December 1, 2002
THE GENIUS OF ANTI-GENIUS:
They'll have to think again about the Quiet American (Mark Steyn, 01/12/2002, Daily Telegraph)In fairness to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, when he dubbed the US the Great Satan he at least understood thatAmerica is a tempter, a seducer: his slur attempts to explain its appeal. Calling America the Great Moron, by contrast, is just feeble. I happen to like moral clarity myself, but I can appreciate that for some tastes Bush's habit of dividing the world into "good" and "evil" and using these terms non-ironically might seem a little simplistic. But it's nowhere near as simplistic as dividing the world into "I'm right" and "you're stupid".For Republicans, this is an old song. "President Reagan's library burned down. Both books," drawled Gore Vidal from his exile in Italy. "The tragedy was he had not finished colouring the books." This is the guy who won the Cold War. In the 1950s, Eisenhower was a smiling dummy who cared most about his golf. This is the fellow who won the Second World War. But long after everything else has crumbled away the intellectual arrogance of the anti-Americans is indestructible. "A man like George W Bush is simply not possible in our politics," I was told by an elegant, cultured Parisian this spring. "For a creature of such crude, simplistic and extreme views to be one of the two principal candidates in a presidential election would be inconceivable here. Inconceivable!" Two weeks later, Jean Marie Le Pen made it into the final round of the
French election.In The Quiet American, Graham Greene treated these cliches more fairly than most: the American may not understand the Vietnamese, but the worldly Englishman is mired in his jaded passivity.
It does seem though that part of the genius of American politics is our hostility to intellectuals. The only elections of the 20th Century in which the manifestly more intelligent non-incumbents won were 1928, 1968, and 1976--and look how they worked out. Were it not for Woodrow Wilson--the accidental intellectual president--Hoover, Nixon, and Carter would be our worst modern presidents, and it took another arrogant intellectual, the godawful Teddy Roosevelt, to put Wilson in office. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2002 11:38 AM
We intellectuals are for the most part egotistical, vain folk who are not good at working with others. Our strengths are not very useful to Presidents, and our weaknesses are exactly those a President needs to be strong in.
Posted by: pj at December 1, 2002 11:34 AMWhat's this guff about TR?
He was a man's man and one of the great Presidents of all time.
TR was a genuine intellectual. I have his
collected works in 12 volumes, half-calf, duodecimo.
I don't share Orrin's disdain of, one must suppose,
himself, he being a flogger of thumbsucking
books and all.
It might be more to the point to say that the
job requirements for being a successful leader
of a large democracy are never combined in
one person.
I will go so far as to say that, given a choice
between real intellectuals like Hoover and
phoney intellectuals like Kennedy and his
pals, I'll take the real ones.
TR was a fine man, but a very bad, because activist, president and putting Wilson in office is unforgivable.
Posted by: oj at December 1, 2002 8:50 PMYou can go even further than Nixon, Hoover and Carter and toss in Wilson, LBJ and Clinton as the "smartest" presidents of the 20th Century and then match their accomplishments up against the supposed "dumbest" six -- Harding, Coolege, Truman, Eisenhower, Ford and Reagan. Of that bunch, only Harding can be regarded as a total failure. Head-to-head, the "dumb" guys come out miles ahead of the super-geniuses, a pattern that seems to be holding as the 21st Century begins.
Posted by: John at December 1, 2002 10:10 PMHey, Harding is under-rated.
He was given a smear-job by the Left after his death and any man who goes to Alabama in the 20's, protests lynchings and says blacks need to be treated equally (even considering the South was a Republican no-go area) deserves some credit.
Excellent point, Ali. Harding looks especially good on race compared to the egregiously racist Wilson.
Posted by: oj at December 2, 2002 10:38 AMExcellent point, Ali. Harding looks especially good on race compared to the egregiously racist Wilson.
Posted by: oj at December 2, 2002 10:38 AMI applaud Harding, but remember that at that time blacks were voting Republican and Ku Kluxers Democratic. Harding was opposing the lynching of his own constituents. Similarly Wilson was reflecting the racist views of the Democrats who elected him.
Posted by: pj at December 2, 2002 12:42 PMpj:
From what I've read, Wilson was personally and venomously racist, not just George Wallace racist.
Wilson was a double racist, both a Virginian and
a social Spenserist.
Harding let Debs out of prison, you'd think
the left would have liked that.
How did Coolidge get on the good list? He
slept through nearly his whole term (even more
than Reagan). In foreign policy, he let the
Germans off the hook for reparations, which
wrecked the European security arrangement,
with dire consequences for America later.
Domestically, he watched agriculture go down
the tubes, also with bad consequences.
That's how.
Posted by: oj at December 2, 2002 11:31 PM