The War on Brains

Nicholas Kristof, writing in his NY Times column, muses about whether the election of Barack Obama will end the anti-intellectualism that has taken over the political landscape and the country.

It's true that Obama was unapologetic about his smarts, and it's also a fact that the majority of voters picked someone with a big brain. Nearly fifty years has passed since the last time an avowed intellectual held the nation's top post (JFK), and there's plenty of evidence strewn across the countryside that being a "C" student might not prepare to you be leader of the free world (GWB).

Kristof: We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

And: Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn’t condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.

Nothing wrong with complexity - we don't live in a simple place, or in a simple time. This is a far cry from George W. Bush stating proudly, "I don't do nuance."