Who Is Cool To Rule?

David Brooks has made a final stab at disqualifying Sarah Palin on the basis of experience in his infuriatingly patronizing N.Y. Times column today.

Brooks considers it a given that Palin’s lacks experience and prudence. Brooks makes the curious statement, “She seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness,” an assertion he fails to back up with examples.

Exactly how is Palin brash? Webster’s defines “brash” as, “heedless of the consequences, audacious, done in haste without regard for consequences, rash, full of fresh raw vitality, uninhibitedly energetic or demonstrative, lacking restraint and discernment, tactless, aggressively self-assertive, impudent.

Sarah Palin is “audacious,” having taken on Big Oil and the Republican establishment in Alaska and beaten them. Those actions may have seemed to have been made “heedlessly of consequences,” but she evidently knew what she was doing, because she squeezed a windfall tax out of Big Oil and won the governorship despite the enmity of the state GOP.

Was she rash? She would have been if she were incapable of winning the battles she took on. But she was talented enough to win. Working to the limit of your talents is not being rash.

Is she “full of fresh raw vitality?” So much so that it irritates her liberal foes to the point of derangement.

Therefore, if Sarah Palin is “brash,” as Brooks claims, it is the good kind of brash: audacious, daring, vital, fresh and energetic.

More curious is Brooks’ charge that Palin is “excessively decisive.” Decision is generally considered a positive quality in a leader. In a world where nuclear weapons are on a hair trigger and national leaders may not have the luxury of enough time to blink, the ability to come to a decision and stick to it is a positive good.

Take the recent Russia-Georgian War, for example. Barack Obama’s initial response was to call on both sides to act with restraint and to submit the dispute to the UN Security Council –where one of the belligerent countries has a veto. Where is the decision in this mealy-mouthed manifesto? All that Obama succeeds in doing is to draw a moral equivalence between the aggressor (Russia) and the victim (Georgia) and propose an inherently impotent forum for solving the crisis. McCain’s first response was an outraged demand that Russia remove her troops from Georgia –a decisive, unambiguous statement that lays the blame for the war where it belongs.

Decisiveness is absolutely essential to leadership. If Brooks wanted to criticize Palin for impulsiveness or rash decision-making, he should have done so explicitly. On the other hand, there is no evidence in the public record of Palin making rash decisions as a mayor or governor…

Brooks falls back on the experience issue to disqualify Palin. Only education and experience, he says, endows the ruler with the required prudence and wisdom for governance.

Says who?

Let’s look at experience from the perspective of presidential history. Some of our most qualified leaders, in terms of education and experience, have made our worst presidents.

Among the worst are John Adams, the Harvard-educated co-signer of the Declaration of Independence who, as President, attempted to criminalize criticism of the government and embroiled us in an undeclared naval war with France. U.S. Grant was West Point-educated, commanded the largest American army up to that time and, as president, was unable to control rampant corruption in his administration.

Franklin Pierce (Bowdoin College) allowed himself to be used as a tool by the south to expand slavery into the Territories. Woodrow Wilson (President, Princeton University –Governor of New Jersey) was unable to convince his own country to participate in the League of Nations. Herbert Hoover (Stanford) presided impotently over the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy (Harvard –service in the U.S. Senate and House) and Lyndon B. Johnson (Texas State University-San Marcos, Senate Majority Leader) embroiled us in the quagmire of Vietnam.

Richard M. Nixon (Whittier College – U.S. Senate, Vice President) subverted the Constitution. Jimmy Carter (US Naval Academy-Georgia State Senate, Governor of Georgia) presided over the hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and an economic meltdown. George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard Law--CEO, Texas Rangers, Governor of Texas) mishandled the Iraq War and relief operations after Hurricane Katrina.

What a talented, well-educated group of executives! But where are the benefits of experience and prudence? Obviously, a great education and extensive experience are no guarantee that a leader will be just, prudent or even minimally competent.

Among our worst qualified presidents we find Abraham Lincoln (nine months elementary school –Illinois legislature, US House of Representatives) who preserved the Union and freed the slaves. Harry S. Truman (Independence High School –failed haberdasher, local judge, one term U.S. Senate, one month Vice President) ended World War II with the atomic bombings of Japan, used an airlift to save besieged Berlin, founded NATO, rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan and reasserted civilian control over the military by firing MacArthur. George Washington (no formal schooling – military general) established the modern presidency, helped write the Constitution, established tradition of giving up power after two terms, declined a monarchy over America and asserted national sovereignty against local challenges to Federal authority (Whiskey Rebellion).

Evidently, lack of schooling or experience is not a reliable predictor of performance as President either.

Neither is membership in the governing elite. Mr. Brooks’ protestations to the contrary, George W. Bush was and is a member of the elite political class –which proved to be no guarantee of great performance.

In the end, Mr. Brooks’ big objection to Sarah Palin is that she is not “one of us,” a member of the governing class. “Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared,” Brooks says.

So who are the “best prepared?” Who gets to define that? The editorial board of The New York Times? I submit the definition belongs to the people, not to academics, not to party bosses, and certainly not to opinion writers like David Brooks. Let the people choose their leaders from among themselves. No one should be entitled to rule (or disqualified) by virtue of their education, experience or membership in a cultural elite.

Democracy is the people selecting their leaders from among themselves –not from a list of “approved candidates” submitted by the press or the parties.