Obama's Cabinet Candidates: Harvard Rules and Wisdom Wanes
Americans seem mesmerized by the emerging list of potential cabinet members being interviewed for jobs. Brilliant! Assertive! "The Genius Cabinet" gushes Slate writer Jacob Weisberg. Larry Summers? Wow! Joel Klein? Whew!
Calm down, folks. What's wanted in anyone's cabinet is not brilliance but judgment. Not genius but wisdom. And the former is a lousy predictor of the latter. Like Summers and Klein, a number of the wannabes are arrogant and unlistening. Known for what they know and where they went to school (like Harvard and Yale).
Summers folded as Harvard's President not because he said something politically incorrect about women (too baby-obsessed to be good scientists) or tried to tell one of America's leading public intellectuals (Cornel West) how to be a "good" scholar, but because he was seen as dismissive of faculty, indifferent to contrarian ideas and unwilling to listen to others - traits he had shown during his tenure with the Clinton administration.
Joel Klein's career as chief education honcho for New York City has been marked by a similar disrespect for teachers and parents, and a techno-corporate approach to education that, while putatively wedded to equal opportunity, has been completely tone-deaf to the communities he supposedly serves. He knows a lot and knows it. But he lacks elementary judgment.
President Obama will be in need of counselors with wisdom as well as smarts, and will quickly learn that arrogance isn't merely a "defect of a superior mind" (as Weisberg puts it), but a form of deafness that incapacitates the hubristic for leadership. Oedipus was smart as they come, but, as I recall, made a terrible king.
Because Obama is himself reflective, patient and thoughtful, people conclude he can afford to surround himself with reckless brilliance. Not. He needs cabinet officers who are equally apt judges of people and policy. Shouting is not strength and self-promotion is not perception.
And what's with the Harvard thing? All but a few of those being discussed for office have secured degrees at Harvard (or the Harvard default school, Yale). Not even Oxford and Cambridge any longer pretend to produce Britain's ruling class by themselves. Should Harvard and Yale dictate who serves democratic (and Democratic) America?
Seriously Mr. President-Elect, though you're a Harvard man, you are from Chicago and points West, all the way to Kansas, Hawaii and Indonesia. One of the benefits of your election ought to be a holiday from self-promoting Harvard "brilliance." How about a few public school and public (state) university appointments? Take it from someone with a Harvard M.A. and Ph.D., the Ivies don't have a monopoly on wisdom. Or even necessarily know what it is.
Read more at HuffPost's Obama Cabinet Big News Page
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Yes, Harvard is a good school; but what about having mavens from Dismal Swamp A & I in the mix? BHO is adding characters to his staff by the dozen. Scholars, students & boosetrs of Dismal Swamp A & I's la crosse team are characters. If the tried & proven adage, "It takes 1 to call I." is to be honored, Obama needs staff from 2d & lower tier institutions to avoid embarassment, scandal & tears later.
We must take care to avoid the turgid, tripe of spurious experts creaping/creeping into BHO's program of changes. BHO is still going to make some changes, isn't he?
No one has been appointed yet but from what I'm seeing the prospective nominees are almost all Clinton administration re-treads.
What was all that talk about "change".
Nothing says "change" like a bunch of people who've all been there and done that many years before.
We need to see the diversity and "change" that Obama promised in the faces of the cabinet.
Still hopeful (because I have radically reduced consuption of mass media)
The CHANGES are not in the faces. They are in the ideas and leadership president-elect-Obama will bring. These people will do what Obama says! The leadership IS the CHANGE!! Relax people!!!!
I totally agree. A balance of brilliance and judgment is key. Maybe that means some brilliant folks and some with good judgment, or ideally a group of people who each have both qualities.
Harvard is great -- I went there myself -- but it is neither necessary nor sufficient.
www.thoughtbasket.com
I guess this counts if the purpose is to diss Summers, a judgment with which I tend to agree. But it makes assumptions about Obama's actual choices that have yet to be validated. When all Is said and done, I am pretty sure the Cabinet will be just as Barack stated it would be -- a reflection of the country in all its diversity and not that easily stereotyped.
But, Stephen... don't you know it's more fun to make assumptions about what other people are thinking, and to jump to conclusions based on these imagined reasonings? Why, simply waiting to see what happens before emitting an opinion is no fun at all!!
LOL!!! Thank you I thought it was just me...
Never forget that Harvard granted an MBA to none other than George W. Bush. They also granted a law degree to John Yoo. If you look hard enough you will find the current administration infested with Harvard degrees.
Harvard has lost all credibility and needs to engage in a great deal of moral introspection before it can ever again be accorded the respect that it thinks it deserves.
John Yoo is a graduate of Yale Law School. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
