Bernie Sanders will never achieve majority support in this country -- no Socialist ever has. It's foolish to think that his "moralist" appeal is a winning formula when the substance of his ideas and proposals are so outside of the American mainstream.
It's also ridiculous to think that this country is exhausted with "experts". The country is exhausted (and rightly so) with idealogues who come up with elaborate plans thinking they can predict (or control) human behavior. An idealogue is not an expert.
An expert is someone who has proficiency in a field and makes informed decisions guided by fact. Indeed, the witnesses at the impeachment hearing were a reminder of just how important it is that we have experts in charge to keep the wheels from coming completely off.
13
Ross Douthat is better at analyzing Democrats that he is at deciphering our jointly shared religion.
Arguably (that's what we do here) this is a change election, with Trump's base hot to break up the Democrats and provide for a coronation. For Democrats it also needs to be a change election, to which Bernie brings better credentials as a political heir of FDR.
Biden has street red among union members, a key factor in bringing back Rust Belt democrats. But Bernie also stands strong with unions and he has what Biden doesn't, wide appeal among young and independents, upon which the 2020 elections are likely to turn. He also has considerable appeal among Hispanics, so he is likely to win Nevada.
Trumps partially successful effort to dirty up Biden is not fatal for the former VP but Trump is relying on men from Mars (or St. Petersburg, Russia) to say Biden is just as bad as Trump. Sure, Bernie will be attacked for being a democratic socialist but voters who want Trump gone won't be persuaded.
Missing from Douthat's analysis, either one will likely pick a woman for VP. My guess: Stacey Abrams, the dynamo from Georgia. Another possibility for Bernie, Julian Castro. A diverse ticket assure diverse turnout.
In a dirty election, made so by Trump, which one is tougher? Neither will wilt but Bernie is tougher than a junkyard dog. I should add that I don't expect Trump to debate
9
This article seems to be an attempt to further discredit "experts" or 'technocrats" which is just a cheap-shot dismissal of people who actually know what they are talking about.
It's been a common talking point for billionaire driven, anti-democratic authoritarians for some time now.
Brexiteers were particularly egregious in their use of this hollow argument.
It is an appeal to the irrational emotionalism that drives the Koch/Putin alliance at it's base. It works well with those who don't understand most of what is going on a lot of the time.
People who are "exhausted with experts" need their own epithet; Suckers.
11
Technocrats? Technocracy? Where? All I see is a government run by lawyers and businessmen who don't understand anything outside their own narrow legal fields. Renaissance men they are not. Especially fun is when you have people on these congressional committees who either don't know a thing about what the committee is about, or who actively undermine it, like with environmental issues.
Yeah. Call me when we have an actual technocracy. I'll break out the good alcohol to celebrate.
12
Letting the expansion run without reform doesnt make much sense because the process of expansion is the process of concentrating wealth in a few hands while using public/private indebtedness as a way of wringing every last penny out of the system.
Sanders' system can be understood when you look at his plan for locally owned broadband which will operate as a utility. Where will the innovation come from? I would rather use Warren's approach which is to love corporations so much that we want them to operate even better than they do by making them compete. For this reason she emphasizes breaking up the big tech companies.
Warren is having a problem with the media language. We learn now that Finland is a 'capitalist paradise'. Breaking up the tech companies is said to be 'socialist' yet breaking up AT&T - Ma Bell - was considered 'capitalist' back in the day. When the corporations make more money it is capitalist, when the consumer gets a fair shake because corporations are forced to compete, it is called 'socialism'. Teddy Roosevelt called it Progressive.
Then there is the language used by politicians: When a health care plan is vetted by the Congressional Budget Office to see if it is paid for, how is the tax break given to employer sponsored group plans handled. Is the tax break credited to Warren's health plan as a means of paying for those not covered at work? Why not?
If Warren had better management in her campaign she might yet have the best chance.
1
Believe me, from where I sit competence looks pretty good right now.
8
We need wisdom, not just intelligence in our leaders. There is a big difference. We also need someone who shows grace under pressure. And finally we need someone who can do more than just beat Trump. We a need someone who can do the most difficult management job in the world well.
If a Democrat wins, but does not start healing the damage that has been done and does not start putting programs in place to deal with the worst problems we have, we will get another Republican in the next election. And that Republican will probably be even more effective than Trump at changing the United States for the worse.
The person to do that job is not yet clear to me. It scares me to think the group I see is the best this country has to offer.
2
It’s Sanders or Trump for me, I have compromised the last 40 years and I’m voting for the person I want this time. I’m done listening to the self-proclaimed experts about for whom I ought to be voting.
4
Just because Biden is not standing out as the sharpest pencil in the box, that doesn't mean he is against technocratic solutions. Douthat makes a weak case—his thesis actually seems more like an excuse for Uncle Joe's emotional outbursts and general incoherence.
On the other hand it's true that there is a strong anti-intellectual streak in American popular culture. This is not a new thing. I really would like Warren to reach back to her humble Oklahoma roots and wrap all that policy in a little more Will Rogers folksiness and a little less herky jerky hand waving. Unfortunately, appearances and perceived personalities do matter a lot.
3
First I'd like to say I'm Jewish. secondly, here's my opinion about Bernie: a majority of the country will not vote for a Jewish socialist. I mean my god we're not even "ready" for a woman or an atheist.
6
Lots of straw men in this column.
Sen. Sanders and Trump are both anti-technocrats. Sen. Sanders, because he is an ideologue. If you buy his ideology, then he is a good candidate. Unfortunately, too many people don’t buy his ideology.
Trump is the Anti-technocrat, because he foolishly relies on his own uninformed intuition and eschews expertise. Might be a good politician in the sense that he can deliver for the short run. But at the expensed of the long run.
There are a whole range of candidates who believe that there is nothing wrong with expertise. And, guess what? There is nothing wrong with expertise. It is how the leader uses it os what counts.
Sometimes when a ship is listing badly to one side, adjustments that get back to the center are needed. And for awhile straight and steady is pretty good.
Democrats have had the misfortune to follow Republican Presidents and Congresses that have messed things up badly.
3
How about we start valuing the creators of technology––instead of the businesses that profit off of them or the technocrats who administer them?
3
This is an excellent analysis by Douthat, who understands better than most liberal commentators where the real divide in our society is, even if I believe his solutions are misguided. Leftists who (like myself) wish for a class-based politics must contend with a working class that is broadly divided over potential alternative futures, which as Douthat lays out, largely has to do with disillusionment with the elite.
5
A 'party politician' suggests a brokered convention of the old school variety, where deals are made and strategies hatched, such as 1932 for instance. And who was finally nominated? - gee, I think it was Franklin Roosevelt. And if hindsight is any guide, there was a lot of good he did. Much of it still visible today. 'Archaic' party politicians - if they are smart, know the ropes in Washington, forthright and value country over party, can do well. In fact, there might be a few of them running in the Democratic primary right now - if so, stop hiding and please step forward.
2
Rarely agree with the writer but this column makes me think about returning to my previous support for Bernie. Warren has been my "flavor of the day" for months considering how the "socialism" assault from the GOP might stop Bernie in his tracks. Bernie has a base that is as strong, if not stronger, than Trump's. Still thinking about it but Bernie wouldn't be the worst candidate we could put forward. That would be Joe Biden. He's just awful, but if we have to go for a "centrist" then I'll go with boring Amy Klobashar.
7
There is no cardiologist on planet Earth who can tell you what Sanders' health will be like in 6 months. Nor could she tell you what the strain of running against a philistine like Trump in a general election would be like for Bernie's health.
To make matters worse, Bernie refuses to release his health records from his heart attack, which suggests it was fairly serious. Surely, this is more critical than Trump (who I despise beyond words) releasing his tax returns.
Yet the fact that Sanders could easily die or become incapacitated after winning the nomination and almost certainly ceding the election to Trump is apparently an afterthought.
How can democrats who actually take facts and science seriously continue to be so reckless with such an important issue? How are we any better than Trumpkins by ignoring this?
5
I am tired of Republicans in general (and this columnist in particular) putting down educated people. When I was growing up, my parents WANTED me to go to college. They WANTED me to get as much education as possible. They WANTED me to exercise my mind and make it strong, because they expected me to be a responsible, involved citizen.
So it pains me to hear Republicans criticize intelligent people as "technocrats" and "elitists" and "know nothings." It feels like the world has been irrationally inverted. Education is now looked upon as a BAD thing--something that makes you LESS American.
I'm a high school English teacher, and I see this every day in my work--the "Stupid is Cool" mentality. Students go out of their way to avoid learning and to be willfully ignorant. They have learned this mindset from their parents and society at large--education is pointless. A "real" American doesn't need all that book-learning stuff.
I've watched this anti-intellectual attitude grow over the last 40 years, from Ronald Reagan's "There you go again," to cutbacks in education budgets, to parents of college students decrying "What nonsense are they teaching you in that school," to our current crisis--a President who does not read, and who is PROUD of his lack of intellectual curiosity.
I've always encouraged my children to read. I would give them books for Christmas and birthdays. I pushed them to excel academically, and to do what they can to make the world better. Was I wrong?
18
"G.O.P.’s libertarian and neoconservative intelligentsia bore some responsibility for the double disasters of Iraq and the financial crisis"
What on earth are you talking about, Mr. Douthat?
Who are the GOP "libertarian intelligentsia"? The Tea Party wonks? Paul Ryan?
The only bona fide GOP libertarian was/is Ron Paul, then after 2010, his son Rand Paul.
Neither of them had any part in the neocon disaster in Iraq or the Dem/Republican financial swindle and bank bailout of 2008-9.
Bernie Sanders' credentials on these matters are very much like the Pauls'. Maybe that's your point.
3
" . . . the key forces in American politics right now — the distrust of technocracy, the sense that the smartest guys in each political coalition can’t really be trusted, the feeling that the whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing and doesn’t deliver on its promises."
What nonsense is this. This is not the key force in American politics at all.
The key force in American politics that has produced the current reality, and will sustain it for a long time is politics of identity. Rural and suburban white voters are feeling threatened by the growing dominance of others they deem lesser (less deserving, less legitimate). For republicans (and I am including all of them), there is zero concern about Amazon not paying taxes or Goldman Sachs demanding we subsidize their losses. Their concern is about every one that does not fit their ethnic sensibility. So threatened is their identity, their sense of entitlement, that they are unified behind a complete lout and an embarrassment.
Kindly call it for what it is. The nice people in Charlottesville were not out protesting technocracy; they wanted box cars and gas chambers.
11
"The whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing and doesn’t deliver on its promises."
Half of Trump's cabinet resigned under clouds of corruption, and the other half are merely incompetent, liars, or both. The entire Republican party is under the heels of crony capitalists. Trump has delivered on two promises, tax cuts for the wealthy and Supreme Court picks guaranteed to back big business interests. Every other promise has been empty: Mexico will pay for the wall, trade wars are easy to win, America will get tired of foreign policy victories, there will be a new, better, cheaper healthcare reform.
Trump, with his pseudo-populism and utter lack of expertise is the corrupt one.
4
Our experts supposedly forgot that opiates were dangerous and addictive, that wars aren't supposed to be endless, that hollowing out the middle class is a bad idea, that helping China build up its military may not be a smart move, and that people who cause financial disasters like the 2008 crisis aren't supposed to be able to just walk away with their money.
These errors are so egregious they place our supposed experts in a bad position. They are either extremely evil, extremely incompetent, or a combination of the two. They either did know about what was happening and didn't care, or they didn't know about what was happening because they are complete fools.
6
Wonks they were, but regardless of their shortcomings, both Clinton and Obama were stupendously better presidents than the dufus's who came after them. When I hear about distrust of expertise, I ask myself, untrustworthy compared to what? If you think we've gained any ground by electing the worst and dullest over the best and brightest, you are a big part of the problem.
4
Maybe the author would be comfortable with his plumber flying a 747 he was a passenger on or being operated on by his housekeeper instead of his big bad technocrat surgeon. This makes as much sense as the fear of knowledge and expertise being part of the government in a complex modern world. More likely it is a cover so the facts produced by technocrats can be eliminated as a challenge to their "chosen" strong man's corruption.
2
Bernie and Amy.
More importantly, VOTE!
2
Douthat is not looking deep enough.
It is not merely exhaustion with experts. It's exhaustion with experts and the political leaders they kowtow to and their united efforts in self aggrandizement that they can only be content when dictating from on high with one-size-fits-all solutions to every issue in America and around the globe.
I'm sick of being part of the global economy that has decimated the working class of America!
I'd rather pay higher prices for everything - clothes, technology, etc. - knowing that its keeping Americans employed!
7
As an engineer I find such logic so counter intuitive. Would I ride in a car not designed by a mechanical engineer but by an architect? Mistrust in experts is what got us into this non-belief in climate scientist and this very silly theory that climate change is a hoax or worse, a conspiracy amongst scientist to get research grants. It is okay to be a bit skeptical but full blown attack on all experts is pure wrong and will be our downfall.
7
I continue to struggle with Douthat's recent analyses. Granted he pays way more attention, and is more immersed in the numbers and verbiage of the things he discusses. But I'm still not on board in his analysis of voters, especially Dem voters.
IMO, its mostly the lower middle to the fringe of the Right who have been inculcated into the Hate the Experts Cults. Its the Repubs who under Trump continue to find smart and truly professional (and clearly patriotic, as we've seen the last few week) people to denigrate. Mostly because, IMO, that base hates themselves for not being smarter across various levels.
Call me crazy, but every time I get dragged into a "debate" with a Trumplodite, or those who cant admit they are, but lean his way - they are confounded by the facts, and that they cant come to grip with the reality that most people in various professional classes are way smarter then them! All because the Right, thanks to Newt Gingrich's attack on reason back in his days, sold the belief that Opinions are equal to fact based realities. That you can thru opinion only deny facts as irrelevant.
A POV, cexampled by Sen. Kennedy's recent "marsh-hare crazy" (his words) on news shows, defending Trump and Rudy's wacky ideas about Ukraine and the 2016 election. That the fact based conclusion of every US Intelligence agency re; Russia's attack (ongoing) on the US in 2016, is an unknowable...and is best evaluated by personal opinion.
I like smart people. I will vote for them.
5
Sorry. But I'm one of those Democrats who doesn't see Bernie Sanders as a "unifier" of the Democratic Party, technocrat or not -- because first and foremost, Sanders is not a Democrat.
Like it or not, there is a significant part of the U.S. electorate that just isn't on board with either him or Warren and their progressive agendas.
And before I start to get all the hateful comments, let me also rush to say that he has some good ideas, however I still haven't decided which candidate I'll vote for -- but I will vote.
2
@N. Smith
Thank you. It's good to know I'm not alone. Sanders is not a Democrat, he is too old and his health is not good.
I remember when Dick Cheney underwent having a pacemaker installed, and how the White House and other Republican mouthpieces were treating it like a trip to the dentist for a cleaning. Having a pacemaker put in means the heart doesn't work properly; so does a heart attack.
Sen. Sanders is a fine, devoted public servant; at the same time, he is elderly and not in good health.
Truth in this. Why I would prefer Democratic candidates stop the ‘I grew up in a log cabin’ stuff. It’s patronizing and voters know it. I grew up lower working class and know most working class voters couldn’t possibly care less if the President did. Hence Trump.
Is the economy doing great? I read too many stories about men who are out of work, who have been for years, and who have given up looking for a job. I read that a great many families couldn't handle a $400 emergency. I read about the increasing number of homeless in cities and towns across the country. I read about farmers who're losing their farms.
In fact, the economy is great for some, and lousy for many others. The stock market isn't the economy. The GDP isn't the whole story.
11
When someone like Mitch McConnell publicly states that Republicans are going to make sure that Obama is a "one term president," we know he is not talking to the voters. Or other elected Republicans. He is talking to his corporate handlers who make his life cushy and keep him in power long after his expiration date.
We need to find a way to get the big money out of politics and shorten the election season. Trump started his "campaign" (or pep rallies) his first day in office, and has hardly had his mind on the country's business as he jets all over the country to portray himself in his new reality show.
So, I don't care if a Democrat is a technocrat, left-leaning liberal, a self-financed billionaire, or a poor country lawyer. I'm looking for leadership and management qualities that will help us hit the reset button on democracy and guide us out of this nightmare we're living now.
6
i think the article forgets that Obama came to power as a community organizer in Chicago and through the African American churches and that Sanders is not so much about moralism as about building a movement and organizations big enough to overcome institutional roadblacks to change.So theres more in common than one might think. Obama perhaps reached out to the wrong experts when he won . Probably because he believed in a post partisan America. Bernie will reach out to experts on the left and from progressive activist groups if he wins
5
Technocracy is largely rational. Unless the policy is to simply burn it all down, technocrats are necessary for the implementation of policy. As such, technocrats serve a role in any constructive administration. That is not what we have now.
2
I appreciate this insightful, clarifying essay. Its conclusion may well presage the result of the Democrats' current race.
3
You need competent wonks to staff the senior levels of an administration. That's one of the real deficits (besides the moral one) in the Trump administration--it lacks competent wonks. Bernie doesn't attract competent wonks because they know that he has no interest in actually governing. He wants a "revolution," but doesn't have any actually implementable plans.
Warren does and thinks a lot about how to actually govern. She's prepared for 2021, not just for beating Trump, and that's why she has assembled the best crew of wonks ever put together by a campaign. Whatever you think of her healthcare funding proposal, that she could turn out something so complete so fast speaks to the quality of talent she has attracted. No other campaign could have pulled off something like that. It's the same thing she did with standing up the CFPB, where she attracted the top talent going into government. Having that sort of talent ensures that execution will actually be competent, which matters as much as the ideas themselves.
6
To my mind, ‘technocracy’ indicates a characteristic of governments which function largely behind-the-scenes, and don’t tend to operate in a manner which would allow for the emergence of a populist movement.
The United States isn’t a technocracy. If we were, our society would be reflexive, and not reactionary. Instead, we’ve got a nightmare of bicameral blockage.
1
Douthat's discussion of distrust focuses on technocracy, but in truth, distrust has gone beyond the bounds of technocratic policy discussions. We have a culture of suspicion, in which even the most mundane facts are met with skepticism, from climate to (just this morning) the death of Juice Wrld, which my son has informed is already attended by conspiracy theories galore. This culture of suspicion transcends ideological boundaries although I would argue that the false suspicions harbored by the right (the government is coming to take our guns, the scientists are misinformed about climate change, the Mexicans are going to take over our "way of life", etc...) are much more existentially damaging to people and to the planet than the suspicions held by those of us on the left.
2
I disagree about the appeal of Sanders. He's the second most divisive figure in Presidential politics after Trump. I suspect Sanders' support is basically capped at where it is now. Even his supporters are really just the flip side of the Trump supporters' coin.
5
An over-reliance on questionable data is to blame for many policy failures and the resulting distrust of experts. This distrust has been amplified by con artists peddling overly simplistic world views.
When economists amplify their fame by saying on questionable evidence that incentive compatibility no longer matters, they are not only making a mistake, they are casting doubt on expertise. The root of the problem is we have a corporate-dominated economy (this has many benefits) full of individuals with normal life constraints. In most senses, the same set of laws has to govern the behavior of both of these groups, which is a very difficult task. It is almost inevitable that policy changes will tend to cause problems in the short run.
Adhering to economics (specifically game theory) would have prevented the 9-11 attacks. Part of the problem is the experts have lost either their nerve or their power. If institutions can only react to what shows up in data, how can they stay ahead of future changes?
Both Clintons seemed to aspire to govern by polling numbers (hence Bill's failure to prevent 9-11). This is not a reliance on expertise, it is a surrender of both expertise and morality (their shady conduct only further surrendered any grounds for policy based on morals).
We need experts to model the world in a theoretically consistent way, and we need to listen to them when they do this. Many voters have learned to ignore them when they do not.
1
By ‘meritocracy’ and ‘technocracy’ I believe you mean ‘knowledge - based good government’. I’m not tired of that. Obamacare has made people’s lives better, despite the many, many attempts to sabotage it.
You are offering false choices. People that offer simple solutions for complex problems don’t accomplish anything. How about restoring the liberal tradition in Republican politics, so we’d actually have Republican office holders that want to make things better, instead of just posturing?
5
Ross showcases the dilemma Democrats are facing in the rapidly-approaching primaries. Do they vote for who they really want, or who they believe has the best chance of beating Trump?
In 2016 I voted for Bernie in the CA. primary, reluctantly voting for Hillary in the general election--given her unhinged opponent. The 2020 election will be determined by a handful of swing states, thanks to the antiquated Electoral College. Can a self-described socialist win those critical swing states?
