Capitol Ideas: Elites, Elitists, and the Campaign
Bethell, Tom
caPITol Ideas Elites, Elitists, and the Campaign by Tom Bethell B B arack obama has been called an elitist, so it’s worth exploring what that may mean. Over the years I...
...But, whatever else we may think of Peter, James, Matthew, John, and the rest, we don’t think of them as elitists...
...48 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR sePTeMbeR 2008 City Journal contributing editor Michael Knox Beran stimulated my thinking on this topic...
...McCain has already bought into key elite initiatives such as the global-warming scare, the purpose of which is to raise taxes on oil companies...
...McCain has been obtuse on these issues, but at least he seems to be coming to his senses on oil drilling...
...T T hat’s where obama comes in, promising to bring with him more state power, regulation, and higher taxes...
...I don’t have access to search engines as I write, but I doubt if the New York Times calls anyone elitist—that would disparage their own allies...
...The people we think of as being elitist usually haven’t been chosen by anyone...
...Over the years I have avoided the word, because elite implies chosen—but chosen by whom...
...the perennial threat to it is democracy (which can inconveniently elect the likes of Reagan and George W. Bush...
...The dollar value of markets worldwide has taken a big hit over recent months, but the truth is that market forces are more powerful than they have ever been...
...When privilege is threatened by a new order, in this instance the market order, its survival strategy, Beran writes, is to “cement an alliance with those at the bottom of the heap...
...No one ever accused the late (and great) Sen...
...So the imperative is that markets must be tamed, the nouveaux riches thinned out, at least, if not eliminated entirely...
...And more and more, that means voters...
...Their own funding is at stake...
...Environmentalism has been the Great Game for the elites over the past generation—a way of pretending that science, not progressive politics, dictates their policy preferences...
...They must aim to steer the affairs of state in pursuit of particular policy goals...
...By the criterion of chosenness, the Twelve Apostles were the ultimate elite...
...Any deliberate attempt by a new administration to reduce the influence of markets will be unpopular with shareholders...
...No connections are needed...
...We the unwashed are led to suppose that we don’t have any choice in the matter if the world as we know it is to survive...
...As Samuel Johnson and others have said, the pursuit of wealth is a relatively harmless activity...
...caPITol Ideas Elites, Elitists, and the Campaign by Tom Bethell B B arack obama has been called an elitist, so it’s worth exploring what that may mean...
...Markets heave people up and drop them down without respect to qualifications and credentials...
...it is not mentioned...
...the College of Cardinals is another...
...If the wealthy want to savor ToM beTHell power, they must run for office...
...It’s like a club that any clown can join without vetting just so long as he has the price of admission...
...Science magazine and the great hordes of government-funded scientists have acted as true believers on behalf of this elitist cause...
...But he will have to be careful not to push it too hard or take it too seriously...
...When the (white) working classes saw what was happening, they showed resistance to elite rule...
...The -ist suffix often works that way: Creation, creationist...
...More important, elites must prefer power to money...
...Jesse Helms of being a member of any elite...
...In the 1960s the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that “wealth and power no longer go together in America...
...So what are the key features of the elite today...
...As it is used today, the word is always pejorative...
...The world was impressed...
...But he may in the end have hamstrung his own campaign by abiding by the system he helped create...
...The great enemy of the class in which Obama has enlisted is the free market...
...But there is a hazard, as Hillary showed in her closing campaign...
...Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, and Kerry had received no such blessing...
...capital, capitalist...
...In a recent article in National Review, he sees that despite Obama’s slogan of “change,” he belongs to an “established tradition,” one that he came to not by birth but “by adoption...
...Politicians with such retrograde, elitist intentions will be punished at the next electoral opportunity...
...China and India, earlier mired in socialism or worse, have brought one-third of the world into market orbits...
...race, racist...
...McCain seems to think that any assault on elitist values would be demeaning—to him...
...If the patrician order is indeed decaying, as Beran suggests, then the market system is the likely culprit...
...Tom bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator...
...An elite may include the elected—Sen...
...this might also get the rabble out of their cars and into mass transit where they belong: elitist heaven...
...When he went to American University in Washington, D.C., in January, Kennedy performed his own act of choosing—ritually laying hands upon Obama as a worthy successor to his sainted brother...
...He did come out for some tentative offshore exploration...
...On the other hand, the great evils of the 20th century were committed by powerhungry idealists who were contemptuous of money...
...McCain shares their concerns...
...It is nonetheless a peculiar and revealing ordering of priorities...
...Decaying patrician orders have historically maintained their preeminence by taking the lower depths in hand and giving them the benefit of a (wise and benevolent) paternal superintendence...
...The Clintons both have shown that they know how to appeal to the upper and lower ends of the liberal alliance...
...Power is more exclusive, for one thing, and to those with access to it, power can make available so many things that money can’t buy...
...In fact, he represents a competing and no less elitist philosophy, as Beran argues, “the aristocratic ideal in its prime, when the knight aspired to fight the good fight...
...The Supreme Court qualifies as an elite, chosen by the president...
...No doubt that’s why liberals continue to direct so much of their firepower against money and so little against power...
...But the trouble with the L-word is that it tends to stop thought rather than encourage it...
...It seems democratic, and negates the suspicion of hereditary rule...
...With any luck, from the elite perspective, The great evils of the 20th century were committed by power-hungry idealists who were contemptuous of money...
...The GOP is in such bad shape that Obama can no doubt win even with an elitist agenda...
...denial, denialist...
...But he was holding the line on drilling in Alaska, using the purely elitist argument that ANWR is a “pristine” area and shouldn’t be disturbed...
...Money is required for elite membership, although that is tacit...
...It’s as though (he seems to think) an admiral on board a ship were to take disciplinary action more appropriately left to the quartermaster...
...Even in Britain, trade union membership has fallen by 50 percent over the past 25 years...
...In short, elitist may well be nothing more than another name for a liberal...
...By foregoing the chance to make money in a big law firm, he “conformed to the patrician ethos of Columbia and still more of Harvard, the faith that public service is nobler than working to make a little dough...
...In the world of “decaying patriciandom, the public service grad enjoys a special prestige...
...Actually, elites like nothing more than a designated outsider to implement their agenda...
...Obama’s decision to become a community organizer after Harvard Law was his key qualifying move, Beran writes...
...sePTeMbeR 2008 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR 49...
...Ted Kennedy qualifies—but obviously election is not a requirement...
...The thought that the midnight caribou is being disturbed by oil company executives causes sleepless nights on Manhattan’s East Side...
...The attempt to keep money out of politics with campaign finance laws was a blatantly elitist move, strongly supported by John McCain and earning him credit with the right people...
...Obama has not shown such versatility, and McCain seems disinclined to spell these things out for the voters...
...Congress might form an elite, because it’s elected, but plainly that misconstrues the whole idea...
...Those with money who don’t seek that goal, or perhaps oppose it, don’t qualify for elite membership because they aren’t even trying to get with the program...
Vol. 41 • September 2008 • No. 7
