NEAL GABLER
The best and the brightest redux
By Neal Gabler
July 25, 2010
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WHEN AUTHOR David Halberstam wrote his account of what got this nation
into Vietnam, he didn't find that the architects of the war were obtuse
or illogical or commie-obsessed or infatuated with American might.
Instead, in Halberstam's now iconic term that became the title of his
best-selling book, they were "the best and the brightest'' --- a
superior governing class that was the product of America's best
families, its most prestigious prep schools and universities, and most
august law firms and investment banks. The irony is that these geniuses
turned out to be so dangerously wrong that the very term "best and the
brightest'' became a sarcastic euphemism for a hubris that leads to
disaster.
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One might have thought, then, that the "best and the brightest'' would
have been eternally discredited like the war they promulgated. But
Barack Obama has such a strange, almost reverential faith in the very
sorts of folks Halberstam flayed that the president threatens to lead
his administration and the country down the same hubristic path.
Even before John F. Kennedy, these patricians had always hovered around
Washington, but Kennedy was the one who collected them with the idea
that if Harvard, Yale and Princeton trained the best minds, why not
harness them for the national good. It was also, not incidentally, a
form of retribution for the Irish Catholic president who, though
Harvard-educated, still felt the stings of class hauteur. Now these
Brahmins --- old aristocrats like Robert Lovett, Averell Harriman, and
Dean Acheson and their protégés like William and McGeorge Bundy, Dean
Rusk and Robert McNamara --- were working for him and for America,
though, as Halberstam pointed out, "They were men more linked to one
another, their schools, their own social class and their own concerns
than they were linked to the country,'' which meant that their sense of
the public good was always subordinate to their sense of their own
brilliance.
Above all, the best and the brightest believed in their own
infallibility. They distrusted politics almost as much as they
distrusted the proletariat because politics was about compromise and
satisfying ninnies (us) who they felt were much beneath them. They were
cold, logical, bloodless, and deeply pragmatic. They considered liberal
idealists fools, and emotion a weakness. They knew best, which made them
extremely intimidating. They failed because they didn't think they could
possibly be wrong.
In many ways, Obama was a sucker for this kind of coldblooded,
upper-crust approach to policy and the elitism that went with it.
Half-white, half-black, half-American, half-African, part Kansan, part
Hawaiian, middle class and transient, Obama made the primary plaint and
question of his book, "Dreams From My Father'': Where do I belong? That
question was posed as one of racial identity, but in the end, whether he
fully realized it or not, Obama found himself not in black culture or
white culture but in the culture of the best and the brightest. That's
where he belonged. That's where he seemed to feel most comfortable.
So it is really no surprise that he has packed his administration with
what one might call The Best and the Brightest 2.0 --- people who are as
dispassionate and rational and suspicious of emotion as the president
prides himself as being: a bunch of cool, unflappable customers. (The
exceptions are Vice President Joe Biden and chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel.) Like The Best and the Brightest 1.0, these folks --- guys like
Larry Summers, outgoing budget director Peter Orszag, and Tim Geithner,
on the economic side; and William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of
defense, and James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, on the foreign
side --- are Ivy-educated, confident, and implacable realists and
rationalists. Like their forebears, they have all the answers, which is
why they have been so unaccommodating of other suggestions on the
economy, where economists have been pressing them for more stimulus, or
on Afghanistan, where the president keeps doubling down his bets.
The difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is that 2.0 are not all Protestant,
white males sprung full-blown from the Establishment as 1.0's fathers
and their fathers' fathers were. Like Obama himself, they are by and
large onetime middle-class overachievers who made their way into the Ivy
League and then catapulted to the top levels of class and power by being
. . . well, the best and the brightest. But in elitism as in religion,
no one is more devout than a convert, and these people, again like
Obama, all having been blessed by the Ivy League, also embrace Ivy
League arrogance and condescension. On this, the Republican critics are
right: The administration exudes a sense of superiority.
So what difference does it make if our policy-makers think they are
above criticism? As Halberstam shows in "The Best and the Brightest,''
people who are concerned not with the fundamental rightness of something
but with its execution, because the rightness is assumed; people who see
what they want to see rather than what is; people who see things in
terms of preconceptions rather than of human conduct; people who are
incapable of admitting error; people who lack skepticism and the
capacity to grow beyond their certainties are the sorts of people who
are likely to get us in trouble --- whether it is an ever-lengthening
war in Afghanistan or ever-deepening economic distress here at home.
After all, we've been there once before.
Neal Gabler is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in
Washington.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
The-statist-quo wrote:
Neil Gabler wrote:
"On this, the Republican critics are right: The administration exudes a
sense of superiority.
So what difference does it make if our policy-makers think they are
above criticism? . . . people who are incapable of admitting error;
people who lack skepticism and the capacity to grow beyond their
certainties are the sorts of people who are likely to get us in trouble
--- whether it is an ever-lengthening war in Afghanistan or
ever-deepening economic distress here at home. After all, we've been
there once before."
-------------------------------------------------------------
I am surprised that Gabler has drawn parallels between the Kennedy and
Obama Administrations. My only quarrel with the best and brightest
comparison is the top guy. Although Kennedy and Obama have similar Ivy
League pedigrees, Kennedy saw war and diplomacy first hand in the
Pacific and the Court of St. James, respectively. Kennedy had life
experiences that prepared him for the Presidency. Obama has not had any
experiences that prepared him similar to that of Kennedy's.
Couple that along with Gabler's Best and Brightest analysis, the odds
are greater Obama's team are " . . . the sorts of people who are likely
to get us in trouble". Those are my fears as well, given what has
happened in the first year and a half.
7/24/2010 10:59 PM EDT
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BecknBuv wrote:
I think Obama has shown that he can rethink and compromise... it was
George W. Bush who couldn't think of one thing he'd change about his tenure.
7/25/2010 8:08 AM EDT
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willyandBuster wrote:
I can't recall a single Obama compromise of any significance where it
comes to heeding the wishes of the American People.
Obama is a Progressive and the core belief of Progressivism is that the
People are idiots and should be managed by Enlightened Experts-- "The
Best And The Brightest"--, whether they like it or not.
7/25/2010 9:16 AM EDT
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yooper2 wrote:
People much smarter than me try to figure out what makes BO tick. In my
opinion two things, 1st he is a socialist, 2nd he is a racist.
7/25/2010 9:38 AM EDT
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Richmond12 wrote:
This is the first thing I have read which attempts to explain the
president's hubris. No other president that I can recall has ever acted
so boldly, in enacting policies with zero support from the GOP and
opinion polls showing that the people are opposed as well.
George W. Bush had bipartisan support for everything he did. From tax
cuts to military efforts to foreign policy, President Bush always
created a bipartisan consensus. Not Obama, who acts too superior to need
public or Republican support for anything.
This column begins to explain why.
7/25/2010 9:53 AM EDT
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mistermcfrugal wrote:
Tell you what, let's just throw all of them out on their _ss!
7/25/2010 10:14 AM EDT
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TheSageJohnLocke wrote:
The last paragraph was largely okay but the rest of this is largely bunk!
The author exposes himself as an idiot when he compares Obama's staff to
Kennedy's. It's just absurd on its face.
7/25/2010 10:30 AM EDT
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willyandBuster wrote:
One flaw in Gabler's piece is that the "Best and Brightest" did their
most destructive mischief by far under Johnson, not Kennedy, so that
drawing a parallel between Obama and JFK doesn't really make much sense.
7/25/2010 11:02 AM EDT
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