ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Elvin T. Lim, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2008) ("My thesis is this: the problem of presidential rhetoric in our time resides not in its quantity, but in its quality. The problem is not that 'going public' has become a routine presidential practice; it is that while presidents talk a lot, they say very little that contributes constructively to public deliberation. Our problem is the anti-intellectual presidency, not the rhetorical presidency." Id. at x. Then, again, don't the people get the president they deserve? If the people or voters are themselves anti-intellectual, will they not tend to get--though not necessarily be satisfied with--an anti-intellectual president? "Rather than harp on the problem of the rhetorical presidency, this book addresses presidential anti-intellectual head on. This is a critical enterprise because much is wrong with American politics today begins with the words that emanate from the nation's highest officeholder and principal spokesperson. When presidents lie to us or mislead us, whey they pander to us or seduce us with their words, when they equivocate and try to be all things to all people, or when they divide us with wedge issues, they do so with an arsenal of anti-intellectual tricks, with rhetoric that is linguistically simplistic, reliant on platitudes or partisan slogans, short on argument, and long on emotive and human-interest appeals." Id. at x-xi. "Peggy Noonan articulates the groupthink behind contemporary speech craft: 'It is simplicity that gives the speech its power.... And we pick the signal up because we have gained a sense in our lives that true things are usually said straight and plain and direct' (original emphasis). But simplicity does not guarantee the truth, only the semblance of sincerity. Paradoxically, in heeding Noonan's advice, presidents have to be untruthful or duplicitous--altering their innate speech patterns--in order to appear truthful." "Speechwriters in the last half century have, by their own accounts, killed oratory. Eloquence, today, has become a function of simplicity...." ""We observe ... a global rejection of rhetorical complexity, with no qualification as to the limits of simplification or the dangers of oversimplification, much less any concern about the potential duplicity of simplifying language not for the sake of the transmission of truth but for its semblance. Indeed, presidential instructions for 'workaday prose' are obviously an effort to push the frontiers of simplification. As is the case with any intemperate position, there is something troubling about this. Education experts tell us that, in order to maximize learning, there is an optimal readability level that  be set above, not at or below, the reader's present level of ability. Using books that are at or below a reader's level may increase reading fluency and rate, but not comprehension. Judging by the cult of simplicity that presidents have promoted, it would appear that they have been less concerned with educating members of the public than with wooing them. The cult of simplicity endorsed by presidents and speechwriters is anti-intellectualism with a demagogic smile, it is a seductive justification of anti-intellectualism that has blinded us to the gradual rot of our public deliberative sphere." Id. at 47-48. Four comments: (1) This, relatively short, book is worth a careful read. (2) Locate and read Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). (3) Think about the anti-intellectualism in your daily life, say, at your work, at your school, in your social life. I have written elsewhere, for instance, of the deep anti-intellectualism of today's legal education; but I suspect a thoughtful and perceptive person will see anti-intellectualism's presence throughout American society. Think about a group meeting where specific issues were supposed to be discussed and decided upon, but where any attempt to introduce any nuance into the discussion was summarily cut off because, in short, it detracted from the simplistic black-white, either-or, etc., narrative of those controlling the agenda. Anti-intellectuals don't want nuance. It is the fly in the groupthink ointment. And, (4) it is not that we as a people are getting less intelligent and more dumb, it is that we are becoming more anti-intellectual. We are becoming quite shallow thinkers, readers and listeners. Woe be us!).