Pretty sure I will be voting for either Bernie or Joe on March 3rd. I still have some soul searching to do because if we can't beat Donald, what's the point?
5
A fundamental problem with rule by technocrats is that it is unusual, if not impossible, for even a well designed central government plan for a country with 350 million resident, to be an optimal solution for even the majority.
Obamacare is a prime example of a defective solution that does not provide an optimal solution even for the five million people who were uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions in 2009.
For the 10 million people who bought Obamacare policies in the individual exchanges, a small proportion got relatively good policies in competitive markets. That was true in high population density areas that had robust medical infrastructure. But even in places like NYC, individuals with Obamacare policies could not find a specialist who would take their plan.
In two thirds of the counties in the US, there were only two or one insurer willing to participate. For states like California and NY, the state had the ability to order the insurers to offer policies in rural counties if they wanted to participate in the lucrative urban areas, so Californians and New Yorkers, state wide, individuals had options to select insurers based on their provider network. But in other states, for example Tennessee, even metro areas with 2 million like Memphis, there are only two insurers offering Obamacare policies and the policies have networks that are limited to a single county.
2
A distinct minority of Americans distrust the "technocrats" who keeps the power running, ensures the food we eat and water we drink are safe, and provide the research that underpins some of the regulations passed by congress.
This minority has voted in and continue to support a president who scoffs at facts and logic, casting any who question his authority or reasoning -- "nobody knows more about technology than me" "in my great and unmatched wisdom" -- as an enemy of the state or member of the deep state.
Given the messenger, it's clear we need more of his kind of enemies and a deeper state.
And need the majority who believe this to vote in 2020.
3
Unsurprisingly, the focus of this piece is politics and political calculations, but that’s not the way Americans vote today. Politicians and thought leaders are in the weeds and may have plans for government, the economy, and society overall, but actual voters - as millions proved by voting for Trump - mostly don’t care. They are increasingly tribal and go for the candidate they perceive as best protecting their tribe. They are not nearly as FOR any policy as AGAINST advantaging “others.” In key states, they’re highly subject to accepting false propositions (fellow NYT readers excepted, of course!). The more I look and listen, the more I suspect the most likely candidate to win the nomination and then go on to beat Trump is None of the Above, a non-politician in the mode of Trump himself: an untainted polticidal outsider, a household name from another walk of life: tall, white, male, familiar, Christian. Forget today’s politics and think of the heroic statue erected to this person in 100 years. Who can beat Trump? Perhaps a famous basketball player, a movie star, even one of the more loudmouthed tech moguls. Who would a major ad agency hire as a spokesman for a big time national consumer brand? Compared to the preawareness or TV Q of a candidate in that mold, any of the politicians currently in the running is weak tea v Trump. He won and rules because he is first and foremost a celebrity and that is what Americans go for in these perilous times: the image of a savior.
4
Republicans tend to be more authoritarian, and they want big, strong daddy to tell them what to do. Democrats think that problems should be solved by rational discussion of the alternatives, with everyone getting to express their opinion. That means Democrats are always going to have a messier path to their goal. That's where we are now.
328
@Madeline Conant
More like they need daddy to tell them what to do.
6
Your answer demonstrates the problem. When a ‘messy’ discussion happens for example, over health care, or gun control, people on the right quickly see it as a ‘rights’ issue. More thoughtful people are inclined towards introducing the concept of ‘responsibilities’. which seems to be beyond comprehension for the right.
13
Douthat discusses the "twilight of the technocrats" without explaining what he means by "technocrat". Is any expert a technocrat? Are there good technocrats as well as bad technocrats. He says that "Common Core" was invented by one or more technocrats. So was the internet, the highway system, and Social Security. Some Presidents and their allies in Congress have led us into pointless, expensive wars. Should those actions lead to the "twilight of the Presidents and Congress"?
104
@PeterE Douthat is one of those Conservatives who wants wiggle room in answering any question. Empiricism for those people is to be feared and resisted because it isn't theirs to control.
"Technocrats" is a sneer at people who use linearity and deductive reasoning to support investigation and fact-finding. The problems with those techniques are 1) that they work; 2) they're anyone's to use. The facts that arise from them, are, for Douthat, coercive. He wants teleology, not reason, to be the process toe finding fact. He wants the things he wants to be true to be true because he wants them to be true, and he wants to see this infantile tall-chasing reflected in the world around him. It's embarrassing every week to see him try to slide his delusions and prejudices by us as bedrock givens.
Our technological society is undergoing change with comprehensive, revolutionary speed. all towards finding fact rapidly and irrefutably. Douthat thinks that his faith and social status ought to offset your empiricism. He and his brethren on the right want themselves to be the final determinant of what is or is not fact, and not just for themselves. They want to tell you what your facts are. They're asserting their power now as a last ditch effort to legislate and litigate their reality regardless fact. They're failing.
13
More "technocratic" pontification from Douthat. Malarkey!
2
Given that "experts"--ie, credentialed Ivy League types--have been wrong about everything* for the last 30 or 40 years, I must say: Well, yeah.
*Al Qaeda, new ice age, the Food Pyramid, mortgages, acid rain, dot-com values, WMDs, paying for entitlements, global warming, and the fall of the USSR come to mind.
3
This is ridiculous. Every advance we've lived through in those years comes to mind as well. Your list is a mix of straw men ('new ice age' was never a scientific consensus, though it sold magazines) and outright error (global warming is real, as predicted).
3
Let's not make the Democratic Party another party of the stupid.
3
What a great idea! Let's search for the dumbest most ignorant slug with unimpeachable morality to lead the party.
4
Is this column really rooting for dumb and dumber? Competance and knowing what to do are bad now?
4
Neither Jack Roosevelt Robinson nor Barack Hussein Obama were the first Africans in America with the 'technocrat' competence, experience and skill to practice their chosen professions.
Moreover, unlike America, the nations with the most Muslims- Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh- have/had female heads of government/state. And the same thing is true of the nations with the most English speaking majorities-Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
What does lacking a Y chromosome have to do with any female's 'technocrat' skills to govern and politically lead and manage a nation state?
3
Sorry but this is the usual Ross Douthat balderdash.
5
Republicans nominated a moron and ignore facts they don't like. Maybe the problem is not that people are tired of technocrats but that the right side of the political spectrum doesn't want to listen to them.
3
Listening to the pundit class’ hand ringing about what is wrong with America is like watching a bad sitcom featuring the gag wherein the main character hilariously stumbles around from one wrong conclusion about a situation to another, when the reality is obvious to everyone but that hapless main character.
Of course, the reality everyone else knows is that we lost our democracy to the oligarchs. It is not a democracy when a tiny group comprised of about 10,000 people buy politicians to write the laws and regulations which favor themselves, and that is where we are as a nation.
The solution is a return to the progressive taxation we lived under for the 55 years of America’s Golden Era (1945-2000). The unfair tax favoritism which shelters income derived from stocks and inherited sources chokes off American pro-social institutions and overwhelmingly benefits the oligarchs. With one simple fix, American institutions would have the funding to return to pre-eminence in education and research and we could also pay down some of our debt overhang. Two side-benefits would be a return of profits to employees and shutting down the money pipeline which currently feeds our oligarchy.
The idea Americans are sick of failed “technocrats” and a malfunctioning “meritocracy” is a favorite explanation of today’s pundits who write op-ed pieces for ostensibly serious papers. It is the favored explanation of the bought-and-paid-for op ed pieces because it poses no risk to the status quo.
7
@Understander as a Trump supporter I encourage you to advocate for politicians who run on a platform of higher taxes
Writing a reply to your column today is simple: Where are the alternatives to the programs you mention from the Republicans? The 2016 Republican campaign spoke of the “greatest healthcare coverage in the World;” where is it? The only way the ACA to cover folks with heads barely above poverty level was to expand Medicaid. I will probably never read your piece covering the moral implications of not having that expansion. The private sector stepping up was and is still as likely as a snowball in Hades even with the threat of complete “socialization.” The 2016 Republican campaign spoke of a “grand and sweeping plan to rebuild our crumbling transportation infrastructure;” where is it? In the last several years, my state has closed several roadway bridges because matching federal funds were not forthcoming. Just several things that exhaust me along with that “oleaginous” caricature of a president we have in the Oval Office.
137
@HANK
Obama and the Democrats voted in the stimulus plan costing $0.8 trillion in 2009. We got no infrastructure. Trump proposed a $1 billion plan with the federal government providing $0.2 billion in loans for infrastructure and got no traction from blue states who seen to believe that the federal government should print money to pay for water, sewer, road, mass transit to replace their failed city infrastructure.
Strangely enough, red states pay for their own infrastructure by raising state revenue and are resentful of donating to the blue states.
Nationwide, states cover 70% of road and bridge infrastructure and the federal fuel excise tax raises sufficient fund to cover 25% but for the diversion of funds to mass transit. The federal taxpayer ponies up an additional 5% out of general revenues.
Delaware has a serious problem if the failure of the federal government to pony up the 5% federal match has caused the closures of several roadway bridges. But in the minds of Democrats living in states and cities governed by Democrats for decades, it is the fault of the Republicans in other states to give them money to pay for their failed local infrastructure.
What did Delaware do with their share of the $0.8 trillion stimulus money?
1
@ebmem
Lol...nice try Tennessee.
"The top recipient of federal aid in FY 2014 was Mississippi, which relied on federal assistance (marked for infrastructure, education, medicare,etc) for 40.9 percent of its revenue. Other states heavily reliant on federal assistance include Louisiana (40.1 percent), Tennessee (39.9 percent at #3), Montana (39.1 percent), and Kentucky (38.5 percent)."
While my State, NY gets 33%, in 2016, sending a lot of its money to states like yours...which only dropped to 38.6% (#7) in 2016.
Most Blue states tend to receive under 35% in Fed funds, while other Red states like Arizona, Montana are in for over 40%
While Delaware was in for 22%.
So who's paying for who?
I wish folks like you would rely on the facts...from credible sources. Easily found if the desire for them existed.
34
@ebmem
The failed roads are in lower Delaware, clearly controlled by Republicans in local government and in the state legislature. They, along with a few Democrats who are too stupid to become Republicans, killed the funding despite a legislature “controlled” by Democrats. BTW, that stimulus did far more for the economy than Trump’s tax cuts. The TCJA economic benefits have essentially flat lined, actually start expiring in 2020 with most of provisions “helping” the Middle Class gone by 2025 leaving them with the $1,800,000,000,000 bill.
10
Technocrats are always needed.
But there are big problems when they run the show.
They're never as smart as they think they are.
They have difficulty explaining what they are doing and why it matters.
They can be as ideological as anyone, it is just buried under several layers of wonk.
2
The biggest technocratic event in my lifetime has been the successful restructuring of the economy to favor investors over laborers at all levels of society. Even the highest-priced professionals find themselves on the butt end of this transformation.
President Trump advances that technocratic effort while ranting like a populist, but the effects of his “deconstruction of the administrative state” is to complete the replacement of a nation of citizens with a nation of serfs serving faceless corporations.
Health care is a proxy here, the Republican plan it to get the serfs to battle over this (without offering anything) while continuing to rig the economy to the benefit of “the market” in which even columnists are bough-and-sold.
120
wow! so accurately described!
4
@cp
"The biggest technocratic event in my lifetime has been the successful restructuring of the economy to favor investors over laborers at all levels of society."
That has no direct explanatory connection to technocrats. That has to do with Republican policy since Reagan. For the most part, those Republican policies were (a) supported by conservative theories like trickle-down that we now know were utter hogwash, and/or (b) expressly intended to benefit only the rich.
10
Excessive complexity is always the enemy of any political candidate or party. To keep trying to win elections via employing micro engineered, 500 point programs is akin to constantly beating ones own head with a hammer. Simply state that you’re going to fight for fairness and equality in our schools, our work places and our courts. When asked to expand upon those ideas, say you’re for equal levels of funding no matter what neighborhood the school is in, equal treatment at work no matter what race or gender you are and equal treatment by our courts no matter what kind of lawyer you can afford. You also believe that the wages of the average worker need to rise just as fast as the wages of their bosses. Constantly repeat how obvious it is that fighting climate change will create, not destroy millions of jobs. Own it, never doubt it. Programs you post to support those ideas also had better be no more than a sentence or two long. They also better not require 58 pages of government forms in order to execute your core vision. Perfect is always the enemy of the good when it comes to Presidential politics. Getting elected for the first time is always about selling your vision. Getting reelected is what depends on how well you were able to build something real out of that dream.
2
Setting aside its unprecedented level of corruption and ignoring the fealty to Russia, today's Democratic criticisms of Trump administration policies and appointees sound very much the same as the Democratic criticisms of the Reagan administration nearly 2 score years ago. With regard to respect for expertise and reality, Reagan era Republicans were not all that different from Republicans of today. The glaring difference is the personality and values of the president. Reagan projected sunny unifying optimism that made Americans feel good about themselves and the future. Don Trump delivers malice, darkness and division as he sucks out our national soul (he is a Dementor incarnate).
Technocratic efficiency alone has never been the basis of a winning campaign. Winning campaigns connect with voters on an emotional level. And that's why Joe Biden, with all of his gaffes and showing his age, is the biggest threat to Trump.
As the incident with the Iowa farmer showed, Biden would never give a cold a-la-Dukakis technocratic answer to the question of whether he'd want the death penalty for a guy who'd raped and murdered his wife. His answer would probably start, "I'd surely want to kill the guy myself, but... "
A core reason why Mondale, Dukakis and Gore lost their elections, was that they were seen as coldly efficient technocrats. Democrats must not make that mistake again in 2020.
Maybe not Biden though. Maybe it's time to look at Corey Booker again.
1
“If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in the country, then I’m afraid Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” -- Marianne Williamson
4
Dear Ross seems to forget how useful knowledge and expertise was in Obama’s first term in passing healthcare reform and getting us out of the depression. And I guess we will next see corporations and businesses getting rid of experts and tech expertise to be replaced with, perhaps, religious fanatics.
5
“..a sense that the G.O.P.’s libertarian and neoconservative intelligentsia bore some responsibility for the double disasters of Iraq and the financial crisis...”
Gosh, ya think maybe so?
4
I don't get it: we're to want people who don't know what they are doing as we're tired of people who do?
Obama's 'expertise' failed because it pulled the nation out of a historic financial collapse while the GOP stiff-armed all along the way.
But that kind of competence is a failing attribute because....?
Next, we'll be saying the clueless doctor is better than the skilled one.
I vote for competence and honesty, not huffing and puffing and finger pointing.
4
I find it highly ironic to read Douthat dissing wonkery!
3
One can never trust a Baptist Convert to Catholicism who calls American Pragmatism "wonkery".
6
Actually it was moralists like you IGNORING the experts that got us into Iraq in the first place - YOUR Christian friends, RD. And Obama's technocrats you diss actually gave health insurance to millions and saved us from a deep depression. The financial crisis came from the "light touch" regulations on Wall St by, AGAIN ROSS, your Christian friends Bush/Cheney. This has to be your most typical column yet. Just bananas.
7
You need to get over your socialist phobia. You use our socialist roads, airports, libraries, water, electricity, police force, army and on and on and on. Have you been to communist Western Europe (France, Scandinavian, Germany, Spain, England?) where they have a lot of really great things including longer life expediencies than in the USA. But it is a socialistic life that is lived longer, so it doesn't really count. Right?
7
How about Twilight of Listening to Ross About Democrats?
2
Though I tend to disagree with Ross's worldview - sometimes vehemently - this column once again indicates that he's got a better perspective on the American electorate than the rest of the NYT columnists combined.
2
Let's see if I get this. We don't want a smart person for president, so we should go with the old white guy who scolds us all the time and has been totally ineffective during his many years as a Senator. Hmmmm. Interesting take on the future.
2
Not to mention our current President . . .
1
"Of course the former vice president also has plans and policy papers — no Democrat lacks them — . . . " I can hear your snarkism from here. Sorry Ross, but having plans is what adults do, not just smear smear smear like those of your party.
2
Jesus says "the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).
Douthat says "Don't worry about wonkery. Your unfounded opinions will set you free."
3
The author has the word technocracy confused with bureaucracy.
2
"Neoconservative intelligentsia" is an oxymoron.
3
Folks, this is what happens when you must occasionally write about something other than Religion.
An unholy mess.
3
More advice for Democrats from Mr. Douhat. Shouldn't you be on the phone with folks like Chuck Grassley?
2
only your side denigrates expertise Ross ...
2
“How about we just elect a [expletive] politician?” indeed – and sweep moralism under the rug. Yes, elect a “politician” who is not above arranging through his “elitist” political influence to have his son installed in a cushy $50,000 a month job. Is this not the very elitist privilege that many voters detested in Hillary Clinton, and who, seething with resentment, cried “off with her head”? In other words, by what wisdom would it make sense for the Democrats to repeat the very drastic mistake they made in 2016?
Well, it apparently makes sense in the dark conservative corridors of Ross Douthat’s mind, a mind that throws out the word “socialist” with the frequency of a Republican speech writer. Yes, let’s leave ethics out of the election equation because Trump’s lack of morals is the new normal. Seriously?
We can afford to ignore moral considerations because the “G,D.P. is running hot” – hot for whom? Hot for the elites who can milk the free-market’s game in a way that the person working under dangerous conditions, under the pressure of ubiquitous Big Brother monitoring technology in a sweltering Amazon warehouse for $15 an hour can’t.
The Hunter Bidens of the world will never have to risk life and limb, sprained ankles or carpel tunnel syndrome at Amazon because they have political “Pappa Joes” with influence to open doors for them.
But the real payoff for conservatives like Douthat is that with a Biden we can avoid the dreaded “S-word” entering the White House.
5
Good article!
Only God knows what Douthat is up to!
3
The Republicans and the Brexiters hate experts. They are demeaning them constantly. They hate higher education. They should be treated by shamans and leave the doctors for people who respect them.
1
Bingo, Ross.
Assuming Douthat's point, maybe this exhaustion with the experts, this turn toward a more moral, emotive political posture, is based on the realization that even facts and their interpretation are situated within a context of assumptions, and that there is no such thing as a disinterested, unbiased observer of the world from whom we can receive a picture of what is "really" going on? Since we are all situated in time and place, no one enjoys a god's-eye-view of the world, and policy proposals from the other side are seen as self-serving arguments masquerading as "facts". (We see a similar cynicism in regard to the judiciary these days). The technocrats did not fail us, we asked of them something neither they nor anyone else could deliver. In the end, all we have is politics and argument, and moral suasion is as valid and effective as factual competence. It seems that Trump rather adeptly manipulates the uncertainty of the world to his advantage. I am not sure why this is the case.
2
While I was horrified and couldn't sleep properly for months afterward, I can understand why so many people were thrilled by Trump's electoral victory. He ran in the Republican primary while ridiculing the most recent Republican administration and the platitudes of his primary adversaries. Trump was from outside the box and against the odds he had prevailed in our sclerotic system. It was this same desire for someone from outside the box that led to Obama's election, though if you paid any attention to what he said in 2008 you knew he was a classic midwestern moderate Democrat.
A crucial number of people were disappointed when Obama turned out NOT to be outside the box as a President. Trump's supporters are excited by the things he does which seem to be outside the box, such as his dealings with China and his aggressive use of Twitter. I suspect that many Trump supporters are rather less excited by the standard issue Republican policies he's also pursued.
The outside the box candidate in this cycle is Bernie Sanders. If enough Trump voters are underwhelmed by Trump's actual policies in office, Bernie will be the next President.
6
Bernie, much as I love him, is a longtime politician. Trump never held even an appointed office in his life and was totally inexperienced and ignorant (and proud of it - part of his appeal to his base). Just because both are slightly out of the mold of typical politicians, the comparison doesn’t hold up. For Democrats to run someone who has a chance of beating Trump in the key places where he most needs to be beaten, they need to run an outsider even more famous (and/or beloved) than Trump. My money would be on someone like Tom Hanks or George Clooney. First, it’s a popularity contest.
In 2016, illiberal forces liked St. Bernie because he did not emphasize socially progressive issues. They were not motivated by moral righteousness. They were motivated by Sanders letting them keep their misogyny and racism.
The notion of credentialed meritocracy is just fine. The problem is, the rich have monopolized the system of credentialed meritocracy. Ross benefited from it, presumably fairly. Kushner benefited from it, after his father gave millions to the same institution Ross attended.
Who in the world wants a president who is not competent and not a government expert? The term wonk is pejorative to Ross. Would he select a doctor who is not competent and did not have medical expertise? Would he likewise select an incompetent and inexpert elementary school teacher for his children?
