What's Changed In 60 Years? We're A Helluva Lot Dumber!

An old (I mean old.) high school classmate has taken to reading this blog on a regular basis. Some old folks collect rubber bands, others save aluminum foil, and there is one old guy in the N-State (Where they think the "N" on the university's football helmets stands for Nowledge.) who regularly checks on this blog. Last night, he sent an exasperated e-mail: "Do you really think that nothing has changed in our politics in 60 years??? I do read your blog." This is a reach-in-the-mailbag-moment that was a staple of radio shows in the golden age of that medium. There HAS been change in our politics over the past 60 years. We have reached a state of affairs when stupid people are celebrated for their stupidity and they are elected to the highest offices in the land. We have a president who is the eldest son of a well-established Connecticut family moved to West Texas. The president rode his family connections and reputation to a pair of degrees from Yale (BA, history) and Harvard (MBA). The president was a mediocre undergraduate student and, if not for his family, would not have been welcomed at Harvard as a member of the grounds crew, let alone its MBA program. This story of stupidity rewarded can be found in the life story of the Republican nominee for president in 2008: son of a distinguished family of Navy officers, this fool graduated 5th from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. The current VP dropped (flunked?) out of Yale and graduated from the University of Wyoming. The Republican VP nominee in '08 is even less distinguished than all of the above. She flunked out of junior college during her meander to a TV journalism degree at the University of Idaho. Does it get any worse? You betcha! The last POTUS who was not a college graduate was Harry S Truman 60 years ago. Truman, a proud graduate of Independence (MO) High School (now William Chrisman High School), was a intellectual giant compared to the current president, vice president, and both of the Republican pretenders to those positions in 2008. So, the answer to the question is "Yes, politics has changed over the past 60 years. The proof is in the dumbest pair of candidates ever presented to the voters in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." If they are elected, may the God (or your choice) have mercy upon our poor, poor souls. If this is a (fair & balanced) response to the question o'the day, so be it.

[x Salon]
The Dumbing Down Of The GOP
By Joe Conason

Sarah Palin's debate performance should signal the beginning of the end of her fad. But for the moment it is worth looking at the meaning of her nomination, without the protective varnish of what conservatives usually dismiss as political correctness.

Why should we pretend not to notice when Governor Palin's ideas make no sense? Having said last week that "it doesn't matter" whether human activity is the cause of climate change, she said in debate that she "doesn't want to argue" about the causes. It doesn't occur to her that we have to know the causes in order to address the problem. (She was very fortunate that moderator Gwen Ifill didn't ask her whether she truly believes that human beings and dinosaurs inhabited this planet simultaneously only 6,000 years ago.)

Why should we ignore her inability to string together a series of coherent thoughts? As a foe of Wall Street greed and a late convert to the gospel of government regulation, along with John McCain, Palin promised to clean up and reform business. But when her programmed talking points about "getting government out of the way" and protecting "freedom" conflicted with that promise, she didn't notice.

Why should we give her a pass on the most important issues of the day? Supposedly sharing the fears and concerns of the average families who face the burdens of mortgages, healthcare and economic insecurity, Palin simply refused to discuss changes in bankruptcy law and proved that she didn't know the provisions of McCain's healthcare plan.

All the glaring defects so blatantly on display in her debate with Joe Biden — and that make her candidacy so darkly comical — would be the same if she were a hockey dad instead of a "hockey mom." In fact, the cynical attempt to foist Palin on the nation as a symbol of feminist progress is an insult to all women regardless of their political orientation.

There was a time when conservatives lamented the dumbing down of American culture. Preservation of basic standards in schools and workplaces compelled them — or so they said — to resist affirmative action for women and minorities. Qualifications mattered; merit mattered; and demagogic appeals for leveling were to be left to the Democrats.

Not anymore.

Actually, the Palin phenomenon is the culmination of a trend that can be traced back to Dan Quayle, the undistinguished Indiana senator whose elevation onto the Republican ticket in 1988 had nothing to do with intellect or experience and everything to do with the youthful appeal of a handsome blond frat boy. (That was how Republican strategists thought they would attract female voters back then, which must be why they believe Palin represents progress.) Quayle too was unable to articulate, let alone defend, the policy positions for which he was supposed to be campaigning. He too had to undergo the surgical stuffing of stock phrases into his head as a minimal substitute for knowledge and thought. And in the same sad way, he too benefited from the drastically reduced expectations applied to anyone whose inadequacy is so obvious.

Quayle deserved more pity than scorn, however, because he seemed to know that he was fighting far above his weight class. Palin evokes no such sympathy, with her jut-jawed, moose-gutting confidence in her own overrated "common sense" and her bullying insistence that only "elitists" would question her expertise.

As Biden showed quite convincingly when he spoke about his modest background and his continuing connection with Main Street, perceptive, intelligent discourse is in no way identical with elitism. Palin's phony populism is as insulting to working- and middle-class Americans as it is to American women. Why are basic diction and intellectual coherence presumed to be out of reach for "real people"?

And why don't we expect more from American conservatives? Indeed, why don't they demand more from their own movement? Aren't they disgusted that their party would again nominate a person devoid of qualifications for one of the nation's highest offices? Some, like Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker, have expressed discomfort with this farce — and been subjected, in Parker's case, to abuse from many of the same numbskulls whom Palin undoubtedly delights.

The ultimate irony of Palin's rise is that it has occurred at a moment when Americans may finally have grown weary of pseudo-populism — when intelligence, judgment, diligence and seriousness are once again valued, simply because we are in such deep trouble. We got into this mess because we elected a man who professed to despise elitism, which he detected in everyone whose opinions differed from his prejudices. That was George W. Bush, of course. Biden was too polite and restrained to say it, but the dumbing down is more of the same, too.

[Joe Conason writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York Observer. Conason received a B.A. in History from Brandeis University in 1975. He then worked at two Boston-based newspapers, East Boston Community News and The Real Paper. From 1978 to 1990, he worked as a columnist and staff writer at The Village Voice. From 1990 to 1992, Conason was "editor-at-large" for Details magazine. In 1992, he became a columnist for the New York Observer, a position he still holds. Conason has written a number of books, including Big Lies (2003), which addresses what he says are myths spread about liberals by conservatives. His new book is It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Get the Google Reader at no cost from Google. Click on this link to go on a tour of the Google Reader.