Today Rod Dreher decided to buttress his case against Palin, such as it is, by quoting a writer whose experience, get this, as a college debater allows him to pronounce on the intelligence of a governor and Vice-Presidential candidate.
How does Mr. Julian Sanchez, Dreher’s chosen expert, know that Governor Palin is dim? He has a full proof method to detect basic intelligence:
Put it this way, one thing I learned from college debate is that a reasonably bright person can generally manage to sound at least competent talking about issues they don’t really understand. I recall one case my partner and I debated where the other team argued against dollarizing the Ecuadorian sucre. We didn’t know a damn thing about the economic or political situation in Ecuador, or a whole lot about monetary policy. I doubt I could have told you the name of Ecuador’s president, let alone the finance minister. But we had some basic econ and game theory down, and I knew a bit about the Mexican peso crisis of the mid-90s, and so we were able to bluff our way through and win the round.
This really is beyond parody as an argument, but is an excellent example of a “folk psychology” hunch that can be used to substitute for data or an argument. I don’t know if the writer knows anything about the gifted and talented or if he is just bluffing to make a point, but I do have first hand experience teaching bright adults.
Is it true that all gifted adults are good at bluffing and debate?
Well, no, as a matter of fact, in my experience teaching hundreds of gifted students not all of them are.
Put it this way, one thing I have learned in over a decade of teaching advanced college students is that some very bright people have an affinity for verbal bluffing and some intelligent people do not. Some smart people are good at regurgitating memorized talking points and others sound terrible. Some people get uncomfortable when they bluff, some actually have a moral compunction against it that constrains them from bluffing well, and others sound like they are experts on subjects they know nothing about.
Often gifted students are more interested in the “big picture” and connecting ideas than they are in facts and details. Other highly successful students are just the opposite. Recently we have learned to understand that some people come with a “different voice” to ethical and other types of thinking. Some bright people extrapolate from the particular to “big ideas” and reason their way back to the problem. Other very bright people (the “different voice”) prioritize a web of societal connections and preserving relationships before moving to more abstract reasoning and big ideas.
Recognizing these different voices and ways of reasoning is an important part of my job. It is hard to do and hasty judgments that highly successful people are “dim” are hard to justify given the complexity of the topic.
None of that stops critics of Governor Palin from certainty regarding her acumen. Based on two media interviews, her success in public life is negated.
Dreher concludes:
He goes on to say that Palin’s answers so far suggest that she’s a dim bulb, or that her ignorance of these important issues is so deep that she’s not likely to make up for it by intensive briefings. I think this is true — and I don’t believe for a second that she’s dumb. Just profoundly incurious and therefore manipulable.
I ask those who still believe in the Palin candidacy: where’s the evidence that there’s more to her than what we’ve seen on these interviews? I’m not asking to be snarky; I really want to know.
Her highly successful political career, governing accomplishments, and rise against adverse conditions (often dismissed as if a pre-ordained movie script) are my case. Words are the substance of Dreher’s case against her.
Remember that Dreher’s judgment is based on a few high pressure weeks in the public eye where Governor Palin has been the subject of horrific abuse. Somehow based on two media interviews, Dreher has decided that she is “profoundly incurious and therefore manipulable.”
Where is his evidence? Is it from the witness of an experienced college debater? Is it from two media interviews?
What keeps us from concluding that whatever Palin’s faults may be that Dreher is profoundly uncharitable in his judgment?
Are only the book smart good political leaders? How would Reagan have fared by these standards?
Palin is either phenomenally lucky (evidently the Dreher view) or smart with what the Greeks called “practical wisdom.” I see no evidence either way about her intellectual curiosity. We don’t know enough about her yet to make such judgments with certainty. We do know that in what she has done that she has been very successful.
The best way to tell if a person is good at governance (I argue) is to see if they have been good at governing . . . not if they are good at talking about government.
She grew up in a small town where everyone knew her. That small town made her mayor. She was tremendously popular in her home town, was successful in her career, and recognized as a rising talent by the state Republican party. She served with distinction on a state board, resigning to protest corruption. As governor, she has negotiated a very complex gas pipe line deal and passed important reform legislation. She called for the state to begin to wean itself from dependence on the federal government and made progress on this hot button issue.
These are real governing accomplishments in a very short period of time in a young politician. They show amazing talent and governing smarts. Are the best political leaders always the ones that would do the best in political science graduate seminars?
American history suggests not.
Governor Palin was on most conservative short-lists as a rising star in the party. Her pre-selection interviews and debates show confidence, mastery of sufficient detail about issues of concern to Alaska, but a style that preferred the “big picture” to overly detailed answers. In that way, she is like Reagan, but watching her debates for governor does not indicate a “dim bulb” to me.
Her governing accomplishments were acknowledged on both sides of the aisle before partisanship consumed us all. The gas deal in particular required picking a highly skilled team, bucking the political establishment, political risk, and has been applauded by even those critical of other actions she has taken (including the local papers).
God knows I value intellectual curiosity. I love dialectic education, Plato, and great books. Tomorrow I will lead a session on Meno joyfully, but allow me to observe that the best seminar students do not always make the best practical leaders. Many very bright students are not facile thinkers with glib tongues. Many are gifted doers, listeners, and “big picture thinkers.”
That is my short answer to Rod Dreher who should recall that the best way to fight the error of anti-intellectualism is not to fall into the equally foolish error of intellectualism. I prefer to think someone with Palin’s accomplishments is accomplished, but bad (or inexperienced) at certain kinds of articulation rather than believing that her stunning governing success (as judged by voters and peers) is mere chance.
My evidence is in her actions and not in her words.