It isn't just that Sanders isn't a wonk. It is rather that Sanders, like Trump, doesn't have policy plans. Period. Not a single credible economist endorsed his 2016 promises. I don't know of any climate experts who have endorsed his gargantuan 2020 climate plan. Why on god's greed earth didn't Sanders have to invent his own climate plan, and not endorse Inslee's?
Ross maligns Biden here. Make no mistake: Biden would truly hire the best and the brightest of the wonks on the Democratic side. And we Democrats and Speaker Pelosi will hold his feet to the fire until he does.
3
@Robert
Fixed typos:
In 2016, illiberal forces liked Sanders because he did not emphasize socially progressive issues. They were not motivated by moral righteousness. They were motivated by Sanders letting them keep their misogyny and racism.
The notion of credentialed meritocracy is just fine. The problem is, the rich have cradle-to-grave monopolized the system of credentialed meritocracy. Ross benefited from it, presumably fairly. Kushner benefited from it, after his father gave millions to the same institution Ross attended.
Who in the world wants a president who is not competent and not a government expert? The term wonk is pejorative to Ross. Would he select a doctor who is not competent and did not have medical expertise, that is, a doctor who was not a wonk? Would he likewise select an incompetent and inexpert, i.e., unwonky, elementary school teacher for his children?
It isn't just that Sanders isn't a wonk. It is rather that Sanders, like Trump, simply doesn't have real policy plans. Not a single credible economist endorsed his 2016 promises. I don't know of any climate experts who have endorsed his gargantuan 2020 climate plan. Why on god's green earth did Sanders have to invent his own climate plan, and not endorse Inslee's?
Ross maligns Biden here. Make no mistake: Biden would hire the best and the brightest of the wonks on the Democratic side. And we Democrats and Speaker Pelosi would hold his feet to the fire were he not to do so.
1
Like many, Douthat throws around the word socialism without reference to the true meaning of that word as a political philosophy. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. And Elizabeth Warren is, as she has stated, a capitalist. Neither espouses governmental control of the 'means of production'. They are both striving to make our society more fair. For a clear eyed description of the type of society both would like to achieve, refer to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/finland-socialism-capitalism.html
4
@Bob Olink you’re right. Bernie isn’t a socialist, he’s a communist
The ACA is only a partial success now because it had to be wildly compromised from it's original design with the implementation of the "exchanges" to even pass.
There was supposed to be a "public option" until Joe Lieberman, in a pitiful, traitorous display of unmitigated moral cowardice, decided to take it upon himself to kill it for his own very personal and selfish reasons.
The pounding Obama continues to take, in spite of the fact that he remains the only president in the history of the country to attempt to implement something that approaches universal coverage, is completely unfair and is far from a sturdy argument against "technocrats" being unfit to lead.
If given the choice of a technocrat, somebody I'd like to have a hamburger with, a throwback revolutionary or just a "pol", I'll take the person who has the best chance to win, but hopefully it's the technocrat.
Unfortunately, we can't always get what we want.
1
Douthat calling Sanders a moralist is really something!
Sanders is tough, honest, pragmatic and passionate. There is no moralizing, particularly not in the Douthat/religious style.
3
It would make a difference to Bernie’s candidacy if he actually stood for something...anything. There’s a VERY long list of things and people he is against, but he has no actual point of view on anything else. Excuse me, he is a great believer in soaking the rich, the almost rich and those who aspire to be rich and in this way he is different from Warren who only advocates soaking the wealthy. But on education .... free everything. How to pay for it? Who cares. Who would be a teacher in a socialist utopia? Who cares, once you take away all other options, teachers would have no choice but to submit to the new world order...you know, like in the USSR and the GDR. What Bernie is, is the loyal opposition. He just wants to be a spoiler, the smelly fish on the table that garners attention but is ultimately inedible.
I have been thinking along the same lines as Mr. Douthat with respect to the potentially broad appeal of Bernie Sanders relative to many of the other candidates. He would not be my first choice, but he may be the candidate that I support in the end.
Mr. Douthat suggests that Bernie's case is a moral case versus a technocratic one. In many ways this is an election about morality, as Trump is nothing if not the most amoral President in my lifetime. But authenticity is also a key element of electability. Trump is ignorant, vicious and corrupt, among other things, but no one can argue that he purports to be anything other than himself. This notion that he "says what he thinks" was found appealing by many American voters who felt ignored by their government.
Bernie has a similar authenticity, which is supported by a decades long career of being no one other than Bernie Sanders. Sometimes his message is so consistent it borders on tedium, but none of the other Democratic candidates can be so completely immune to accusations of shifting positions, poll-driven messaging, or general phoniness. Bernie comes off as a little angry as well and, unlike Biden, seems to have lost none of his mental edge.
In the post-factual world we inhabit where large segments of the population increasingly feel hopeless (hence Trump), technocracy has its limitations as a motivating feature of a candidacy. Authentic, righteous indignation may hit the right note for our time.
2
This boils down to the right wing, religious suspicion of intellectuals. In Broadway’s To Kill a Mockingbird, advertised extensively on this page, the poor white antagonist, Bob Ewell, rants, “the so-called intellectuals have been taking advantage of us our whole lives!” Aaron Sorkin recently admitted that he culled this line and several others from the play from pieces he found on Breitbart News.
Look, the”best and brightest” intellectuals gave us the Vietnam War. The currents against intellectualism in America are part of what makes the country vibrant and effective. We want Captain Kirk running the ship, not Spock.
But intellectuals, at least honest ones, are trying to get at the truth. What is actually good, rather than what benefits ME. This is what led us out of the dark ages. We need to nurture it.
1
Your argument will be rendered nil when 10 or 20 million Americans don’t get their social security payments because some non “technocrat” forgot to load the data.
1
Again, the preposterous double standard here.
A few offhanded comments from Democrats and now the mechanisms of government are under siege.
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller still collects a government paycheck.
4
A shallow revision of Sanders qualities that reflect the genuine danger to the power structure that exploits and oppresses the American people. The greed and hatred and fear that governs and are the official policies of the Republicans are being revealed. The wall is racist, the tax cut added
1
We’re not experiencing the ‘twilight of the technocrats’ so much as enduring the onslaught of the idiocrats.
Willful ignorance and castigation of the competent is a recipe for disaster. Exhibit A: the Trump White House and the majority of the Republican Party.
1
This is laughable:
"the whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing and doesn’t deliver on its promises."
Who's corrupt? Trump and the Republicans. Not Ivy Leaguers like Obama.
Who's self-dealing? Trump and the Republicans. Not Ivy Leaguers like Obama.
Who doesn't deliver on promise? (Like "build the wall" and "infrastructure week" and "mexico will pay for it" and "we're going to replace Obamacare with something even better").
Trump and the Republicans. Not Ivy Leaguers like Obama.
1
With his tendency to refine all arguments toward the Oneness of Church, Judiciary and State, I don't see Ross's cultural ideal as free-flow American. Medieval Spanish more like.
1
It does seem as if the flailing factionalism and bone deep Party animus was highly correlated to the loss of earmarks. Back in the day, politicians learned that, if you want to get that Naval Transport Station or pretty new (eponymous) bridge built in your district, you had to be a go-along-to-get- along kinda guy. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, persuade other folks in either party that your earmark is an idea whose time has come by allowing yourself to be persuaded the same about their earmark. Horse trading regularly crossed party lines, and was a good place to start for real legislative give-and-take.
Now there is no incentive to interact across the aisle and every incentive to slag the opposition as scurrilously as possible. It gets really boring and pointless.
Bring back the earmark!
4
I find it notable that no one is talking about the fact that Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Not only has there never been a Jewish president but there has not been a Jewish vice president. The same is true of Bloomberg obviously.
Another straw man fallacy from the NYT stable of conservative columnists. Over the last few days we've had Brooks claiming that social democracy doesn't tolerate capitalism; Stephens claiming the economic system of France and it's counterparts in Europe are inferior in every respect to that of the US (apparently the French are not as happy as the Mexicans!); and now Douthat is asserting the mass of Americans (and in particular Democrats) reject technocracy and meritocracy when nothing could be further from the truth.
Over the past few weeks we've seen a parade of meritocratic technocrats in the state department and elsewhere in government giving evidence before congress only to be trashed by the Republicans in congress and the administration, and its shills in the media. Without these technocrats and their counterparts in government, industry and academia the entire country would grind to a halt.
One begins to wonder at the intellectual capacity of the NYT editorial team in giving space to this sort of nonsense.
3
Democrats' "...distrust of technocracy, the sense that the smartest guys in each political coalition can’t...be trusted, ...[and] credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing...." This statement is wrong.
Democrats don't distrust technocracy so much as the way technology is used, not by the smartest guys, but by robots put in charge of regulating people's behavior.
Democrats don't believe that meritocracy, credentialed or otherwise, is corrupt. Where it can be found, meritocracy is anything but corrupt, based as it is on actual worth or value.
But the GOP doesn't believe in meritocracy, vilifies experts, hates science and, it seems lately, education generally. Republicans seem to value only money and power and believe whoever has it should have more. They foisted trump, the antithesis of merit, onto us and devalued the country.
It's rich that republicans, Douthat, Brooks, et al, have taken it upon themselves to advise democrats on whom to nominate, how campaigns should be run, and knit pick the candidates.
While there in the White House the GOP has given the country a mountain of rancid corruption and stupidity, a genuine fat berg of arrogance and hate. Yet republicans think they can lecture democrats on how to appeal to people.
It's would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.
3
Cult of personality shallow waters over the last 40 years has yielded the dead end for both politicl parties and a fractured America.
You keep pointing to the “they”. I think the problem is with the “you”. We need technocrats to fix,not plutocrats to obfuscate.
2
If Ross wrote for a Conservation publication, say Commentary or the now defunk National Review would he then have to address the readers of those in a positive vein?
His position on the NYT appears to provoke his disdain for all things Liberal or Progressive to get under the skin of most readers of this paper. If his audience was outright Far Rightwing would his subjects take on appealing to that audience or is he simply a Contrarian who would turn on those readers?
2
None of the Dem candidates for POTUS has long enough coat tails to take the Senate. Even if a Dem is the next POTUS & per chance the Senate is 51-49 Democrat, Schumer doesn't have the skills to make his party walk in lock step with Pelosi and a potential Dem POTUS.
1
So you're not going to give up pitching Bernie. Forgive me if I think you're being very disingenuous. A conservative Republican pitching a socialist in a capitalist society seems to be full of malarky.
1
I will take the anti-elitists seriously as soon as they are willing to pay me to treat their pancreatic cancer, repair their car's transmission and invest their retirement savings.
Not the technocrats, it’s the ‘professionals, the real estate doctors, the ‘labour’ lawyers, the phony jobs economy ( work an hour be counted full time), the health execs who know nothing about health, the business schools to regurgitate the myths of trickle down.
Yes a moralist we need cause you have messed your bed with 800 military bases around the planet to disrupt, grift and kill.
There is also the little matter of the NY Fed propping up JP Morgan and the other parasites on Wall Street to the tune of 17 trillion dollars. 2008 anyone?
And Ross does a slick inverted back handed clap for the Trumpster.
1
Democrats dislike technocrats?. Which party denies anthropomorphic climate change while the vast majority of scientists believe it is settled science?
1
In the presence of the looming climate catastrophe, this is all so many angels dancing on the head of a pin.
2
When Douthat gives advice to Democrats, thing twice, three times or more before taking it seriously. He loves Trump! He loves the right wing fanatics. What he is always trying to do is pretend he’s balanced and just an informed observer. He’s not!
2
This article if far less coherent than the last. I think you should stick to trying to reform the Republican party.
2
Pssst. We're ruining the planet. Anyone?...
3
Whereas the GOP: The experts, knowledgeable and studious had their chance; let the bartenders, con-artists, and calf-worshipers have theirs.
2
In a country drowning in stuff and starving for meaning I can't see any alternative to Bernie.
I see Ross come to the same conclusion but I guess if you want to be on the "popular" side death by drowning is preferable to life looking for a balance instead of perfection.
They sure ain't making Christians like Jesus anymore. Blessed are the rich for their's is the Kingdom of Heaven.
It ain't the economy stupid.
2
Mr. Douthat:
Why not write a column encouraging the GOP senate to convict
and remove the president from office. You know ... support the facts and take the moral high ground. Then you could write a column supporting a conservative candidate from your party.
These thinly veiled diatribes that attack the democratic candidates is getting old. Stay in your own lane and call out your party for their despicable disregard for their oaths of office. Your lack of accepting your party's role in destroying
the country is beyond sad. It is blatant cowardice.
2
If only we would give technocracy a chance. Science would actually matter. Separation of church and state would be a real thing. Gerrymandering would be unconstitutional. Citizens United over turned. Technocracy at the service of open and robust democracy would be something to try. Your body of writing opposes this and therefore the simplistic analysis.
1
It ill befits someone who with the Republicans in Congress believes he is more Catholic than the "renegade" Pope to lecture anyone about ethics and our challenged future.
I suspect this pivot to Bernie on the part of Republicans is a last-gasp effort to promote less effective action against an economy and climate going haywire because of greed and exploitation.
This is not true capitalism, but a state-supported effort to maintain the power of supranational corporations.
The future may go hang.
Actually, even on Bernie (I'm a Warren supporter, because she understands the economy and action, while he and his supporters are better at slogans - still, he's a great guy who opened the door to real change) he's wrong. Bernie will, if elected, do his best to overcome the forces of reaction.
We won't have a future if we don't get to work to solve our problems together, based on real dangers. Wealthy and powerful interests are hard at work using our delusionary subservience to marketing and waste, via cosmetic infotainment, to keep us from taking that action. Sadly, they are cutting off the ground under their own feet as well.
The earth, which doesn't do delusion, is taking action to reject its apex predator, and we can either work to stop destroying it or lose the vast majority of the things we don't need but have come to take for granted.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, for example, does not fit marketing. Circular economy, while wise, does not profit the few.
4
As much as I lean towards technocratic processes, what is often missing from these processes is the ability to make a distinction between doing things right and doing the right things. While you would like to see both considerations in a decision, technocrats often focus on doing things right. Obama's early decision not to slap criminal indictments on bankers in 2008 is an example of his advisors--Geiter and Summers--advising that we need these people to do things right rather than setting example for future masters of the universe that you put a lot of people out of work and you are going to spent a lot time in jail.
58
@Amanda Jones
"Obama's early decision not to slap criminal indictments on bankers in 2008 is an example of his advisors--Geiter and Summers--advising that we need these people to do things right rather than setting example for future masters of the universe that you put a lot of people out of work and you are going to spent a lot time in jail."
This is no specific issue of technocrates but of the highly dangerous "fraternities of specialists" making a state to their prey. I remember the mid 8oties when we were systematically warned of these already well researched specific fraternities at our national university of administration sciences just for the reasons you have mentioned here.
Unfortunately in 2008 global finance industry was based completely on such "fraternities of the secret sciences of international finance industries" so nobody could get rid of the local co-fraudsters because they were too strongly connected to their remaining "brothers" in the overwhelming powerful US/UK finance industry. If US and UK would have banned these folks there would have been a chance to get rid of them also. But they did not so there was no option to keep the locals in office as their indispensable peers.
Simply spoken: Only they knew where they had buried the money all over the would.
3
@Amanda Jones - The real reason was that they thought they couldn't get convictions. and the first case they tried was a disaster for the prosecution:
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/bear-stearns-trial-how-the-scapegoats-escaped/
2
As an immigrant from Europe, one thing struck me about the American system. Most people's work hours are longer than in the countries where I have lived, American's vacations are shorter, maternity leave is shorter or not even available at all. Children get sick more often, because their working parents are sending them to school too soon after sickness, and the children keep infecting one another at school more often. At home, many children are often left to their video games or TV, because their parents don't have time to read with them or support them with their homework. No wonder we now have people whose education, on average, does not measure up, who have seen that hard work does not get them ahead, and who do feel like having a revolution. Bernie Sanders promises to create a European-like system in our country, where the divisions are likely too extreme for his plans to succeed. This year, Pete Buttigieg gets my vote, because he is the only one who has the vision of the fundamental changes that can not only unite the country, but also move us into the future. Luckily, although he is a technocrat, he is a great communicator as well. An increasing number of people hear and understand his message. The media have a responsibility to play their part in getting the best person into the White House.
41
Republicans want to think their ignorance is as good as Democrats expertise. It is not.
Much of the anger at technocrats was because of the 2008 financial crisis, caused directly by conservative deregulatory philosophy. Remember that subprime lending exploded 2004-2006, shortly after the Bush-appointed SEC leader met with the investment bank leaders in April 2004 and told them essentially to lever up (buy mortgages like crazy with borrowed money). We were suffering from a jobless recovery and Bush was going into an election, so he relaxed banking regulation. Countries that didn't, like China and Canada, had no banking crisis.
Even The Economist ran a cover article in 2005 warning of our unsustainable housing bubble and drastic consequences when/if it burst, but the horse was already out of the barn.
Obama expanded healthcare to 20+ million people via a highly technical conservative solution (essentially Heritage Foundation healthcare) and it has worked magnificently. People didn't like the mandate (conservatives completely flip-flopped, having argued that no mandate meant freeloaders in the 1990's and early 2000's), but the rest of the elements continue to be amazingly popular with both parties.
Trump so far as increased the budget deficit by about 60% vs. technocrat Obama's policies (the CBO January 2017 forecast) while 2 million have lost health insurance and millions are paying more for goods due to tariffs.
2
The reason for the dearth of viable Democratic candidates is the fact that anyone attempting to clean up the mess we're currently in over the period of two presidential terms is probably doomed to failure. Does anyone with any sense want that responsibility?
Unfortunately for Sanders, the technocrats and wonks are correct on one crucial point: to implement his programs, everyone would have to pay 50% in tax. Not just the rich, but everyone. That's the way it is in his beloved Scandinavian socialist countries, and it works in those small, homogenous societies.
Would it work in the US? I believe the opposing candidate would argue otherwise, and many voters would agree.
1
@Jonathan Some would pay a *marginal* rate of 50% and some would pay much higher and without a flinch of pain -- except to their crazy need to hang onto every miserly penny.
And though many pay more in tax they would cash out with more spending money because of the money they wouldn't be paying out to support the profiteers.
3
@Stephen Boston - I mean what I said: to pay for these programs, everyone would have to pay half of their total income in tax. That would raise about $9 trillion in tax. We could then spend $4 trillion on medical care, $2 trillion on social security, and $2 trillion on free college tuition, and $1 trillion in running the rest of the government.
When I was a lad in school, everyone was required to read Silas Marner, the story of a miser who would often lose consciousness while damaging the lives of everyone around him. Is that morality tale out of fashion now?
Obama, and Clinton before him, governed more like Rockefeller Republicans than they did Democrats, most especially the Democrats of the New Deal and Great Society when much of the county's infrastructure was designed, and built; and when many of the country's social ills were first addressed on a meaningful, and federal, way.
Johnson was punished the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts by the defections of southern Democrats to the Republican Party and Obama was punished for ACA by the inception of the Tea party.
HRC lost to Trump as much because of an ill-planned and ill-run campaign as she did by Democrat defections to Trump. Had attention been paid by the DNC, we would not be having this conversation.
The "status quo", be it Biden or Trump is just another way of saying "standing still" or "samo, samo" and is reminiscent of William Buckley's famous mission statement in the first issue of “National Review (1955) that his mandate was to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop.”
To sum up, maybe it is time to see what an avowed, old-school "radical" can do. Social democracy has worked before.
Bottomline, the Congress will decide how and what happens not the President. We need a candidate that has some clear goals, and not details.The details will have to include 500 opinions and lots of compromise.
Goals such as a heath care program that will cover all and be administratively less expensive and cheaper and efficient. However this can be done needs to be examined. Single payer, more ACA, public option ? or combination.
Less expensive education costs to be explored.
Big long term infrastructure program
Reexamine out unfair and complicated tax schedules
All important and each candidate can confirm their commitment but stay away from details, they d not matter at this time, they wil lbe hashed out with all the congress.
The candidate need to show intelligence, be informed, ethical behavior, willing to work with others and that these are their goals.
Bernie, having had a heart attack already, would beat Trump in November 2020? How many presidents have had heart attacks even before they were elected?
1
Ike, for one. And many today fondly recall the days of his administration (including more heart episodes and loads of golf) as America’s best days... btw, also when income tax rates were highest and the nation was subject to nearly constant major labor strikes.
1
A plutocracy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. ... Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. Members of The Billionaires Club seem to support Trump.
