its conversations. She left behind most of the standard tropes of Republican rhetoric [...]. There wasn’t even any tired, old Reagan nostalgia." In sum, said Brooks, "in those 40 minutes [of her speech], the forces of reform Republicanism took control" ("A Glimpse of the New," 9/4/08).

It would seem that the high of the convention, however, has left Brooks with a lingering hangover about Palin and the Republican ticket, especially as the vast reality of the problems we will inherit from the Bush administration becomes more and more palpable, by the day.