Don't Hate Me Because I'm Brilliant!

Anne Applebaum wonders why smart, witty people like her at not more admired. From "Best of the Web" a daily feature by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal we learn that

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum takes note of the rise of the cognitive elite. As top universities have relied on standardized test scores for admissions decisions, the country has become more stratified by intelligence, with power and wealth more tied to IQ than ever before:

The result . . . is now with us: Barack Obama, brought up by a single mother, graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School, is president. Michelle Obama, daughter of a black municipal employee, graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, is first lady. They brought with them to Washington dozens more people, also from modest backgrounds, mostly not with inherited wealth, who have entered high government office thanks in part to their education.

All this influx of high IQ talent should have the people praising their new masters for making their lives better in every way.  For some reason, that's not how it's working out.  People are responding to "the ones we have been waiting for" with a great big raspberry.

And it's not because we resent the "elites" for getting to the top.  What's missing in Applebaum's analysis is how much they have screwed up.

This is an interesting idea, or at least it was 16 years ago, when Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray put it forth in "The Bell Curve." But Applebaum is perplexed that not all Americans welcome their new overlords:

Despite pushing aside the old WASP establishment--not a single member of it remains on the Supreme Court--these modern meritocrats are clearly not admired, or at least not for their upward mobility, by many Americans. On the contrary . . . they are resented as "elitist." Which is at some level strange: To study hard, to do well, to improve yourself--isn't that the American dream? . . .

In America, the end of the meritocracy will probably come about slowly: If working hard, climbing the education ladder and graduating from a good university only wins you opprobrium, then you might not bother. Or if you do bother, then you certainly won't go into politics, where your kind is no longer welcome

This is entertainingly clueless. In fact, no one resents President Obama and other members of the cognitive elite for their fancy degrees or their personal success. What is vexing about the liberal cognitive elite is two particular forms of hubris to which highly intelligent people are especially prone.

The first is the idea that because they're smarter than you, they're more qualified to run your life. This is the presumption at the root of ObamaCare and pretty much all socialist economic policies.

The second is the disparagement of common sense because it is common. Think of Obama's infamous comment about the bitter clingers of Western Pennsylvania, or the liberal elite's vicious attacks on anyone who opposes the Ground Zero mosque.

A high IQ may constitute "merit" for the purpose of deciding who gets into a university, but there's much more to life than higher education. We have no doubt Barack Obama was a good student, but that doesn't make him a good president.

And that's the problem.  Applebaum never asks how well out new technocratic elite is doing as they have taken over for the "old aristocracy."  The primary characteristics of the people inhabiting Washington today is a glibness, the reflexive desire to shift blame, arrogance, the desire to gain more and more control, all the while screwing up - big time.