2
In theory, we insist that voters be at least 18 years old so they have some understanding of the world they are shaping with their vote. Sadly, we have a large electorate who are completely insulated from reality and the world around them. This is why we need experts. This is why we need news media to loudly and clearly rebuke lies in an effort to promote conflicting ideas as having equal weight. Republicans lawmakers writ large are neither morally or cognitively in the same ballpark as their Democratic colleagues. Why? Because one side forms their policy and worldview on expertise and the other...on gut.
3
Yes, many Americans are tired of how technocrats operate.
They are tired of the data-driven, seeming indifference of its purveyors who see the the numbers but don't seem to feel the heartbeats behind them. They are tired of analysts who diagnose what they believe to be symptoms and even causes, but haven't solved the problems they excoriate.
Candidates like Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and Donald Trump have all tapped into the feelings of those who are disaffected, alienated, left out and even abused by the system as it exists today, and who are tired of candidates and office-holders who promise but don't deliver.
The late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago famously answered his critics by asking "It's one thing to criticize and find fault, but where are your programs? Where are your plans? What trees do you plant?"
Warren certainly has plans and lots of them. Bernie has anger and lots of it, while Biden has his Uncle Joe persona. What Americans want is solutions that improve their lives. If they don't see a candidate who provides them, they will settle for a candidate who "get" enough of them to win an election.
That is Donald Trump's secret sauce, even if he serves it to them on a nothing-burger.
Ross plays catch with himself, and drops the ball in both instances.
It's sham and bootless technocrats, credentialed and uncredentialed -- look at the economics' profession, for example -- who just *know* without study or despite the evidence, what the world requires.
Consider this very page: a day can't pass without a pronouncement from on high in fields no more accessible to "opinion makers" than knee surgery or power plant design. And yet they'd have us live by their edicts.
This is not meritocracy, it's pecking order.
The Republicans have demonstrated that they can have God without morality; in both their champion Trump and in their Faustian bargaining. The question for the Democrats and for the country, is whether we can have morality without God and the answer is "yes, but...". "Yes" in that morality is not dependent upon a God. "But" in that one has to give that morality a locus. Pete Buttigieg is attempting to do this, but he is probably the wrong messenger (alas) at this time in history. Sanders is an atheist and can't fuse his 60s-born socialism with a deity, in large part because his socialism taught him not to. What we need, alá Martin Luther King, is a credible messenger, unafraid to frame their values in the form of a higher power. This will motivate the religious, the irreligious and and the aregligious alike. There are no shortage of contemporary problems that can't be spoken of as an affront to God, whether one believes in God or not.
1
Better a technocrat than what you've got now. Even you know that, Ross.
Given that there will be no challengers to Trump on the Republican side, surely you should do all you can to help whichever Democrat gets the nomination.
3
The irony is we have seen this in NYC for many years. A mayor who is a good manager but not a likeable sort is elected and is respected. He wears out his welcome and a warmer more folksy person is elected mayor. It is more of a relief but the City does not benefit and voters go back to skilled but not that likeable mayor.
2
@Daniel A. Greenbaum
The real irony is that much of the "educated" public regards a no-nothing business manager as capable as a matter of course, based on his demeanor.
How quickly people forget that stop and frisk didn't reduce crime and that the Bloomberg school test scores were phony.
Rhodes Scholars. Harvard Kennedy School grads. Yale law grads. What do these monikers have in common? I take this to be the main point of this column. Democratic party elites carry the same pedigree as the scions of American business, especially the Wall Street crowd, Ivy Leaguers who then hire techies from MIT and Cal Tech.
The question is, is it an either or proposition when it comes to governance? Science and technology vs. the humble townie lawyer who ran for Mayor or City Councilor? It is not an either or proposition; neither Biden nor Sanders eschew science nor technological solutions. What these two politicians bring to the table is a touch of wisdom.
Statistics do not tell the whole story. To me this is the point here.
For example: Obama made it clear he did not support a public option. He preferred the more technically elegant market solution of the exchanges. His MIT economist friends told him this would be the better route. He used "politics" as an excuse but had he made a full-effort to pass a public option he would have gotten it. But it was too ideological, and the technocrats hate ideology.
RD is right on this and thanks for this perspective.
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Technocracy in our time has little to do with actual technology and more to do with finance, business and accounting. Why we treat these tools of class rule as some kind of abstract expertise is worthy of serious consideration.
2
At the very end of this article, Ross suggests that because we have good GDP and employment numbers, that somehow people are OK with the status quo. It is exactly because we have these numbers that people are upset. We are measuring the wrong things. Yes, the economy is expanding. Yes, people have jobs. But no, their lives are not better than their parents, and no, they do not have faith that their children’s lives will be better than theirs.
I would say that the declining life expectancy rate is a more accurate reflection of the state of our union than GDP.
4
It sounds like Democrats are realizing what the Republicans realized last time. To quote the piece “The experts had their chance; let the moralists and radicals have theirs”. One can argue with the moralists description, bet essentially the republicans went in another direction. My sense is it’s the Democrats turn. Go Bernie!
Deficits Matter. It becomes scary when a Republican President, even if he is deranged, is running up record breaking deficits to get a booming economy even if it will cause serious problems down the road.
It becomes even scarier when the entire Republican party ignores the fact that all bubbles burst eventually with large negative fallout and that is what we will face somewhere down the road, most likely in the next 8 years.
This bubble bursting will be exasperated if we simultaneously enact an expensive health care program if we do not increase taxes to pay for it. Unfortunately no Democratic Presidential candidate will admit this presently.
We don't punish liars during presidential campaigns just as Republicans don't punish Republican Presidents who run up huge deficits
I'm sick, tired and bored of all the labels recklessly thrown around
when what's equally essential is the strength to defeat the incumbent, arouse the voters and provide the leadership to steer us through what lies ahead in order to preserve and enhance our democracy.
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I suppose Douthat's supposition that Americans are exhausted "with the experts"---a supposition for which he offers some mighty thin support---leaves me in the netherworld of those "left behind" members of the citizenry whose cerebral cortexes are still engaged, who still engage in reflective, critical thinking, who still appreciate real-world expertise combined with real-world experience that produces real-world benefits in those arenas of greatest practical and moral/ethical concern/need.
We have seen the "benefits" of a president attracted to reflexive, anti-intellectual, anti-expertise, anti-fact, anti-truth lemmings. Having hollowed-out the collective expertise and collective memory which anonymously and doggedly served us faithfully and well both at home and abroad, Donald Trump has surrounded himself with the worst anti-institutional, anti-expertise fools he could find---think, the "three amigos" running U.S. foreign policy in eastern Europe.
Expertise in the leadership of our country? God knows, I pine for it. I'd like to stop feeling as though my country and the world it once looked to for stable leadership is in a free fall toward the very dystopian darkness that The Grifter laughably said he would save us from.
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Bernie and Biden just bore me. They are not democrats so steeped in technology they can can help avoid its pitfalls.
To be blunt: Dear Ross, you are punching much under your weight. Really.
I have much true respect for Mr.Sanders - not "with all due respect" - but he is just a clever attack dog. He is clearly honest but unfortunately not "the brightest candle on the birthday cake." His stance "The experts had their chance; let the moralists and radicals have theirs" is not true.
The experts had no chance. Look at the health care issue. All experts were thwarted by "the system" you are always palliating by calling it merotocratic or expert. To be clear: They were thwarted in their hearings by PACs, lobbyists, pressure groups, thinktanks - you may name some others - lobbying against the negative aspects of the planned reforms for their clients within BOTH parties. When experts - domestic and foreigners - had realized this they packed up saying "no chance this way" and all foreigners left for good while all American top tiers quit.
Mr. Sanders is right to say moralists and activists have to join in but this can never do without being backed by indispensable expertise to do it right. He does not understand this. He is alienating most of the badly required experts by his permanent rant by his half baked proposals not realizing that these people are fed up almost the same way he is. The technocrat Ms. Warren is not able to offer viable proposals also because all serious experts ran away too far fearing a more than likely obstruction of their advice the next time also.
Your turn to fix it.
@ws
Supplement:
Some technocrats who revealed to be "fed up" also:
- Ms.Yovanovitch
- Mr. Vindman
- Ms. Hill
- Mr. Taylor
- Mr. Kent
jiust to add all "adults in the room" who are not "in the room" any longer.
Mr. Sanders should not alienate these folks as he does right now by his rogue campaign against all kind of experts. You never know. He might need their sophisticated help sometimes. Remember: He want´s to become US President who has to deal particularly with foreign politics. As far as I know he is no expert on this issue - just not to say: He hasn´t any clue.
He could be stronger by inviting honest true experts - undisputably a difficult pick - to his campaign.
Anyway. Just to be cynical once again: A smarter and less stubborn, obstinate, intractable guy would have given up long time ago but then there never had been someone who could have carried the Dem´s torch above the gully level after the self-inflicted HRC disaster.
Douthat blames chronically disappointing test scores, racial achievement gaps, and general stagnation in education on technocratic innovations, specifically Race to the Top and Common Core. Who does he think he's fooling?
Race to the Top was passed in 2009 primarily as an economic stimulus program (remember the recession?), operating in education. The funds started going out in 2010 and were mainly gone by 2011, with the last dregs of money spent in 2013. The money went to the best school districts, with the vast majority of public schools receiving nothing. This was not designed to improve test scores.
Common Core was proposed by the National Governors' Conference, a primarily Republican group. Its details were worked out during well over a decade by the state superintendents of education, also mainly Republican. It was a pretty good plan that would have taken a lot of effort to implement. However, by the time the plan was developed, the Republican Party had evolved into calling Common Core a pinko Trilateral Commission scheme. Common Core was never ever implemented, not in one state. Heck, the Common Core textbooks weren't even published, much less used in classrooms.
The blame for problems in public education lies elsewhere.
1
It's one thing for Democrats to be skeptical of the so-called experts. But it's quite another for Republicans to be skeptical of the facts. Given a choice, its preferable to deaI with know-it-alls than deny-it-alls.
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None of this helps to explain the person in the White House now. Neither technocrat, nor competent, Trump is bent on destroying government just because it's there. He has no finer values, morals, plans, or goals. Nor does he care to sustain it: he doesn't see past the next ten minutes, or feel past the current rage. Searching for a rationale to explain his election I can only find a self-destructive distrust of government fanned by self-interested politicians and talk show puppets. There is no alternative vision; just more of 'less is better' even when it clearly isn't. The facts are clear; people have been tricked into voting against there own best interests by lying political figures who keep saying: " someone is getting something you aren't".
1
"Eschewing grand ambitions, and just letting the expansion run as long as it can go" will run us right down the black hole of climate disaster.
3
The reality is all to often the "Unbiased" Technocrats supposedly neutral policies turn out to favor the people who fund these "Unbiased" studies. And the so called "Neutral" civil servants retire a couple of years after the decisions are made to a job paying beaucoup bucks working for the exact same people these decisions favor. It isn't that people mistrust the science so much has people believe the Technocrats are in someone's pockets. And they have good reason too. Usually they are. The corruption and self dealing in the Civil Service & Politics is blatant. In academia it isn't has blatant but it is more assuredly still there.
As an example how many people remember all the talking head economists proclaiming loudly how admitting China to the WTO would not cause the whole sale shipping of jobs to China? Lo & Behold after the working class & Unions had their back broken it came the primary funders of those studies were the very people who had done so well out of the deal. Or perhaps we should recall the Princeton study that pretty much proved that irregardless of what the voter's want the only opinions that mean anything to the politician's are those of the rich.
So spare me and whole lot of others the fantasy the "Experts" are anything but paid puppets or that this country is a meritocracy when it most self evidently isn't. And that's with connivance & consent of BOTH parties. And NO I didn't vote for Trump
The pendulum swings. I'd think that after 4 years of policy being made by Trump's mercurial and uneducated whim, the country would be all in for a technocrat who actually understands policy. That said, Trump's also phenomenally corrupt, so a moralist might be equally appealing.
1
Terrific analysis. Chasing “politics” out of both parties has hobbled our ability to govern ourselves. The Trump phenomenon wasn’t possible in bi-party regime in which “politics” dominated each side. Reagan v Mondale, Bush v. Gore, Bush v Clinton, Clinton v. Dole. Unfortunately, we may be saddled with an ever infantilizing electorate drawn to the two most non-political types, juveniles who think the whole world is rigged, Trump v. Warren!
Our resident Republican intellectual tuning the snare on the Bernie Bandwagon two weeks in a row. Hmmm. That, in itself, is a tempting morsel for literary frolic, but I'll defer to those feeling a smidge more vindictive this morning...
Armchair political analysts suffer the same short-term memory loss regarding our "democracy" that the rest of us always do. And that's regarding that pesky Electoral College thing. In a country of 50 states with around 330,000,000 people, when a "president" is elected by 0.0002% of the population in 0.04% of those states, any sweeping analytical protocol regarding the voter psyche and trends are out the window. Case in Point: the current regime, courtesy minority rule, better known as the Drumpfian Swamp. Given the punditry's accuracy with that one a few years ago, I'd say all bets are off taming any consensus on what might be, but probably isn't, happening in the mindset of likely voters.
Having said that, given the bungling idiocy oozing from the OO, please—gives us back our technocrats!!
2
Less technology and meritocracy as an asset for Sanders. I see your point. The democrats would be running like non-bully Trump from the left. With morals.
I perceive that many Americans are sick and tired of hormonal executive decisions and public policies that are not based on analysis but on the paranoic mind of a messianic president.
There has to be a ground for technology and meritocracy if we do not want the next cabinet looking like the one we have now, regarding qualification. Besides, I do not see Sanders supporting people who want to keep their own private health insurance. He would not get the votes of the moderates in that group.
Quoting Douthat: ".... the feeling that the whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing and doesn’t deliver on its promises." This is Douthat's favorite trope, i.e., the "meritocracy." As if smart technocrats aren't needed any more. Sorry, Ross. These are precisely the people we need to see us (Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans and everyone else) through to a survivable future in a secular, liberal democratic international society. Suggestion: Drop the references to a "meritocracy" as if that were the problem. No, they collectively are the solution.
1
While Sanders passion towards the working class and his support for a more fair America towards the middle class and poor are long over due sadly Sanders will never be able to deliver as president be cause passion is not enough to change Washington DC.. He will be stopped by the powerful and rich who have true control of our government..
Biden is a dead man walking and only represents the Rich Corporations, Wall Street and big Banks while returning to all the failed pass policies of the DLC Democrats while putting on the Old gee whiz no Malarkey act that no one believes.
Elizabeth Warren may have a chance to change Washington DC if elected because she is smarter than a lot of Washington mover and shakers and has really thought deeply about what is wrong in America and how to change our government policies to make our country fairer for all Americans...
Hopefully she will be smart enough to allow our politics to catch up to her bold ideas and avoid the pitfalls of trying to move too quickly with big policy's.
2
Regardless of who wins the nomination foe the Democrats, I think we all know that the real problem is on the Republican side, and has been for a couple of decades. A mentality of winning is the only thing that matters (which leads to shameless lying and distortion of the truth), and when they don't obstruction is the constant order of the day. Mitch McConnell is the perfect example of this: rules and norms are only to be observed as long as they benefit the Republicans, and once they don't they're conveniently broken. Should Trump win in 2020, that will be the end of democracy in the US, because the Republicans aren't checking him at all.
1
"...that exhaustion plus a solid economy explains why the socialist may yet fall to an even more archaic breed — a party politician."
I shudder.
(After 50 years, I finally switched and became a Democrat. Please don't start me of with Joe. I'll sooner vote for Trump.)
I keep trying with you Ross, but I just have to admit that we live on different planets. You’re talking about the two least electable Democrats: Bernie uses the term “socialist” in his self-description, which America finds inexplicably disqualifying, and Joseph Biden cannot string a sentence together (imagine how bad that would be on the debate stage).
Articles Iike this one completely derail the discourse. Please please please stop commenting on Democratic politics. It is far more interesting to hear you speak on Republican politics.
1
"But Biden’s status quo-oriented version of the anti-technocratic pitch is better suited to the economic moment."
No, it’s not. I offer a very simple counter argument: if not now, when?
When times are good, conservatives tell us “don’t rock the boat“. And when times are bad, they say "we can’t afford any risks right now“.
Ross ignores the truth that he states earlier in this piece: people are fed up. That is why now is the time for real change.
2
Ross doesn't get to pick the Dem nominee. he just has to vote for her/him and get all his co-cons in battleground states to do the same.
Which is why Mayor Pete has as much or more in common with Bill Clinton than Obama. Young Ivy League Rhodes Scholar and avatar of the meritocracy from a rural state. The major difference isn't orientation but military, with Clinton avoiding service in common with his generation while ambitious Buttigieg chose to check off that box because of post 9/11.
@Timothy Teeter
Somehow I doubt signing up for active duty is "checking the box." The man was wounded in combat, for heaven's sake.
@LauraF Buttigieg was not wounded in combat. If he was, he has failed to mention it. Her served in intelligence.
Today, December 7, is the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks. There are NO articles about the Pensacola attack open to comments. Now imagine an American President, a few years after Pearl Harbor, kowtowing to the Japanese Government and parroting the self-serving statements from the same. Trump is on the payroll of MBS, and should be held to account.
Period.
1
I work as a live in provider for an adult with developmental disabilities and the challenge of it led to my conclusion that ideals or idealism creates horrible positions reserved for underpaid fools compensated by being dubbed heroes. Look at the American ideal of manifest destiny. It created the position of indian killer. Inclusion is the same. All the support I would have as an employee at an institution is traded for me to go out in the community alone with a person who I may have to physically manage alone and while I am bitten and punched onlookers will call the police and I am still alone. I'm moving on from it because the pay won't provide for a retirement and won't support a family. This creates endless turnover and inconsistency in care that harms the clients but ultimately reflects the low value placed on their lives. They are living proof that America is not the land of opportunity, not for everyone.
1
Completely disingenuous. What people are fed up with is not "technocracy" which in any case was not exemplified by Bill Clinton. People are fed up with neoliberalism, also known as globalism, the domination of policy by those who represent global corporations instead of the American people.
1
You missed the real problem. Trump cannot deal with truth at any level and the part of the electorate that is most wedded to biblical nonsense has chosen to go down with the ship that is Trump.
2
We've spent the last 25+ years being pitched on the concept of technocrats, the trick being that they're almost all either bought and paid for, or just pure charlatans.
Where were these technocrats when they all agreed on the Iraq War? On the great state of the pre-recession economy? On every trade deal? All these technocrats were unanimously in favor of these calamitous policies, seemingly to a man.
Why not Andy Young? The only man with a comprehensive plan? What, is he too Asian or to technocratic for most? I am afraid both.
If Douthat could explain exactly what a "technocrat" and what a technocrat does that is so bad his column may have made some sense to me.
Is a person with scientific knowledge and uses it like a physician or physicist a technocrat?
1
Bernie knows that cheap immigrant labor depresses American workers' wages. Is he a technocrat with common sense?
2/3 of the public does not feel better off economically. The top 1% has taken advantage of the cult following of the flim flam man in office to steal from the rest of us.
1
Ross I love your columns. We have different views for sure but I do appreciate your insights and opinions. You make me consider/reconsider in ways that are fair and productive.
You are not a propagandist or an intentional trickster. You're thoughtful, smart, and honest even if not always right in my view.
You are "RC conservative" to be sure. But I imagine that if you were President while you'd act to appoint judges that lean against Pro-Choice they'd still be strongly for equality, egalitarianism, and a more perfect liberal democracy.
You'd not sell your Nation's soul to the devil to achieve some perceived theological dictum?
You would not deny that n the face of many working models and our great wealth universal excellent health care is a modern human right and something to achieve for all in US?
Won't it be it great if the GOP was like you - like you'd be in office? Not like the weird cult driven away from liberal democracy and toward theocratic authoritarian plutocracy tinged with racism, nationalism, and disingenuous denial-ism/dishonesty.
Wow! we'd actually have a choice at the polls! A choice the current GOP denies all real Americans today!
If you believe in liberal democracy the ONLY choice is the D-Party. Any D candidate for any office would be better for America! Wonk or no-wonk! D Party pointed existentially right. Only existentially right choice now!
1
"the smartest guys in each political coalition can’t really be trusted, the feeling that the whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing and doesn’t deliver on its promises."
Here's the nub of the problem: when the "smart guys" want to make money you shouldn't trust them. They will rob you blind.
The smart guys/gals who don't spend their whole lives chasing after money (the scientists, the unelected bureaucrats, the journalists and artists) are the only people who will save you.
How to tell the difference--go to school. Or if you can't do that, then just trust the professors--they're not in it for themselves, they're in it for you.
1
Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" ("Twilight of the Gods") closes with Valhalla in flames, the hero lifeless after a vain pursuit of (cursed) gold.
...sounds like Trump to me, actually. Twilight of the Dilettante, maybe?
