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why i’m not discouraged: on greatness

Okay, so I had a version of this post all ready to go for a while.  It was entitled “why i’m discouraged part 3″.  But, I’m really not discouraged anymore.  In fact, I’m pretty much the opposite of discouraged.  I feel energized to a degree that actually kind of shocks me.

So here’s some of what I was going to say back when I did feel discouraged:

I know American antipathy toward the life of the mind is nothing new.  Way back in the early ’60s Richard Hofstadter, in his classic Anti-intellectualism in American Life, defined anti-intellectualism as:

a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.

So, yes, we have a tradition of suspicion of intellectuals and a related disdain for elitism.  I know this.  But it feels somehow worse this election cycle.  Regardless of where you live, where you get your news, who you talk to, you’ve probably heard someone expressing their desire for a candidate to be like a “regular person”.  Leaving aside the fact that a “regular person” is not going to be running for president in this country, why would you even WANT a regular person to be president?  What kind of allergy do we have to the idea that a leader should be better than a regular person?  Even if we’re living in a post-Nixon, disillusioned world where we know the Great Man is a myth, shouldn’t we still want some aspect of greatness in our leaders?  Hell, I don’t even want the leader of my workplace to be a regular person.  I want leaders to inspire me, to represent impossible ideals, to -and get this - be smarter than me.  So, I think of all the things this election cycle has given me to be discouraged about it’s that after eight years of total, total fail a lot of us still seem to think the most important criteria for leadership is “it would be fun to have a beer with that guy”.

Hofstadter goes on to say:

As an attitude, it is not usually found in a pure form but in ambivalence–a pure and unalloyed dislike of intellect or intellectuals is uncommon.

I wonder what he would say now.  I think a “pure and unalloyed dislike of intellect” is pretty damn common.  I heard someone on the radio say “I could never vote for Biden, he uses words I don’t understand”.  You know what?  Get a freakin’ dictionary and thank your lucky stars that someone smarter than you is responsible for running the country.

When I first started writing this it was just after the announcement of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate.  The whole “greatness” question was what actually started this whole Discouragement Series.  I started writing it trying to be all “less-political” and not naming Palin as the source of my angst.  It’s weird though.  I went through a period where I couldn’t really think about her without getting sick to my stomach, like, literally sick to my stomach.  She really represented to me everything that is the most discouraging in American culture and the fact that people seemed to love her just made me totally despair.  Her selection seemed calculated to appeal to the customer (as opposed to the citizen) and to appease those who hold greatness in contempt.  I guess I feel like I have come around to actually naming her by name because it seems to me there’s been a shift.  It seems to me there are folks out there looking at her and saying “You know what?  No.  We deserve better than this.”   Maybe I’m just choosing to believe this, maybe nothing is different.  But I feel hopeful.
But then, that’s me.

Well, what do you know, it’s not just me!  It’s most of us.  Beyond all questions of politics, one thing that I find deeply exciting about President-Elect Obama (i really like saying that) is that he is profoundly, unabashedly cerebral.  My friend Mark and I were just remarking that he is certainly the most overtly intelligent president we’ve elected our lifetime.  As Mark said “Bill Clinton is wicked smart, but he almost always hid it under that southern fried aw-shucks thing”.

I feel like we just took a leap of faith and chose greatness.  Whether or not Obama turns out to “a great man” is yet to be seen but we voted for an idea of greatness.  And I have to say I’m having a hard time staying discouraged in the face of that.