Elitist not elite II

musings notes this particularly egregious conflation of elitism with eliteness.

Like most members in good standing of the Washington media elite, I have naturally and inevitably grown to hate Sarah Palin. But that's okay, because the feeling is evidently mutual. At last week's convention, Palin went on about how "experts in Washington" were counting out McCain with their "usual certitude" and the "Washington elite" weren't taking her seriously because she isn't part of the club. Palin, you see, is a typical American -- a hockey mom who has "had the privilege of living most of [her] life in a small town," as part of a family that has "the same ups and downs as any other." "I also drive myself to work," she added, just in case we didn't get the point.

The aw-shucks act serves two purposes. First, claiming to be The Average is a useful mallet for beating down criticism as hopelessly snobbish -- as when Bill Kristol writes in this week's Weekly Standard that "the liberal elites" will appeal to their "anti-small town" prejudices when they try, presumably with their usual certitude, to keep Palin 3400 miles away from Washington. (I have no idea what "anti-small town" prejudices look like, but I guess I better get some.)

Second, and more importantly, Palin's everyday qualities are supposed to be an actual electoral and governmental asset -- as when Kristol writes (this time in the Times) that by picking a real-live "Wal-Mart Mom," John McCain might have a decisive number of voters saying, "It's about time." Reverse snobbery is the new snobbery: the way to win an election and govern a country is by seeming as ordinary as the limits of credulity allow.

Let me take the bait and make a plea for good old-fashioned elitism: It's not "about time" for an average American to occupy the White House (or the Naval Observatory), and the notion that some ossified and preening elite lords over Washington is silly.

Everyone is an elitist. We want elite doctors to treat our cuts and cancers. We want elite lawyers and accountants to smooth over our divorces and taxes. And we (some of us, anyway) want our elite soldiers to invade foreign countries. And we don't apologize for these preferences. In most contexts, "elite" is just another word for "merit."

So why don't many of us want elite politicians? The reverse snobs usually argue that Everywoman politicians are better at understanding everyone's problems. But even if this claim is true (and I'm pretty sure it isn't) it remains suspiciously unextended to all other aspects of social life. We don't think the lawyers who have been dragged through a messy divorce are more capable of handling a client's. Why?

And anyway, anti-elitism strikes me a strange pose for a through-and-through conservative. The helpful oversimplification is that conservatives are supposed to favor equality of opportunity ("everyone competes on equal footing, outcomes be damned") and liberals supposed to favor equality of outcome ("everyone deserves something, competition be damned"). Equality of opportunity is supposed to dictate that race, gender, geography, and nepotism count for nothing - they're all features that have nothing to do with merit. This principle is why the same Bill Kristol could write (about a different unqualified applicant, Harriet Miers) that there was "a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it." That she was a Bush loyalist and a woman said nothing about her merits. Palin's interest in hockey and commuting says equally little.

"Merit" might be tough to define and harder to locate -- as a member of the liberal elite, I certainly have some problems with it -- but as a theory, it hangs together coherently. Conservatives used to like it. But I guess all that flew out the window somewhere between Wasilla and Anchorage, maybe while Sarah Palin was driving herself to work.

— CONOR CLARKE

In fact, the puny-headed punditry propogated in these paragraphs itself proves the difference between Palin-like elites and the poor, pea-brained Washington elitists.

Update: I think this sentence summarizes the sentiment of this post:

Her perspective is different from that of other national politicians. For Barack Obama, Wal-Mart is a symbol of worker exploitation. For Hillary Clinton, it’s a former source of corporate-director fees. For Sarah Palin, it’s a place where you buy stuff.

When is the last time someone insisted that their doctor not shop at Wal-Mart, and instead look down on people who do? This has nothing to do with eliteness, it is cultural elitism, which is not helpful in governing, perhaps much the opposite.