So let's go, Bernie and / or Biden, the most human -- and electable -- of the Dem bunch! Douthat is right -- we need a professional, not an amateur.
Technocrats and experts aren’t going anywhere and will play as big a role in a Sanders’ presidency as they played in Obama’s. There will be no twilight of technocrats in this world as technological progress explodes and global warming worsens. What we need is a moral renaissance to go with the technological one. We need compassion, integrity and probity in a political arena besmirched with filth unimaginable just a few years ago. We need a president who has stood fast by his ideals no matter which way the wind has blown. We need Bernie Sanders!
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@RajeevA
Agree! America, the ordinary people need Sanders!
As a longtime Bernie supporter, I've never thought of him as a moralist, but as a hardworking dude with integrity, bold ideas, vision, courage and a commitment to make life better for ordinary people.
I'd suggest that the time is not the "twilight of the technocrats", but the sunset of the "best and the brightest"...
Those "best and the brightest" who never saw a war they wanted to end, or a Wall Street regulation that couldn't be eliminated or watered down, whose courage and conviction was limp noodle-like, except when protecting their
status quo. RIP
Time for change.
Technocrats are useful, but Sanders' inspiring integrity, bold ideas, courage and vision are what America needs NOW!
A Future To Believe In!
13
@Lucy Cooke
Yes! When a candidate can produce a rather lengthy "anti-donors' list, you know he is saying and doing the right thing.
6
Yes, the technocrats have failed us, but that’s because their “wonky” solutions are all in favor of the corporate overlords who have captured our government. Bernie has plenty of great plans. The climate movement has named his climate plan the “gold standard.” Teachers are enthusiastic about his education plan. Housing advocates are thrilled with his housing plan. People who want universal healthcare, including doctors and nurses, are thrilled with his Medicare for all plan. The thing that unites Bernie’s plans is that they are not in favor of the corporate elite. They are bold, well thought out plans to solve the real problems of the vast majority of the American people. Whereas the wonky plans of Pete Buttigieg are designed to hide the fact that they don’t really solve our problems. Even Warren’s plans fall short of many important marks, as her muddled roll out of her health insurance plan shows. And Biden just promises to “get things done” without specifying any real plans to grapple with the crises that we face as a society and a nation.
65
@Cassandra
Big medicine loves his MFA plan because it increases their profits. Teachers love his education schemes because it increases their paychecks. The University elite love his free college for all because it makes it possible for them to raise college costs by three times the rate of inflation. Housing developers are thrilled with his housing plans because it will increase the price they can charge the government to provide housing.
Sanders dreams of the workers paradise of the 1960's that was the USSR. He, somehow, is going to do it right this time and the ruling elite won't skim off the cream, leaving whey for the masses.
His wife was president of a small non-profit college that she drive into bankruptcy through fraudulent loans while collecting her $200,000 salary and $250,000 severance pay, which the Sanders used to buy another home.
Granted, the Sanders' skimming was pennies compared to the millions Hunter Biden was paid for a no show job and the $30 million per year in taxable income the Clintons documented in their tax returns for selling influence. But the fact that his personal largesse harvesting is modest does not excuse the inherently autocratic view that the ruling class is entitled to a bigger slice of the pie.
2
@Cassandra Yes Cassandra gets it right here. People are not exhausted with experts per se. They are fed up with the experts and politicians working solely for the benefit of the oligarchs instead of the majority of the American people. In fact Douthat's column is an example of this wonkiness, as he presents a kind of technical explanation rather than addressing the actual fundamental problems afflicting our government and society.
3
@ebmem
As qualified as you are to comment with that superficial skimming comment, I too can state unequivocally that they're all better than what we have now.
4
Obama offered a transactional politics, but Republicans do not want transactions except on their terms. His technocracy was never given a chance.
Any Democratic president or congressional leader will have to deal with the other party's McConnells and Newts, Tea Party folks, and people who are prepared to worship Trump in public and keep their real feelings private, or lose their real feelings entirely a la Lindsay. Republicans never had to deal with a whole bunch of Kuciniches or Naders in Congress; Democrats keep their lefties on a tight leash.
The Republican Party has gone bonkers. That is what both technocrats and Democratic political hacks are up against, and to write political analysis that ignores this fact is to add to our comedy of the absurd.
131
This is another brilliant piece. Douthat and Bouie are the best analysts of our current moment.
Expertise is what advisors and administrators are for. Establishing what the common good ought to be is the job of politicians; it has to do with 'vision"; it has to do with identifying 'friend and foe'; it has to do with 'inspiration'; and it has to do with envisioning broad outlines in a credible way.
1
As long as we try to attract attention, we tend to emphasize the individual suffering from being poor, instead of looking at an unjust system that allows poverty; and that there is the urgent need to tackle the current 'odious inequality (the cause!) that makes it possible to be poor...in such a rich country as these United States.
2
@manfred marcus: Poverty proliferates by children having children with no grown-ups in sight.
I wish the NYT had a right wing opinion writer who could either be honest about the nature of our country or was wise enough to actually understand how we got here. The simple truth is the left-leaning technocrats actually did right by us more or less but the disingenuous Republicans made it seem that this country was being raped by them. There is little raping by Obama or Clinton who both left this country far better than how the Republicans wrecked it before they got in. But let's not speak this truth because it doesn't fit into the narrative that your current bunch of writers need to believe.
The truth is for decades the Republican party has sought power exclusively to hand it to the wealthy to pervert this country how they see fit. Efforts to improve education, healthcare reform, reduction of poverty, and reasonable fiscal management have been less than successful because the Right did everything in their power to make them fail. They have sought to starve the government through tax cuts and then push us to bankruptcy through massive deficit spending in order to break the back of our nation so the population expects far less from our country than it is capable of giving. Policies that have led us to massive wealth inequality point directly to this vision of the United States that the Republicans have pursued for decades allowing the few to prosper exponentially over the ones that make their wealth possible. And in the end they will decide how we live in.
254
@Lucas Lynch
" I wish NYT had a right-wing opinion writer. "
NYT does have one - Ross Douthat! But now he also cannot justify the "rightness of the right". So he now waxes eloquent about Bernie Sanders who will never be the Democratic Candidate. Never mind the Presidency. All he is doing is once again sowing seeds of confusion. Not that the Democratic field needs more. And let's face it. The technocrats, President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama saved the day from a total meltdown saving our country from being a complete banana republic. "The G.O.P. libertarians and neo-conservatives intelligentisia bore 'some' responsibility for the Iraq wars and financial crisis? Sorry! But they were responsible for 'all' the mess and now the ascension of a man like Trump.
17
@Lucas Lynch
Establishment Republicans are indistinguishable from Democrats in that they are technocrats who do not trust the electorate to make correct policy choices. They favor big federal government/big business/big regulations.
Their policy, like that of Democrats, prefers that the experts in the administrative branch make the rules. Establishment politicians do not like the idea of passing legislation for which they can be held accountable. They prefer sounds good laws that are sufficiently vague that the "experts" can convert into regulations that favor their cronies.
For decades, Democrats have also used a sue and settle strategy to get federal courts to expand the power of the administrative bureaucracy via Chevron defenses to get regulations imposed by fiat that would never be acceptable to the voters or as part of a democratic process.
The left leaning and right leaning technocrats may very well have at some point been well meaning, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is how we are in a situation where the revolving door of both elected and non elected government officials manage to give an ever increasing share to themselves and their cronies at the expense of the masses.
Whatever your political position, it has to appear unseemly for Hunter Biden to have received largesse from the Ukrainians and for the Clintons to have received $30 million per year in taxable income.
3
@Lucas Lynch
I believe that Ross Douthat is doing his best to prove his claim that "the whole model of credentialed meritocracy is corrupt and self-dealing..."
If anything demonstrates that "meritocracy" means that mediocre members of the old boys club get promoted to influential jobs over people who are far better thinkers, writers and human beings, it is that the NY Times gave this column to one of the club and claimed he got it on his merits.
4
Would you ask your uncle to be in charge your daughter's college level eduction? Would you ask your best friend to work on your tax return? Would you ask your doctor to design a 20 stories building? Would you ask your neighbor to operate on your cancer? Technical competence is vitally important in the modern world. Trump is the exact embodiment of the popular but FOOLISH revolt against expertise. Is Trump more knowledgeable about warfare than the generals? Is Trump knows more about the environment than the scientists? The leader of a great country like the United State cannot be someone who is not smart enough to know fact from fiction. Some levels of technical competence are required despite what some foolish right wing pundits may fool us to believe. However, do not mistake me that just being a great technocrats makes a great leader. Hillary Clinton is a great technocrat but she failed because she falls short in inspiring many people. Competence is necessary but insufficient condition for Presidency. Moral and inspirational leadership must accompany it.
139
@Peter
"The leader of a great country like the United State cannot be someone who is not smart enough to know fact from fiction."
Also, the leader of a great country like the United States cannot be someone who is not self-aware enough, and honest enough, to be aware of the fact that there are things he doesn't know.
16
@Peter Hillary inspired 3 million ppl more than trump. Her strategy doomed her and apparently Russia too.
5
@Peter: Specialization creates the need to define fractal relationships.
2
Douthat ignores the simple fact that the technocracy was not given a chance to implement anything resembling a rational policy by a GOP dominated obstructionist Congress. The GOP had two simple populist messages: the deficit was holding back economic growth and Obamacare was a disaster waiting to compound US financial problems. Well, in the end the technocratic Obamacare is now popular and the next big scare is Medicare for all. As far as the deficit is concerned it disappeared as a GOP issue. The only ones now worried about the deficit now are the technocrats because it is not due to major investments in infrastructure or anything that could lead to economic growth but rather to fill the pockets of people already swimming in money. It is not that intelligent well informed experts are unable to see solutions, it is that politics conducted by exploiting fears and prejudices make it very difficult to implement rational solutions. Technocrats can be faulted for not knowing how to handle irrational human beings and assuming it is enough to explain why some particular action is needed. Unfortunately politics is what gets in the way of progress. Embracing the politically expedient may win elections but it is at the expense of any social or economic progress.
3
Go home and ask your wife how many thought avenue she goes down to make sure nothing gets left behind for a two weeks stay with you and the kids in the cabin in the woods. I like Warren her core is straight as an arrow and you would really need to convince her if you had a better way to slice cheese and as effective. Yang is also someone to also listen to with ideas of doing away with layers and layers of government and give directly. Raising the next generation is important with over fifty percent of all children raised in a single parent home his ideas are revolutionary. Would love to see them both on the same ticket we are in trouble and it’s was there before Trump
1
"This disappointment has been strongest on health care, where Obamacare’s most popular provision was the simple socialism of the Medicaid expansion rather than the complicated, expert-fashioned architecture of the exchanges."
Mr.Douthat: This is the worst judgement of the US health care problem I´ve ever read. You don´t understand even the basics oif this issue. Period.
The crucial problems of ACA are
- no cost cut
- no covering of all risks, particularly the good ones that fund the bad ones, (both absolute criteria)
- no sufficient enforcement.
These principles are as simple as they can be. The general professional rule is "Make it as simple as it can be. It will become all too complicated automatically".
All experts who have experience with working health care systems in their countries - this means all industrial countries in the entire world except USA - are aware of this. American experts are also because there are strong global research alliances. They didn´t need the help of their foreign fellows in hearings in the Obama days but they begged for it nevertheless just to show American authorities what a working systems is requiring.
When these foreign experts had to realize in their hearings that unstoppable pressure groups obstructed this approach by overloading it with exceptions and overcomplicated procedural impediments - the only explanation had been to derail this system in practise as it did - they packed their bags to leave and to never come back again.
1
@ws: "Scalability" is fractal. Self-organization is defined by conditional rules of relationship between neighboring cells.
Question: When did "science" and "Truth" develop a synonymous relationship?
Science is a method for furthering our understanding. Good science tends to lead to more questions. Certainty has nothing to do with it, since scientific "facts" are constantly being revised or overturned.
Truth is a philosophical concept, much argued about, and far too complex for me to comment on here.
actually, scientific facts are rarely changed, theories, however, are often changed. The existence of gravity is a fact, it's origin is still being debated by various theories, as one example.
2
Even with different nuances and emphases, at least, the Democratic presidential aspirants are offering a policy vision to the voters, but Trump and his Republican party are still sticking with deceptive populist slogans and the frightening policy vacuum.
7
@Prof. Jai Prakash Sharma: In world of corporations, the Democratic Party fails to teach that the US Federal Government is the people's corporation that sets the stage for all the other corporations.
1
Democrats blundered horribly in 2016. They totally misread the nation and the current confusion is not looking good for 2020. I'm not impressed with any of the candidates. There seems to be a strong democratic message missing right now with all these candidates as they all try to outgun the other. Having so many choices adds to the confusion. Also being a 2 year process causes many voters to just suffer from boredom during the whole mind boggling process. Many of them are now starting to fall by the wayside, but still no workable solid message from the party that needs to bring all of this disarray together. I hope we don't see 2016 all over again because right now I don't see a candidate that stands out who can beat trump at his game when he's got the great economy message to back him up.
2
I have a very hard time seeing Bernie Sanders as "unifying."
In fact, his perpetual anger is perhaps the biggest reason I will not support him.
You see, in order to unify as a leader, you have to recognize that you are leading everyone. Not just progressives, not just Democrats in general. Not just the working class. Not just those whose ideology aligns with yours. You are also leading (which means serving), those you deeply disagree with, those who's beliefs and concerns run wholly counter to your own. You cannot take into account the interests of only your own party.
You have to be able to compromise with and respectfully work with those across the aisle.
Joe Biden gets this. Pete Buttigieg gets this. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren do not. It's why only the first two might actually have a chance at beating Trump - because half the country doesn't feel disrespected when they listen to them.
Sanders and Warren, on the other hand, do nothing but deepen the divide every time they open their mouths.
1
@Kristin
"You see, in order to unify as a leader, you have to recognize that you are leading everyone. Not just progressives, not just Democrats in general. Not just the working class. Not just those whose ideology aligns with yours. You are also leading (which means serving), those you deeply disagree with, those who's beliefs and concerns run wholly counter to your own. You cannot take into account the interests of only your own party."
Bernie is a Democrat I guess because he will appear on a Democratic ballot. But , over his long career, he is only a Democrat recently.
2
@Rima - I respectfully disagree, especially with respect to your argument that we should put our faith in “academics and policy writers.”
No. We should put our faith in deal-makers like Joe Biden, who can get the work of government done. What we don’t need are people who insist on creating a perfect system, whether they’re left-wing wonks or Stephen Miller. Instead, let’s get a moderate deal-making politician in so that our country can actually run.
Yes — America’s not perfect. But we’re still a great nation. Let’s keep it that way. My apologies if this has offended you in any way.
1
As we all know, there is often a very large distance between a goal articulated and getting there.
In this perilous election before us, hopeful that a Democratic President will inherit the devastated national and international as well as physical landscape of our country, we should have some indication of what that "distance" looks like, once the goal has been articulated.
Words are important, to be sure, but they are also cheap, if not backed up with what they mean.
Beware the politician with lofty goals but wields smoke and mirrors on how to get there. Luckily, the Democrats have some candidates who actually have plans we can read, rather than sound bites for the media to chew on.
1
Religion:
Many Evangelicals dismiss science as a tool of devil. On the other side the fundamentalist climate change believer "believes" in the science behind end of world statistics. However, they "believe" since science got us into this mess so it couldn't possibly get us out of it. Who needs Science?
Science:
Technocrats? Would that include marketing scientist? The little device in our homes seeing and listening to everything we do and say will provide them answers. Data shoved through algorithms to get us to buy what they're selling, from sneakers to politicians. Yet they can't figure out Trump.
Art:
Politics is like Jazz. It takes not only an incredible amount of theory and technical knowledge to be a great jazz musician but also knowing what to play and when to play it. Statistics are useful to politicians but if they don't understand and know the voters they're just spouting facts and theory. They have to tell the people what they want to hear and deliver.
Where Religion, Science and Art comes together:
Mike Bloomberg. Although not immune to the Trump flu, he's not inflicted with '70s left wing politics. He became a billionaire because of stat's. Can you imagine the brain thrust behind his decision to run? He knows what the people want to hear.
1
Rather than two circles (technocrat and moralist), Ross, you need at least three: The third is the one that contains those who would burn everything down in order to control the bodies and behavior of others. I can understand that for a man as wedded to organized religion as you are, that circle might be so obvious so as to be misunderstood, but those of us outside that circle are weary of the histrionics indulged therein.
It is clear that the GOP has no regard for its own technocrats like Mitt Romney (and can we include Ted Cruz in here?) or even those who can clean themselves up and put on a suit like Jeb Bush and Mario Rubio, and the party faithful seem to be unaware that their agenda has been accomplished by a technocrat extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell. No, your group will replace every Eric Cantor who silently did their bidding with a David Brat who sings of the morality of racial prejudice and oppression of the poor, a favorite parable of Jesus I expect.
In order to make sense of the Democratic field and the party's aspirations, you impose your own party's tribal embrace of the flag and the cross. Ross, what if a new paradigm is emerging, one in which what is good for GM might or might not be good for America, but our richest citizens paying tiny amounts into our treasury can no longer be defended as … what? Where is the dividing line between those who help the country more by paying their share and those whose contributions are enhanced by evading the tax laws?
7
@Jack Mahoney: I have never seen an old fool more bitter about inevitable death than Mitch McConnell.
Tyranny always comes wrapped in a flag and capped with magic.
1
Where Bernie’s moralism lurks just beneath the surface, there is one candidate, Marianne Williamson, who puts it front and center: Turn from an economic bottom line to a humanitarian bottom line. I believe that what lies implicitly at the heart of Bernie’s agenda is made explicitly by Williamson.
Dear Ross, I get it that we Dems are all over the map with our candidates. It's tough to decide which one to back since there are so many choices. The average voter has access to little contact with any candidate. Instead, we rely on media coverage including their web sites. This doesn't cut it.
The Dem debates are a farce and waste of time and money--it's impossible to learn anything about their philosophy of governance--it's all staged for sound bites and the next news cycle--about as useful as a recycled dryer sheet.
I'd like to see more in-depth interviews--a forum in which candidates can flesh out their ideas and provide some continuity. Instead of debates, how about panel discussions?
9
@Svendska8 : How about using the same structure as the "Sweet 16" phase of college basketball's "March Madness"? Candidates could be randomly paired off, and debate 1-on-1. We'd need to have some way to determine the "winner" if we wanted to go to the next bracket s- something more reliable than on-line polling - but this could at lest make the debates meaaningful.
Technocracy can work ; China is the best example.
Douthat has a point regarding American technocracy; it is self-serving. It has become a mandarinate at all levels. School systems beef up their headquarters staff with 'experts' while starving schools of resources and even carry out union-busting against teachers.
The underlying problem here is that our educated elite is merging with our business elite to pursue their social class interests at the expense of the lower orders. Oligarchy has become the new American Way.
3
Yes, Ross, I know you'd like to go back to the pre-Enlightenment world where God and King were at the top of the great chain of being. However, you can't turn off science and you can't make technology disappear. The world in our present technological context is just too complex to be run by amateurs.
Just the other day we saw Trump espousing his non-expert opinions about electric light bulbs. He was spouting off with no data and no science. Is this the any way to lead a world with nonsecular bombs, artificial intelligence, genetic design capabilities and global climate change? I think not.
19
@Henry Crawford: Most of the experts are only just beginning to exploit the insights of fractals and scale independence.
@Henry Crawford Trump's whining about light bulbs and toilets show just how out of touch he is with the ordinary day to day reality of life--and not just since he became president. The first low flush toilets and low energy usage light bulbs really didn't work very well. The ones that are out now do work much better. He's so removed from ordinary reality that he doesn't have a clue. We just replaced some light bulbs and the LEDs we bought have exactly the same soft white light as our old incandescents. Their prices may be higher than the old bulbs but wherever we put in the new ones over the last few years, we have not needed to replace them so a bargain over the longer run. As for looking orange, it's not the light bulbs that are the problem; it's the color of his pathetic makeup. Is there no one in his immediate circle who can point this out?
3
@Henry Crawford: The flap over filament light bulbs is rankest technological idiocy I have ever seen. Fire codes should require these bulb because they run too cool to start fires.
This sounds like a vailed endorsement of Donald Trump. After all, he certainly does not represent "a vision of competence and expertise". If Americans have had enough of that I suppose he would be the obvious alternative. Get ready for 4 more years!
4
@Ronald B. Duke: Trumpism plays to the heads of theocrats. I doubt people who preach that the universe was decreed into existence by a sentient being have fully functioning brains. I think Ross is a bulwark of theocracy at this newspaper. Trump acts like a God because he believes he is one.
@Ronald B. Duke: Trumpism is the screaming of a two year old denied candy.
1
@Ronald B. Duke Most Americans will prefer a deal maker with some morals and some empathy for the country rather than himself.
DT has done so much to damage the country's systems that I wonder if it isn't better to elect a transitional president.
Our domestic regulatory agencies and international diplomacy have been so damaged that it may take four years to repair them--and, no small thing, to bleed away some of the chaotic moral poison that the current occupant of the White House has dumped into the well.
That is the best reason to elect Joe Biden.
7
@cmk - Well said. Thank you.
Yeah, who needs expertise when you can govern from the gut. That’s what we’ve had during the W. and Trump presidencies. It was all good, right? I’ll take intelligence, data, and old-fashioned book learning, thank you!
36
@Chad: W ostensibly received God's advice to invade Iraq to show his daddy how it should have been done the first time while praying.
3
Mr. Douthat has a recurrent habit of making nearly everything partisan and tribal. There are other views: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-there-a-crisis-of-truth/ . Shapin has some other thoughts that are much more bipartisan, and perhaps make more sense. He discusses a world that has--for some understandable reasons--become more skeptical of scientific expertise. From Shapin's final paragraph:
"...A nostalgic return to Truth and disinterestedness would mean a much smaller and poorer science, and it would mean forgoing many of the benefits we enjoy through the enfolding of science in the fabric of everyday civic life..."
My own cherry-picking is perhaps unavoidable, but this other view with respect to science (as expertise) is less tribal. After all "the correct answer" is assumed by an assortment of groups--many of them with little expertise at all.
2
Douthat: "...where after two decades worth of technocratic experiments — Race to the Top, Common Core, etc. — we have chronically disappointing test scores, persistent racial gaps, the same basic stagnation despite reformers’ best-laid plans. ..."
It is endlessly frustrating that so-called conservatives give Common Core the back of their indifferent hands. Notice that Douthat did not mention the worst of the programs, the Federally-intrusive No Child Left Behind, which did so much harm that it gave rise to a desperate creation in Common Core. Common Core is a set of aspirations, a set of goals from educators to be reached at certain points along the K-12 route. It is not a "technocratic experiment." It was left to the states and localities to innovate, but it takes time for the publishing industry to catch up and for the inevitable mistakes to be addressed. It appears to this reader to be the best plan yet.
6
@MS Indeed, how does Douthat manage to overlook (ignore? purposefully avoid?) not only reference to No Child Left Behind but the beloved conservative ideal of the sweeping "School Choice" movement, the wide-ranging education impacts of the "religious rights and freedom" movement (think voutures and various federal supports). Oh, and how does one fail to consider the impacts of the charter school revolution - or its arch proponent, Education Secretary, Cruella DeVos, who personifies the non-technocrat model Douthat seems to be favoring? Perhaps these glaring omissions simply don't fit his purposes.
3
This is as bad as Douthat gets. Clinton and Obama, no matter what a hard core conservative like Douthat believes, were probably the two best presidents since FDR. Neither was able to accomplish all they wanted given the intransigence of the republicans but both governed reasonably and responsibly and made defensible choices on difficult issues.
Sanders wouldn't govern at all- he has exhibited no interest in foreign policy and concentrates his old testament wrath on capitalism with the result that no domestic legislation would be passed in his presidency. He appeals to a small minority of Democratic voters and when the republicans get through branding him what he proudly self identifies as- a socialist- he will lose by record margins in a general election.
Douthat hedges his bet with Biden who may very well actually be the nominee but he won't be one that brings any enthusiasm to any sector of the Democratic base. He is certainly no "technocrat" but that isn't to his credit- his appeal is that he simply isn't trump.
18
FDR was a disaster, creating the coming SS funding crisis and enabling the entitlement mentality that is so prevalent in this once high achieving nation.
Thought provoking, as always.
What puzzles me is whether there is any way for the Democrats to win in 2020, short of some sort of deus ex machina of nature or the foreign relations or Wall Street. They are a house divided against itself and I recall somebody saying that such houses cannot stand.
2
@Hugo Furst
We are not divided. We have a common vision--to rid ourselves of the toxic Executive branch of neo-liberal horsepucky. We are united in that quest. We just haven't defined which candidate has the best proposals for leading us forward. IMHO, the press is not helping. Everything is geared for sound bites and snark. A steady diet of that vacuousness has put us in starvation mode. More substance, please. More long-form conversations, please allow candidates to explain themselves. Our current forums are nothing more than cage fights. How is that in the best public interest?
1
Technocrats or meritocracy are not the real threats to progress but rather conservative ideas of individualism and an unwarranted fear of government involvement in economic or social issues. From Barry Goldwater to Reagan and now Trump, conservative evangelicals have been a major factor in republican platforms . Rather than sharing wealth our capitalist system has keep an increasing amount for owners of capital. Today’s op-Ed on Finland shows how cooperation between government,capitalism and voters has been a success for all. We are a divided nation in many ways and until we can find some common ground not much will change. The current administration had proven incapable of finding common ground on any issue. At least the Democrats are trying to make a start.
12
This nation has pushed its profoundly unfair system of electing federal officials long past its discard date. It is mired in rank idiocy and dishonesty.
1
Having a plan to move toward an objective does not make one a technocrat. Warren is a poor girl from Oklahoma who made good. I worry that both she and Bernie are advocating too much change too fast. But I prefer her plans to his anger.
Biden and Buttigieg are both in the same lane, headed toward change at a more modest pace. Neither is looking back, unless you think being civil is outdated.
I have no problem with Bernie's "social democrat" label or Buttigieg's personal lifestyle choice. But I do think that Republicans can make both of those a factor with negative results (and another nasty campaign).
So a Biden/Warren ticket solves all the problems. Biden soothes, especially our foreign allies. Warren can focus on her plans, and it gives her 12 years- 4 as VP, 8 in the Oval to get things done.
11
In the absence of any viable additional parties, the choice of President in the general election is binary. Thus, I most often find myself voting against someone rather than for a candidate I really like. Such was the case in the last election and will be the case in the next.
I find the potential for additional viable parties very attractive and believe that such a condition would be great for the country. But I am skeptical in will occur if there were only one additional party on either the liberal or conservative side as it would divide that vote and ensure the election of the intact party as occurred in the election of 1912 when TR split the Republican vote. So while I like the idea of additional strong parties, I don’t see how we get there.
2
All the US states conspire to make the financial barriers to ballot access far too high for any third party to go national.
2
There is a third choice not addressed by Ross Douthat as he sides with front runners and that is Amy Klobuchar who knows the system, but I believe can evaluate and perhaps embrace change in a level headed way. She is not a technocrat and not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist either as he embraces many ideas that have value, but is not someone I see as getting them implemented. Amy Klobuchar i believe could unite us in her quiet middle America way, be a great president and defeat the opportunist Trump.
8
Exactly!!!
Ross says the Democrats espouse wonkery, "a vision of competence and expertise governing to some extent above ideology, in which there are assumed to be “correct answers” to policy dilemmas that a disinterested observer could acknowledge and the right technocrat achieve."
I can't argue that there are "correct answers," but I think it's obvious that some answers would work better than others and I would hope that politicians would try to implement them. That does not seem to be the Republican way.
We have an existential threat from climate change. The Republicans respond by calling it a hoax.
We have a growing awareness that democracy is threatened by rising inequality intimately connected with the increase in power among the very rich. The Republicans respond by calling for tax cuts.
Republican ideology is built around the theme that the government is the enemy. Individual responsibility is the only answer. The invisible hand of free markets will solve all problems. That ideology makes them incapable of responding to the very real problems we face.
9
This is an excellent synthesis: wonks v. Trump like radicals v. Politicians. I must say that Sanders starts to look better and better for both appealing to Democrats (even thought he is not really a Democrat) and Trump sort of voters looking for a radical answer.
2
Mr Douhat's memory seems a bit short. A huge part of the reason the Obama administration was less successful than it could have been was do to the total scorched-earth tactics that Republicans continue to employ today. The entire goal of the GOP was to make it seem as though Democrats were incapable of getting anything done, and so they refused to cooperate on hardly anything. This has really Republicans approach since Gingrich: only policies that a majority of the GOP favor are acceptable, and everything else must be crushed, regardless of what the majority of US citizens want. Any lie told along the way was just serving the higher purpose of keeping Real America in charge.
Now this does not mean that everything Democrats have done or tried to do was right, or even a good idea; many current ideas on the left could certainly be improved by honest conservative criticism.
But that's not what's happening. For a very long time we have really only had one party making any real attempt to act in good faith, while the other made money and power their only principle. Meanwhile, a whole host of pundits and commentators acted as if both sides were equally at fault for all the dis-function. And here we are.
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@Nate Lunceford
You are spot on. This scorched earth policy is exactly why they can't put together an alternative to Obama Care (ACA). The GOP's confirmation of 150 or so conservative judges is the only accomplishment that they can claim as a victory for their base of voters. Nothing on health care, infrastructure, trade agreements or immigration reform.
13
nonetheless Nate, the GOP showed that Obama's style of governance doesn't work well if the other side is uncompromising. We certainly can't elect someone following in his footsteps because the GOP has only gotten worse since his term ended. I agree with Ross that we need to be radical to combat the insane GOP . compromising with the GOP is like compromising with a terrorist or insane person - it leaves you worse off than not compromising at all.
4
"...one of the key forces in American politics right now — the distrust of technocracy..."
That explains why almost nobody has a smartphone, why on-line shopping and banking is so unpopular, why automobiles with Bluetooth, GPS, etc. capabilities languish in dealer showrooms.
Now I understand!
The problems we face have nothing to do with technocracy, technology, or techno-beat music. Well, maybe the latter.
We face the same problems the human race has always faced; greed and moral hypocricy. Technology has nothing to do with either one, other than to expand and empower both. But then the printing press started all that off, didn't it.
And lastly, when it comes to greed and moral hypocricy, Douthat's Catholic Church is certainly the oldest and probably the most proficient practitioner.
19
Whomever the Democrats elect to replace POTUS, the existential threat remains the GOP majority in the Senate. Since the days of Newt Gingrich the GOP has been committed to preventing the Democrats from accomplishing its agenda (with the notable exception of ACA). One has to wonder how party has prevailed over country to the point that the GOP seems incapable of compromise, while being dominated by the paid-in-full sycophants of the big-money interests. It matters little who the president is if she or he is blocked at every turn by the determined opposition of a Congress that is content to make a mockery of Democracy.
11
@JP They were also unanimously committed to preventing the ACA, Democrats succeeded in implementing the ACA over their obstruction.
3
@JP Don't forget Mitch McConnell's statement that the Republican senatorial aim was to make Obama a one-term president. Our one acre, one vote electoral college gives rural conservatives an undeserved advantage in the Senate. Rural citizens continue to vote their emotions and their resentments of modern urban/suburban liberals. The disdain that many liberals show for conservatives, and the constant sneers at religion, which almost nobody practices because they think biblical writings describe the natural world, do not help advance our causes.
1
@David Cohen And many forget that during the 'litigation' process, the Republicans watered down Obama's original vision mercilessly before they'd vote to pass it.
1
Or, instead of "all of the above", elect someone who has some experience in operating and fixing parts of the planet Earth which we pretty much all inhabit.
And doing it without selling his soul to an army of donors.
Bloomberg anyone?
Whatever his failings, real or dreamed up by a caucus of professional umbrage-takers, his, ironically, relative freedom from the forces of money make him a tempting choice for someone whose first term will not be spent raising money for his reelection.
2
@Good John Fagin This is the argument I heard for Donald Trump. That has not been working out so well.
2
@Steve Devitt Oh, come on. Even from this side of the Atlantic it's obvious that Bloomberg, whatever his faults, is no Donald Trump. *All* of the Democrats' field are better than that. The question is, can any of them win? And if not, what is wrong with our civilisation, that we elect the means of our own suicide?
1
If indeed there is widespread distrust of technocrats and expertise we are in deep, deep trouble. The world of 2020 is far more complicated and events move inestimable faster than, say, the world of 1920. Hunches that miss the mark can have profound and long-lasting consequences.
This is not to say that expertise is infallible. No science, no aspect of human affairs, is fully understood to the last detail. Experts are occasionally wrong but their errors are rare enough and the process by which their answers are formulated is transparent enough that consequences are rarely dire. Chaos, on the other hand, is the breeding ground of miscalculation and escalation.
2
@James Thomas It's probably because the world of 2020 is so complex that people no longer trust experts. Questions are many, answers are everywhere, their reliability questionable because there's always another, different, answer somewhere else. People just give up & believe what they want to believe.
1
Bernie and Biden have an immediate obligation to endorse and champion younger candidates with similar policies. Two slowing old men must not be allowed to attempt leading hundreds of millions of a diversified electorate who will outlive them. The party seems to be waking up, but it ain’t woke yet.
6
Why does it always have to be either/or? We need to find a balance under both/and. The sooner we understand the concept of a complex world that bathes in a dialectical mindset that looks at problems and their solution dialectically the sooner we will progress.
I'm not exhausted by technocrats, I'm dismayed by the dearth of visionaries.
27
Always nice to see a different take on familiar things, especially from a columnist making an effort to formulate pro arguments outside of his ideological zone. But misses a couple of things. The Democrat candidates are trying to distinguish themselves, going with what they see as their personal or strategic strengths. Once one is the candidate, and then especially if they win, they will need those who can fill in most of the other pieces they don't have. And if they don't have technocratic skills, they better find those who do. Nothing significant will get done in the complex world we often assume away without it.
Douthat doesn't see that we're in a climate emergency (also a biodiversity one, but we're not ready for that yet). Common assumptions about how even apparently unrelated things work, starting with the immense degree of improvement that must be sought, will have to be challenged. Aiming to return to the pre-Trump era, even if possible to undo some of the damage, is vastly insufficient.
We will be in an ongoing era (kicking and screaming for many perhaps) that will require skill sets and capabilities in many areas: creativity and innovation, humility, empathy, adaptability, truth-telling, visioning, perpetual learning --and, very much, technocracy, writing and reading policy papers, explicitly bringing ethics into policy, restoring civility, and working with the other party.
In some ways, it will take the best from each of the Democratic candidates, and then some.
2
I find absolutely nothing appealing about Bernie Sanders and the only way he gets my vote if he is the nominee is me casting it as an "anyone but Trump" choice.
12
That a "hot" GDP and record low unemployment still leaves so many in the middle class financially exhausted and living in fear of the next downturn and any future medical issues goes a lot further in explaining the appeal of "blow up the system" candidates than some abstract exhaustion with technocracy. We, the people, generate an enormous amount of wealth in this country. The statistics show that for the past 40 years all of the wealth generated by productivity gains (and I mean all of it) has been hoovered up by the 1% due to a system they engineered. Outside the 1%, whose exited about perpetuating this system?
15
@The Real Question
Excellent point - the growth curves of productivity and wages used to correlate tightly - you could lay one on top of the other nicely. Then, after the cancellation of Bretton Woods these curves diverge and all the wealth gains due to increased productivity went to the rich.
We are now reaping what we have sown.
6
Mr. Stephens reveals one important aspect of our politics, but does not highlight the elephant. When dealing with Trump, emotions are on the surface. In our Age of Id, emotions are premiere, perhaps supreme.
But the question arises, is it really the failure of wonkism or the success of emotional politics? How long can the cranks keep cranking?
We receive daily an onslaught of spleen from the president. Bloviators pick up these shards of calamity and push them through their on-air and on-line amplifiers to deliver raw emotions cranked up to 11. They ricochet around the world with even more enhancement and focus by Putin's Internet Research Agency. These talking points are picked up and recycled through the same convolutional neural network. Leveraging our biases and hatred, they connect to our tap roots of fear. No wonder that most of us are reaching emotional saturation.
So, is Mr. Stephens correct that Biden is the best fit? Or Bernie offers emotion, just blown in the opposite direction?
We don’t need pure transactional politics that fix nothing. Nor do we need pure outrage, devoid of thinking about how we fix things. Our emotional binge has so far only produced atavistic politics and regressive policies.
It’s time to grow up. We need an adult.
6
@David Potenziani Agreed. Moralist and radical means narrow minded ideologues operating solely via their limbic systems. Emotions work to get one’s attention. Then the rational should analyze and decide in most circumstances. We need thinkers or just let AI take over our governance.
I have no illusions that any man is up to the task of dealing with the reckoning of our illusions that GDP can be grown forever. Or that any technocracy can deal with such a complexities of overreach. Or that any philosophical change can happen rapidly enough to ease us safely down our steep rise against limits facilitated by fossil energy. We are still deluded we can have it all and no president or system can satisfy that.
2
No matter what policies the voters ask for, it is technocrats who have to figure out how to make it happen. Yes, there will horsetrading, and suboptimal decisions made for political gain, but those pesky technocrats are still the ones stuck with making things actually happen, and work.
Trump is a great example of how well government works when it is driven by uninformed and technically incompetent leadership.
And as the world becomes more complex, technical expertise matters even more.
I'm not saying leave it all in the hands of the technocrats.
Douthat has put up a straw man: Populists versus technocrats. And that just doesn't reflect reality.
2
"In the Democratic coalition more than the Republican one, meritocracy and technocracy have long been unifying forces."
Yeah, the current iteration of the GOP certainly gives their leaders a total pass on those desired attributes.
It's a weird moment in American history: Biden is comfort food, but as with most comfort food, often hard to digest. At times he seems lost.
Bernie terrifies me: it's nice to have a moral vision for a change, but how do you translate that vision into pragmatic and concrete accomplishments? He comes across as angry and inflexible--should he win the nomination, I think you get an economic version (socialism!!) of antiwar McGovern who lost in a landslide.
Whether you're selling vision or technoprowess, leaders still need to produce coalitions. Hard to imagine in an era where 40% of America seems to love being told what to do by an increasingly unstable authoritarian.
6
That [Sanders] has policy plans too made me smile. Today and tomorrows onwards toward the future more and more, technocracy would amplify its definition, which may push meritocracy over towards an area in which what mean merits exactly is hard to answer. If that happens, policies have their own contributions too, according to my guess. I love, on my part, ideologists. When we stop looking up, what are we supposed to look for? However, things are happening everyday, at all moments. Practicality making operations run can prove the efficiency of the system drive, rather than, well, stagnation or backward-recoil toward political antiquity. At that point, technocrats gain powers on an unprecedented level to push the system solely into their direction. But, who wants such a thing? No one except technocrats, I assume. I also love moralists and good radicals. Then, Douthat sounds right to imply Sanders might be the most hopeful and reasonable anecdote against the whole chaotic situation, which, though, has no guarantee force to win the presidency.
Nice, discrete boxes make for something to write about, I suppose.
But does the electorate thinks along these lines, even subconsciously? I doubt it. And let’s not mistake populism as being mutually exclusive with technocracy.
People are moved by emotion and narrative. And if the winning candidate is Bernie, or for that matter, Reagan, who both appeal(ed) to a higher moral universe (in different ways) — do people really want or expect them to make decisions without regard to what the “technocrats” have to say?
We have that experiment going on now. And not only has it lead to breathtaking incompetence, it has enabled corruption.
If anything, the electorate wants the antidote to Trump - let’s get the smart people back in the room and make policy based on facts and evidence.
5
Rank and file Democrats are reacting to the collapse of their working class living standards, not some abstraction like rule by technocratic efficiency. The 18th century seizure by the English rich of the Common lands, that the poor had been entitled to farm and forage for centuries, was similarly justified as an economically necessary "improvement". Ditto the 20th century scientifically sweating out of the most efficient labor from the workers, via the "scientific management" of Taylorism, which was used to justify worker-killing speed-ups on industrial assembly lines. Today, hi tech companies like Amazon and Apple are on the cutting-edge, not only of technology, but of cruelly exploiting their workers and fighting their efforts to organize into Unions . . . Socialist workers, are aware of the history of their class. They won't be fooled again . . . .
5
@Red Allover I seriously doubt that the "socialist workers are aware of the history of their class". Knowledge of history is sorely lacking in our culture today, unfortunately.
3
I know that one of the artful dodges the Reagan Restoration pulled off was to tug the perceived center of the political spectrum rightward, but I have to hold the line somewhere: Mike Bloomberg is not center-left.
4
As a Trump supporter I like Bernie. He touches me in his "there something rotten in the state of Denmark" rhetoric. He may not have the right solutions but he has the right attitude.
And I'm sorely tempted to voice my concurrence at the ballot box come November as I'm kinda of a state of mind that we need to blow things up and see where the pieces fall.
Taking a chance on Bernie may not be the worst thing we can do.
8
@Michael Dowd actually Cadet Bone-spur has attempted to do exactly what you want, "we need to blow things up and see where the pieces fall." Except, your philosophy is not only reckless, but it's not-at-all acceptable for government and society. This isn't a game. The stakes for literally 320+ million citizens are very high. You may be one of the insulated top 10% who couldn't care less about the social safety net, health care, infrastructure, the environment, etc., but blowing stuff up is what children (and crazy people) do, not stewards.
I would also point out that, other than give tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, the Cadet has accomplished relatively little in terms of the issues I mention above.
4
GDP is not running red hot as the columnist asserts. The economy continues to grow at a slow to moderate pace. Job growth also continues but with most growth coming at the low end of the wage and benefit scale. For workers with health benefits, increases in premiums, co-insurance and deductibles are outpacing wage increases. Wealth and income continue to concentrate at the top. The Democrats need a coherent, consistent narrative that actually addresses the economic and social reality of people's everyday lives--not just white papers--to build popular understanding and support for their policy prescriptions.
13
Everything that pundits (on both sides) predict about the next presidential election, about public policy or about any of the big issues in the U.S. today is predicated on the idea that the government is functioning properly. It's not. Unfortunately, the very structure of the government (three branches) and the role of big money (purchasing legislation) has lead to a total bottleneck in getting anything substantive done. Add to this the fact that one of the most cynical, self-serving and vile creatures is in charge of the Senate. It is this person who's running the government today. (And that's not the way things should be!)
Even if a Dem. wonk or technocrat were elected in 2020, nothing will get done. There will be no new health care reforms. There will be no real immigration reforms. There will be no infrastructure spending. There will be no tax reforms. There will be, once again, an utter and total moratorium on everything Biden, Sanders, Warren or anyone wants to do.
It's undeniable that the "news" says the economy is doing great. I think after 4 more years of incompetence, breaking things and likely more tax breaks for the wealthy might help things change. But I doubt it.
17
@mrfreeze6 - Sorry, Congress does not want to pass any legislation, because it might offend some voters. So they have shipped all the nation's problems off to the President instead.
@Jonathan Democrats in Congress are passing legislation; it's Senate Republicans who are blocking everything, as they have for eleven years now. And the President seems eager to solve all the nation's problems--to benefit himself, not the nation.
4
@mrfreeze6 Government is working. Politics is not.
Douthat offers only criticism, not alternate solutions.
Where have I heard that before? Oh right, every day on rightwing media. That's the real exhaustion I feel.
17
Nice try, Douthat.
You'd love a Biden presidency, since nothing progressive would get done. Barring that, you'd settle for an ambitious Sanders presidency, since again, nothing progressive would get done. Sanders doesn't have the political chops for that.
But a Warren presidency terrifies you. She's got all the intelligence, ambition, and political acumen of FDR, the most effective progressive president in the history of this country. Warren would change things for the good and for good.
We are on the cusp of a major transformation of the U.S. of A. Warren can push us over that cusp. I, for one, cannot wait.
62
@Thomas Moll: Only one third of the senators have to stand for election in 2020. The notion that one election can materially fix any serious flaw in this nation's organization is a pipe dream.
4
Senator Warren lept to her feet to applaud President Trump when he declared that America would never be Socialist. She has described herself as a "capitalist to the bone." . . . Until 1995, she was a conservative Reagan Republican. As a Harvard lawyer, she earned hundreds of thousands of dollars representing large corporations. She accepted corporate donations for her Massachusetts Senatorial campaigns and, if she wins the Presidential nomination, has stated that she will accept billionaires' contributions again, through the Democratic National Committee . . . . When her Medicare for All plan (following Sander's proposal) was challenged, she immediately caved and said she would not even introduce the legislation for it, until her third year in office. And this is the Democratic politician you imagine will transform American society? . . . It is Senator Sanders who has stated, over and over again, that it will take a massive, in-the-streets Movement to get Congress to act on his reform proposals. This is the only realistic strategy. If you sincerely want change, stop liberal fantasizing and support the Socialist.
6
@Red Allover
That "Movement" lost far more primaries than it won in 2018. If it can't even overturn Democratic incumbents, the idea that it will sweep the country isn't even close to a realistic strategy.
1
Good analysis. I am undecided but leaning towards Biden and this analysis helped me crystallize why. Technocracy doesn’t really work in government because there is no consensus on what the government should do. Technocrats can tell you how to do something but not what you should do. When I see technocratic analyses of things like what tax rate would maximize government revenue, that scares me because it assumes that the function of the government is to maximize its own revenue. I am from a Rust Belt city but went to an elite university so I know both people from back home who do local Democratic machine politics and mostly support Biden, as well as technocratic people from university who mostly support Warren or Buttigieg. I trust the back home machine politics people a lot more—they are happy to make some improvements to a local community center and get their buddies a job; I never get the vibe that they want to run your life like I get from technocrats.
I like Sanders in some ways too, although radical change in domestic policy doesn’t appeal to me. There are many flaws in our government, but when you look around the world, there’s no denying that America is at or near the top of the pile on nearly any metric. If you were an athlete in the top 10% of your sport but wanted to improve, you’d make careful tweaks, not completely change your current training regimen. It would be good to combine Sanders’ convictions and foreign policy with Biden’s pragmatism and domestic policy.
2
@HO "there’s no denying that America is at or near the top of the pile on nearly any metric."
Well, not really. We are actually near the bottom by most important metrics - education, health, (social) justice, income inequality, life expectancy, climate change, and more. So, the US is more like an aging athlete with many self-inflicted injuries due to training the wrong way.
196
@Robert
What do you mean? The US is 8th in education according to the UN index (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index). We’re 38th in life expectancy (still in the top 20%) and the main reason we’re as low as that is because we’re rich enough to afford health-damaging things like cars, meat every day, and drugs.
In polls of where people around the world want to move, the US comes out first every time and it’s not even close; 21% of people want to move to America and only 6% choose the second-place country, Canada (https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx). The fact that so many people want to move here is pretty strong evidence that things are good here. We should all be more appreciative to be Americans; this false narrative that other countries are doing better than us just feeds Trump’s false narrative that other countries are taking advantage of us.
I agree that we don’t do great on social justice and especially climate change—but the impacts of those things are mostly felt abroad (Americans are rich enough to afford air conditioning and infrastructure to mitigate against a warmer climate and have constitutional rights that give us some protection against social injustice) so I’d consider those more foreign policy issues where I’d agree with a more lefty approach.
1
@HO woo-hoo! We are better than nations with $2,000 per capita annual incomes. Some US states have higher lifespans than those places no less!
I compare ourselves to other OECD nations. Wish we compared more favorably to those.
4
Having read Frank Bruni's column just before Ross's, I must say that Ross's handicapping of the Democrats' race toward the nomination is the more interesting. But the outcome he imagines -- Sanders bests Warren, but then is beaten by Biden -- is too dreary to contemplate. I believe that any one of the three Democrats can beat Trump, but Biden would be far and away the worst for the nation's future.
Where do we want to be in 2024? Where do we HAVE to be? Neither Ross nor Frank B. pays any attention to the existential threat posed by the accumulating impacts of climate change, and the global economy that is pushing us toward the point of no return. The restructuring agenda presented by the Green New Deal won't be accomplished by 2024, but it must be undertaken. And the GND may look technocratic, but it is at the same time a set of ethical imperatives. I have been backing Warren, but if Bernie's fervor carries him to the front, so be it.
4
I have a lot of respect for Ross' political acumen, which is why I am concerned, and hope that he is wrong.
The criticism leveled at Obamanauts is justified. When Obama got elected, the idealists, while moderate left of center but idealists nevertheless, embarked on several ambitious plans that used up their political capital, and got Republicans in power for the next 8 years in the house. As has been discussed at VOX, a simpler path to universal coverage would have been to expand medicaid financed by taxes on the rich in lieu of 33,000 pages long Obamacare legislation.
My hop is that Pete Buttigieg is not punished for the sins of Obamanauts. But I agree that cynicism regarding technocrats is warranted.
2
You have some good points here but you are largely wrong about Obamacare's most popular provision. That provision is the removal of preexisting conditions before insurance can be granted. THIS makes ALL the difference. The rest is gravy. This is why we're having the M4A conversation, etc. People in the US are finally talking about universal health care. I don't think the genie can be put back in the bottle.
If the American public allow it, it is their problem IMO. It's about time all of the public go out to vote - 60-65% turnout isn't enough when 35% of the reactionaries are there voting constantly. So if 100% voted, I bet the Ds would do well.
I think Warren is still the best bet for 2020 but I'd be happy if Sanders was the nominee.
4
For once I find a bit of agreement with Mr. Douthaut!
Democrats and liberals should rally behind Sanders. He does offer the clearest moral struggle against what Chris Hedges' calls "diseases of despair" in America. We desperately need a politician that excels in something more genuine and important than technocratic or "expert" analysis and prescriptions. Douthat is right the ACA didn't go far enough - and that Medicaid expansion was the easiest (but not best) way to expand insurance coverage. The problem Medicaid always has is that it is a pool of high risk, chronically ill people, and insurance only works when there are healthy people in the pool...
But about Obama... He too was a solid moralist and projected a vision of America that was much bigger, grander, and more moral than any president since JFK, or perhaps FDR or Eisenhower. He was not just a technocrat, and even when he was, it was only perceived as elitist technocracy by the right. In my analysis of Obama, he followed a simpler rule - pragmatism, and not "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good". Nonetheless, the left is right to critique his subservience to corporate power. The ACA gave corporate power too many seats at the table, and that's what ruined the ACA (a marginal improvement) - not Obama.
That said, I'd say the problematic technocrats in America are corporate usually, and not necessarily Democratic.
6
Running for office should require that the candidate hold a Bachelor's in Physics, a Master's in Economics and a Doctorate in Political Science.
You wouldn't allow a surgeon operate on you if he didn't hold a medical degree, so why allow someone to run the country based solely on a popularity contest?
3
@Remarque
That'd be a great way to ensure only people born into affluent families with money can hope to become president. Higher learning in America has devolved into a mere gateway into the upper class. Most young people these days can't afford one degree, let alone 3!
I agree education helps, but no, it would be a bad idea to suggest a president must hold advanced degrees. I know many academics with expert knowledge in narrow areas, but are clueless in terms of understanding street level experiences in America...
5
@Remarque I basically agree. It's ridiculous that people with absolutely no relevant academic training AND absolutely no track record of public service can run for the highest office in the land.
Trump is, of course, the best example of both, but the same is also true for Chang and Steyer. I think that both of them are incredibly smart people and have a lot of expertise to offer. Chang, for example, should be appointed to head a Federal Automation Task Force of experts from industry, academia and politics to figure out how the US is going to respond to automation-driven unemployment. Right now, we have absolutely no plans whatsoever.
But when it comes to the presidency, candidates should have both relevant academic credentials and a sufficient track record of public service. The President of the United States should have a solid, no, an outstanding background in political science, world history, and at least some of the life sciences. I am sure you can find a few such people at any of our top universities.
3
@Remarque
Those credentialed surgeons still hang on to a good reputation despite the cynicism of 'the operation was a success; the patient died.'
Interesting perspective, very good on the difference between Sanders and Warren. But Sanders is not a viable nominee. Nor should anyone be so glib as to dismiss "expertise" or "technocracy"--by which you mean, using our brains to the utmost to try to solve our problems. Got a better alternative?
3
@Just Ben
I think he might be the best choice. Another way to look at this is 'who would you most like to lose with'
Losing with Biden is another kick in the pants to a declining relevance; losing with Warren is strike two for smart people.
If you lose with Sanders, is there going to be a great deal of regret that we didn't go with someone else?
Thinking this way, in my opinion, is preferential to flat statements about viability.
They laughed at Rockefeller Center, then everyone was trying to get in.
Ross wants politicians who "aren’t going to dramatically improve the status quo but also aren’t likely to embrace clever plans that accidentally make it worse."
What definitely makes things worse is when Democrats go bi-parisan and endorse republican ideas.
NAFTA was HW's baby and definitely would have been signed in his second term.
He would have passed the Crime Bill too. Clinton went bi-partisan and was paid back in kind by the likes of Newt.
Then Dems went along with W's neocons...'nuff said on that one.
O'care made things lots better for millions of people who had no coverage previously.
While Common Core didn't work there's no data showing it made things worse.
The economy, in terms of things like GDP and job creation, is no better now than it was with Obama. Current growth is 2% and Obama had over 30 months of job creation over 200k.
7
@Chris Manjaro
Common Core didn't make things worse because by then they were already as bad as they could be.
Education in this country is focused on all the wrong things. The last twenty years have been hyper-focused on standardized testing and civics education is no longer important.
It's what brought about the current crisis. Obama could have helped change it but didn't. His was a failed administration.
And he is a war criminal. But so are they all, so I guess we'll live with it.
2
@Thomas Moll Trump has a big education program?
I agree with Ross Douthat's broader argument here. I just have to call out two points he makes that strike me as naive.
First Ross writes: "Sanders comes out ahead with the many Democratic voters who don’t think old-fashioned dealmaking is really possible anymore…."
Huh? How does he think structural change is going to happen in a Sanders administration, or any Democratic administration? Through executive orders? No, it's going to be through legislation, which by definition means dealmaking.
And you know the best way to make a deal? When you're negotiating from a position of strength, when you've shifted the debate into the opponent's side of the field, when you have public pressure on your side, when you even have a larger caucus as a result of that pressure. I'll tell you what's not the best way to make a deal. When your opening bid is the result of your having already negotiated with yourself.
Then Ross writes: "America has systemic problems, certainly, but institutional sclerosis and futility are much more tolerable when the G.D.P. is running hot and unemployment is at a generational low."
Maybe the American economy looks rosy and all from the vantage point of Ross Douthat and his colleagues in the most rarefied realms of the punditocracy. I've got news for him: those statistics are not how most Americans are experiencing this economy these days.
38
I'm no Bernie bro, but ALL things considered he is probably for a great many reasons across the spectrum, some of them pointed out here, a better chance to save our democracy than all candidates in play. Remember, he is neither (D) or (R), and when all is said and done this country, all partisanship aside, IS a Democratic Socialist Republic in reality.
17
Hmmm...I beg to differ with Mr. Douthat's diagnosis. Neither Bernie nor Biden reject facts or expertise in their different approaches to combating the present (mostly Republican) zeitgeist of "anti-intellectualism." Most thinking, and feeling, people are aching for a return to rationality in political life, coupled with a moral, value-driven rejection of the mean-spirited know-nothing politics of Trump and his fawning acolytes in the Republican party.
12
How do you work W’s presidency into your ideas about experts and technocrats? I’m not so sure I’m willing to count the neocons as experts, much less as technocratic experts.
As to economic and financial experts and the 2008 financial crash, I’ll grant you that we could have used a few people near the top willing to say “malarkey” when the experts thought they’d succeeded in minimizing risk much more than they actually had.
But I’m reminded of a joke about economists I heard a few decades ago. A bunch of experts in different fields were stuck in a deep pit. A number of them tried to figure a way out without success. Finally they came to the economist, who began by saying, “Assume we have a ladder.”
In any event we want someone who knows how to evaluate expert opinion while remaining sensible, discerning, and conscientious.
As for political skill, job number one just might be convincing the voters to first allow politicians to act like sensible conscientious grownups, and then to go even further and insist on it.
5
Well, I dunno. Can a modern society really make any progress without technocrats? I have a sneaking suspicion that when the final history is written it will be the technocrat, Mario Draghi, who will be remembered as the savior of the EU, not the Northern European moralists who imposed economic austerity to ensure those Southern European spendthrifts paid for their follies. In fact, I would argue that moralists are usually dangerous when they achieve public office. The bed of Procrustes and all that.
6
Douthat's points are persuasive. But one could go further to say that rejection of the technocratic paradigm underlies the entire global populist movement. Beyond particular questions of trust, there exists the problem of the inadequacy of the technique. Technocratic approaches are based on tinkering, and tinkering assumes a system that is mostly functioning well.
The world has entered an era where the basic sufficiency of governance structures is being called into question. This perception leads to an attitude of radicalization, even when no good answers appear to be forthcoming. In places such as France people in the streets are simply lashing out. They don't really know what they want. They are simply angry.
The response of technocrats to big problems is usually just more tinkering -- more layers of bureaucracy, reams of new regulations -- the insanity of which merely fuels further rage. A limit is reached where complexity becomes self-defeating, resulting in debilitating inefficiencies. This where we are now.
While markets may provide a better mechanism for responding to large problems, they need to be structured to favor outcomes that actually address the issues of concern. Inadequately structured markets sometimes just make problems worse or, as we currently see, can be captured by oligarchs for their own selfish ends. Two major future tasks will be to create socially useful market controls and to build socially responsive mechanisms into the corporate legal model.
6
Perhaps Sanders ideas for social fairness have some merit, but even if he was 20 years younger and healthier, he never would have been elected. But honestly, to label : “Buttigieg and Bloomberg as center-left“? Bloomberg is so agile that he would be a Republican, Democrat or Independent depending on the weather conditions. Bloomberg is to this election cycle what bots are to our democracy, except he’s being disingenuously pious. The damage to our system is the same.
7
Bernie is indeed a moralist, and he has appeal even among conservatives because he is viewed all around as a genuine person, honest and trustworthy. His credibility is his strongest suit. He would make a strong president. Both Bernie and Biden can beat Trump, and that is a good reason to keep him in the sights.
32
Almost no one spends more time congratulating himself for the depth of his orthodox Catholic piety than this columnist. It is therefore certain that he is deeply familiar with the scriptural admonition that you reap what you sow. So if someone he cherished grew desperately ill, and he searched for the very best medical doctors and clinicians available to cure the loved one, and they responded that they, for a variety of reasons, choose not to associate with those who have this much contempt for the "credentialed meritocracy," preferring to devote their attention to the least among us, those who are far less notorious and affluent than this individual, would this not be a righteous and powerful manifestation of the scriptural admonishment referred to earlier, in the face of such infinite and hence equally repellent hypocrisy? Not to mention the typically tendentious and specious oversimplification of a particular, social and political phenomenon. For those who are drawn to Mr. Douthat, consider, as an alternative, Mencken, not every word, of course, but you'll soon enough see; far more droll, far less supercilious. Pick up "Notes on Democracy." Raise your hand if you think the occupant of the White House knew before of Mencken, deliciously a famous son of Baltimore.
6
I think you are actually arguing in favor of candidates who can make decisions based on soft criteria, like the ethical and morally correct thing to do. Lord knows, there's a complete absence of this skill in the present administration.
Technocrats and experts are needed and are essential. Again, we see the result of letting total yahoos call the shots. Flushes and toilets when people need affordable health care that works. Technocrats and science are tools, important means to the end result. Thank heavens that we have technocrats in foreign policy who are preventing a total national security disaster while Trump and the Three Amigos self-deal.
8
Barack Obama circa 2008 didn't present as a technocrat, but as a shiny new "moral" post-partisan leader. I know, I went to one of his rallies. Inspiring it was, but there was no policy. Not much politics either - he stood on a stage by himself with the local pols kept out of sight. Like his campaign, his administration was short on policy and he remained mostly alone - he left no new successor, cultivated no new party leadership. I wouldn't call him a technocrat. His appointments mostly consisted of lawyers ill equipped to manage their agencies. I reckon that Bernie is Barack Obama with intestinal fortitude.
12
Sorry, Ross, Bernie never appealed to,me. I would vote for Obama again, but you Republicans had to put term limits on!
There won’t be another president or candidate that could match his political & mental skills in my lifetime. He was quite special and had a lovely family. I don’t have to decide right away who I will pick until the end of February. Dems are having a Primary in SC even though Trump is afraid to have any Primaries. Sad, as he would say!
13
You need not be a technocrat to be a competent president. You must be a capable administrator. If there is one lesson to be taken from Trump, it is that we need a president who can manage the government. There is little in his record to demonstrate that Bernie is an able administrator. He's been an outsider in the Senate and a few years as mayor does not give one the experience to run the national government (Mayor Pete's reign gives no indication that he has that talent either, he has the smarts but not the experience).
2
Thanks for the Birthday gift, Ross. Seeing that beautiful Photo of my favorite President helps to remind me of what I’m working, and hoping FOR.
VOTE 2020.
15
I don't blame people for being distrustful of technocrats; all experts should be considered critically, and like all rational humans, technocrats have both their successes and their failures.
But at least most of the time, they try to make decisions based on demonstrable fact.
But giving the irrationalists--people who can't make the distinction between fact and emotively-held opinion, who may even deny the concept of fact--the wheel of the car ensures sooner of later you're going to crash.
Technocrats are wrong some of the time, and they do try to course correct when they are. Irrationalists are wrong ALL of the time. And they'll never admit to it.
29
@Glenn Ribotsky "Irrationalists are wrong ALL of the time."
Maybe, yes. But as these times attest, irrationalists win elections, and THAT is the critical need of our times, and something that needs to be structurally addressed, not forever pandered to.
2
"Institutional sclerosis and futility are much more tolerable when the G.D.P. is running hot."
Hot? The economy is growing at a 2% annual rate thru the 3rd quarter.
The miracle of republican tax cuts for the rich!
7
@Chris Manjaro The temperature of the expansion might not be "hot" but the length of it has been unprecedented and the employment numbers and job creation numbers continue to defy expectations. I’ll give him that one...
2
@Scott I'm not saying the economy is bad right now. What I am saying is that in terms of things like GDP and job creation, it's no better than where it was when Obama was in office.
For example, Obama had 32 months when job creation was 200k or higher.
1
It's inexcusable that the Democrats don't declare themselves to be what they are: the party of fact, science, and data. There lies the future of capitalism. This economy is already based on those foundations, not on the retrogressive fantasies and lies told by Trump. They need to take credit for it. They need to say proudly that they are the part of business.
5
@Next Conservatism Those who support Bernie are hoping that the Dems don't have to be the party for business as usual.
9
@Jenifer Wolf "Usual" is already over. The people who want it back know it. It's dying as they watch. And Sanders has no monopoly on the future.
I like Bernie Sanders but worry that this might merely reflect the fact that I like his vision. Can he produce a detailed plan that would actually work?
He proposed a "wealth tax" of 8% (Warren has a similar tax at 6%) to pay for universal health care. I believe this reflects a misconception of how health care works.
It is not money, but more doctors, that you need to deliver universal health care. A more realistic plan would propose a national fellowship program that would entice graduating high school seniors with an opportunity to go to medical school and then return to provide health care to their communities.
Yes, you would pay for the fellowships with taxes, but higher income tax rates, not a wealth tax. The income tax would be more sustainable. What happens to the wealth tax after the wealth has been taxed away?
Moreover, a realistic plan would consider the very real cost of immigration on any health care system. The US population has increased by about 87 million since 1986 when the last immigration reform bill was passed. Most of the population increase is due to immigration. And the rate of population increase seems to be about double the rate of increase in production of doctors.
Nobody talks about this. What worries me is that voters believe that there are "no limits to growth."
Visit India if you want to see the implications of population growth.
We need a world-wide plan to limit population growth as we enter the age of global warming.
8
@Blaise Descartes: Ask if Bernie an attract and coordinate a panel of qualified experts to work out the details.
5
"What happens to the wealth tax after the wealth has been taxed away?"
By the time that happens, Bernie would be decades dead. The rich have hundreds of trillions stowed offshore as cash, art, or other tax-evasive mechanisms, and if Bernie doesn't attack those the wealth will NEVER be "taxed away"—not even anywhere imaginably close.
@Blaise Descartes. A related factor rarely discussed is the impact of growing population on the environment. About 30 years ago, some prominent voices within the Sierra Club raised this issue, asserting that immigration drives population growth, leading to habitat loss and other forms of environmental degradation.
The Sierra Club now is a full-fledged supporter of liberalized immigration policies. One wonders what factors led to this change of outlook.
Jasper
1
'G.D.P. is running hot and unemployment is at a generational low.'
But that doesn't take into account how it was done, by blowing up the budget deficit, same road we went down in 1981 and 2001.
68
Sanders would be the worst choice for Dem nominee by far. He has a lot of bad ideas but even worse, it is impossible to sell the public on a need for a "revolution" when the economy is growing. Take his proposal for a "job guarantee," for example. It's completely unworkable but it might have political merit during a recession. However, in current environment it would just play into the hands of Trump since it tells voters their well-being is dependent on the actions of politicians. That is a narrative Trump will happily endorse, "we already have almost everyone working, thanks to me!"
3
@ConsDemo We have millions working multiple jobs, struggling to pay rent and maybe eat here and there, and praying they don't get sick - even when they have health insurance. More and more wealth is being extracted every possible way from a sinking working class. Give me a Sanders; he will make best use of the Bully Pulpit and will be the absolute only one who will never stop fighting for justice for average Americans. Reinvigorate labor, get masses of people consistently engaged, USE the anti-trust laws on the books. We need an Organizer-In-Chief. . .because the world is burning and we are drowning.
2
Iraq was not a disaster. We got rid of Saddam, who would have had nuclear weapons in 5--10 years had he remained in power.
We mismanaged the occupation, but that was small compared to the major threat.
2
@Jonathan Katz I had heard an astonishing 16% of Americans -despite everything we know- still think the Iraq War was a fine idea, but didn't believe it. Well, show me.
6
@Jonathan Katz The 'major threat' wasn't Saddam; it was the Saudis, who actually killed almost 3000 Americans on 9/11. Oooooops, wrong country. & we did nothing to those who supported Bin Laden's operation & have destroyed 2 other countries, Iraq & Afghanistan.
3
Perhaps voters have lost faith in any candidates’ ability to govern, becoming weak in the knees only with those who have some undefinable charisma. Charisma certainly is a powerful force, but doesn’t Trump serve as a canary in the coal mine, warning us all of the dangers of incompetence?
What confidence has Sanders demonstrated that he possesses the legislative skills and connections that would get Medicare for all successfully passed in the the House and Senate? He isn’t even a member of either major party, so what relationships has he built to work a bill to passage? He speaks with passion about issues, so some voters get excited, but the sausage-making that gets a bill passed is another matter.
Grand ideas are indeed grand, but governing is another matter. We need a President who can direct the executive branch and influence the legislative branch. I don’t see Sanders succeeding in that role. And, despite her legislative experience, Warren hasn’t convinced me of her administrative skills either.
We desperately need effective leadership in the White House. That should be what voters attend to.
Bill Clinton rode the emotions of politics. He felt our pain. He played the sax. He rode the economy and the polls on how we were feeling. He let that take him into indiscipline and dishonesty.
Obama was the mind of politics. He had the sense of art to tear up as Aretha Franklin sang, but he didn't try to go on stage and sing with her. He likely was aware of polls, but he was studying the facts. He was intensely self disciplined and honest.
They are about as different as two effective Presidents could be.
75
@Mark Thomason Clinton and Obama were perhaps very different Presidents, they were similar in perhaps the most important respect. They wanted to the best they could for the US and its people. Very much in contrast to the current occupant of the White House, and for that matter the one who came in between them.
9
@Mark Thomason Maybe Obama ACTUALLY teared up. It has been known to happen in the presence of great art or a great artist, even--or maybe especially--in one who is skilled at keeping his emotions to himself.
1
@Mark Thomason
Though I may have disagreed with their politics I never doubted their sincerity. I know something they shared was the vision of what Hillary could do for this country.
How is that, instead of grace we're cursed with Trump?
3
We are all standing on the shoulders of giants but fail to see we stand above the giants. I think of the Steven Pinkers, Chrystia Freelands, Volodymyr Zelenskys, Paul Krugmans, Zalman Rushdies and so many many more. Yet who do we put in charge of the World's most important nation?
I do not understand Ross Douthat. I hope the world never forgets what happens when banality is the only order of the day. Technocrats have provided us we everything we asked for. They do their job and they do it very well.
I am a humanist who believes in democracy. It is more than hard enough understanding what humans want. I do not understand why anyone wants to try and understand what God wants in a universe ruled by entropy.
America has more than enough stuff and is starving for meaning. America needs Bernie to bring it back into balance.
7
there is another way of putting it, without disagreeing with the sentiment: Western People had it too good for too long, and have long ago completely lost touch with reality. Perhaps they really need an economic depression (on it's way) to rediscover that food does not grow on grocery shelves, electricity cannot be just grasped from the air, and gasoline is not just made in the gasoline pump. And Hoover Dam, which makes my current life possible, did not just exist from time immemorial, by the grace of the Almighty.
37
@mf,
Such an important point, and well said. It seems humans are prone to taking for granted the more secure lifestyle created by expertise and advanced human knowledge. On the other hand, experts aren't infallible, and I do think at times, some have an unrealistic tunnel vision that could benefit from down-to-earth input. Anyway, it seems there's strong anti-elite sentiments out there these days, including one aimed at intellectual elites.
1
Everyone 'sounds' knowledgeable. But the truth is that no one knows anything definitive about what the electorate will do. Opinions and biases cloud judgements. A certain amount of chaos makes polling unreliable. Spare me the talking heads who all seem to be trying to manipulate the voter into or out of despair.
3
An extremely perceptive column by Mr. Douthat, who is now probably America's most eminent public philosopher.
Three enemies of democracy are technocracy (Bloomberg), demagogic populism (Trump) and politics as a spectator sport (citizens who watch tv but don't vote and participate).
As mayor of New York, Bloomberg did not listen to the people. He knew better: that sugar is bad for your health and that smoking in restaurants and pubs is bad for your health. It didn't concern him that many New Yorkers like Coca Cola, Pepsi, and other popular drinks. It didn't concern him that many like to go into a bar, have a drink and light up after a tiring day at work.
Trump of course is Trump: a deeply disturbed man with no impulse control, hatred of political opponents, and a pre-Copernican view of the universe: that the moon, sun, and planets revolve around him.
Bernie is a great man, but uncle Joe is best positioned to win the nomination and the election. It would great to have a real politician, like Harry Truman, lead our country again. A man who did not let his ego come between him and his job.
1
@Diogenes
I used to choke and gag when men smoked cigars and pipes in restaurants. Cigarette smoke gave me a sore throat.
Did I have no right to enjoy a drink without gagging after a tiring day at work?
The sugar thing? Yeah, he was a zealot. In my opinion, we should just let people give themselves diabetes as long as they don't bother anyone else in the process. Of course, I do end up paying for their health care, but at least they're not giving me cancer while they're drinking their sodas.
3
@Diogenes
I'm starting to wonder how low turnout among the under-40s will be if Biden is the nominee. He's not really selling them anything they want. Say what you will of Trump, he has many supporters and they are motivated. In a low turnout election, where the demographics of the voters mirrors the demographics of Florida, Trump's re-election chances start to look very good indeed.
3
@Diogenes
I agree with the food policing but the second hand smoke? Your rights should end when my rights are endangered.
Our daughter's friend's mother died of lung cancer. She never smoked, had no history of lung cancer in her family, her husband never smoked. They even had the house tested for radon gas which tested negative. But she did accompany her husband, a musician, to all of his gigs in various pubs and clubs. The doctors drew the conclusion that her year's long exposure to second hand smoke likely caused her lung cancer.
I have never smoked, nor has my husband. Why should your "right" to smoke supersede our right to enjoy a meal in a restaurant without gagging on stale cigarette smoke?
I'm not at all a Bloomberg fan since I don't like his manipulation of the political system that allowed him to run for another term after being term limited out of office. I'm not a big fan of my life being micro-managed by the government but I do believe that if someone's actions are detrimentally impacting on another's life the government intercede on that person's behalf. We have noise ordinances, barking dog ordinances, leash laws, speed limits, public nudity laws, laws banning public inebriety, etc. to protect the society at large. Without any laws we have chaos. Gee exactly what we're seeing now in the White House.
1
I agree but only to a limited point. If you look at the GOP's stunning losses in suburban districts and R retirements from the House (faced with potential losses), it points to educated voters revolting against this national distrust of technocrats. We prize competence, education, empirical fact, and the trains running on time, so to speak. Ross, you're describing Trumpism. You're not describing what the other half of the country (ironically, you're writing about Democrats), desperately wants. We want normalcy more than anything. We want grownups, ie technocrats, in charge.
3
@Meggles Who is this 'we'? Many Americans would like a cessation of the constant economic worry, which is what 'Normalcy' is now. Sanders promises to deliver on that. & since he has a long record of integrity, he appears to be our best shot.
6
As a longtime Bernie supporter, I've never thought of him as a moralist, but as a hardworking dude with integrity, bold ideas, vision, courage and a commitment to make life better for ordinary people.
I'd suggest that the time is not the "twilight of the technocrats", but the sunset of the "best and the brightest"...
Those "best and the brightest" who never saw a war they wanted to end, or a Wall Street regulation that couldn't be eliminated or watered down, whose courage and conviction was limp noodle-like, except when protecting their
status quo. RIP
Time for change.
Technocrats are useful, but Sanders' inspiring integrity, bold ideas, courage and vision are what America needs NOW!
A Future To Believe In!
57
Knowledge based thinking and Reflective based thinking are two different ways of problem solving. The former is common place like fixing, restoring or building something known or what currently exist like physical things, policies, rules, processes & ideas. It is based on empirical observations and established or accepted rules. That is what public education whether K-12, vocational schools and graduate schools deliver—conformity or learning.
Reflective more typically termed critical thinking is imaginative, inspirational or innovative in nature. The genius of The USC is that it is offers transformative adaptations i.e Amendments. That credentialed meritocracy or expertise mentioned is not a negative in the least but an assessed skill. Yet when that inhibits better possibles it can be a drag on human personal & social advancement & development. Bernie & Warren speak inspired leadership the rest are common place thinkers and tinkers in my view and simply can’t imagine and fear change.
Unlike professional writers, musicians & inventors most persons have difficulty creating anew.
5
Sanders and Warren offer young people, and the rest of us as well, a view of what this country could become, if we were to embrace a system of government which actually put its citizens first. Trump appeals to the fire and brimstone conservatives who embrace an authoritarian, punitive form of government. A from the cuff, no policy, no plan, form of government. Joe Biden represents a return to a form of government which no longer exists. One in which progress came in successive steps, i.e., the ACA was meant to be a step toward universal healthcare. The election of Trump changed everything.
Trump has trampled the government, the Constitution, and the rule of law. Rules and regulations are ignored. A return to the form of government many of us were comfortable with, and one which Biden represents, no longer seems possible.
IMHO, if we are to rid this country of Trump, we are going to have to embrace a candidate who will be transformative. That would be either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. I have finally come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a "safe" candidate. It took me awhile, but I have finally warmed to the idea that we, like the Republicans in 2016, need to embrace a candidate who will bring radical change, but in a good way. So now I am saying. let's just go for it. Go for the whole ball of wax.
A reminder Ross. The economy might be humming, but that can change overnight. Remember 2008 when the house of economic cards crashed almost overnight?
166
@Diana
Trump is a symptom of a larger dysfunction in America. You are correct in that it will take a crises that the Trump base and anti-Trump base both rally around before there is change. Unfortunately the media has a business plan that is built on perpetuating the dysfunction in America. I'm not sure how to correct this as most people hear just what they want to hear and ignore the rest.
9
@Diana I was having a problem choosing between Warren and Sanders until I heard Warren say "I"m a capitalist to my bones." Raging, out of control capitalism is killing the planet. Sanders gets this, even though he soft-pedals it. After careful consideration of all the candidates, I feel that Bernie is our best choice. With Bernie, I fail to see any downside at all.
6
@Diana It is a sad sad day for the country when the Dems wish economic crash upon it to win the White House.
I would be more willing to listen to Ross Douthat if he'd take a more guarded tone. Throwing in a "it seems to me," "it appears," "some have suggested," "I am noticing," etc. from time to time would make his arguments a lot easier to consider, even if just for the sake of debate. As it is, it's easy to dismiss his ideas because he so consistently portrays opinion as fact.
80
@Dr. O
The phrases you list are regarded by most editors and English teachers as weaselly. Across decades of working as an editor or teacher, I routinely cut them or point out why they're weak and add nothing to the argument the writer is attempting to make. These phrases aren't signs of intellectual humility—they're hedging.
As a matter of syntax, they either throw the sentence into indirect discourse or are merely paratactic and not integral to the thought.
If I'm running out of space when I leave a comment in the Times, I look for phrases like these that aren't pulling their weight in delivering the idea.
I would also point out that these kinds of phrases are more characteristic of Trumpspeak ("I don't know, but some are saying") than the speech patterns of the Democratic candidates.
This column strikes me as one of Ross's weakest lately (I've been fascinated by his efforts to articulate his horror at what his party has become under Trump), but the thesis would be not improved by the addition of hemming and hawing.
Finally, the column is already labelled "Opinion," and picturing the writer is a way to mark further that an opinion piece is published as the voice of the individual and not as a news story in the objective mode of the news department.
I'm not sure how to interpret the fact that this comment is receiving endorsements, so I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on this.
4
@Dr. O I disagree. This is explictily presented as an opinion piece. One does not say "It is my opinion that my opinion is..."
Douthat is one of the best writers on the Times. I don't often agree with his opinions but I invariably enjoy reading them and admiring the clarity of the thinking behind them.
Your own post would not be improved by, for example, "It's my opinion that it's easy to dismiss...". That this is your opinion is perfectly obivous. Or did you mean it as a statement of fact ?
2
Good points and yes Ross Douthat is opinionated. But I have come to appreciate the freshness of his ideas and how they represent a vastly different strand of politics from most democratic or republican and New York Times Op-Ed writers. His ideas are in part echoed across Europe through writers such as Eric Zemmour: working classes have largely abondoned centrist left wing parties because these parties have all embraced a reason-based brand of pro-business and free trade and pro-immigration policies and, in fact, the right way to turn the tide and beat Trumpism (and not just Trump) is not to go back to Obama style free trade moderation but embrace economic populism and pro-working class ideas. It sounds to me as if Warren and Sanders are just the kind of candidates we’ll positioned to maximise turnout and take back middle class voters from Trump. Yes we may lose some so called Wall Street moderates but such segment of the population today is politically marginalized.
3
I assume that Mr. Douthat is modifying his last week's support of Senator Sanders with his favorable comments about Mr. Biden today. Given that Mr. Douthat is a conservative, I do not understand how he could completely support Senator Sanders in any event. No doubt Mr. Biden will someday earn his complete support.
2
"... which is that in nominating Bernie, the Democrats would be embracing one of the key forces in American politics right now — the distrust of technocracy, ..."
That is incorrect. The distrust isn't with the technocracy but who is in charge of it: i.e. the people who have the money and power. That is a far cry from distrusting the lowly civil servants, academics, policy writers and others who serve our oligarchic regime.
The distrust is with political parties that have always, to some extent, been owned by moneyed interests, but since the 1976 Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, have made it possible for one rich person to bypass all the political rules everyone else must follow and buy themselves a seat in the White House.
The distrust is with a system that, now, very clearly, is owned and operated by corporations, from running candidates who are compliant, to writing the laws said compliant candidates vote on, to running government agencies and the White House.
This isn't democracy. We might never have had democracy to begin with, but there is only one other time we had it anywhere near this bad: right before FDR.
Biden represents the establishment that is under corporate influence and is still pushing the false notion that we must cooperate with the side that is cementing oligarchy.
No thank you.
290
@Rima Regas :
Buckley v. Valeo said that the state cannot limit the amount of money a candidate chooses to spend on a campaign from his own funds. It has NOT "made it possible for one rich person to bypass all the political rules...and buy themselves (sic) a seat in the White House."
Just ask Presidents Perot, Steyer and Bloomberg.
And, BTW, alleged billionaire Trump was vastly outspent in 2016 by middle class girl Hillary.
14
@ed connor
Without Buckley v. Valeo, neither Steyer nor Bloomberg would be able to run as they are today, especially Bloomberg.
Trump has been raising hundreds of millions of dollar for 2020 since his inauguration, intimidating most of those who might have run against him - to the point where he's gotten state parties to just close off any possibility of being primaried.
Bloomberg may well put himself in a position to spoil and then go on to win the primary and then lose to Trump by depressing the vote because of the negatives that go with his candidacy.
As for winning in 2016, I didn't say money is what won him the election - merely that money is giving those who are rich an advantage no other can have. There is a huge difference.
74
@Rima Regas
Often, being a technocrat means being able to marshal the numbers supporting a preconceived conclusion and not an impartial regard for the data. Bloomberg had reams of statistics telling him that stop-and-frisk was racial profiling on a massive scale, yet it seemed to correlate with lower crime. Was it the cause? Probably not. Did it do immense harm? Yes. And being a technocrat, does not preclude you from following your gut when it suits you. Against great opposition, Bloomberg appointed Cathie Black as NYC School Chancellor, despite the fact her only qualification was that they traveled in the same circles. There was no data to back up that choice, and hardly differs from Trump's selection of Betsy DeVos.
Bloomberg has already shown flashes of arrogance and insensitivity in his recent interviews, so there is no reason to believe that a billionaire egotist of any stripe will adhere to the data when it conflicts with their all knowing-all seeing wisdom, which in this society is equated with wealth.
16