If only. How many brilliant dictators are there? I’d wager all of them are full-blown geniuses. I suppose one could make some roundabout argument that this actually refers to intelligence in the electorate, but I think even an engaged electorate can be oppressed, and the context suggests that we’re talking avout candidates, besides.

Anyway, speaking as a conservative who loves “The West Wing”, I only find myself only agreeing with about half of this article. Bartlet isn’t just a dream, he’s a pipe dream; in terms of character and intelligence, he’s someone I could get behind, but anyone pining for him is making the mistake of thinking that the only problem with the liberal ideology he represents is that it doesn’t have a forceful or intelligent enough spokesperson. Its real enemy is reality, which is always opposing all ideologies when they fail to go as planned (which is often). If Barlet were real, he’d have plenty of problems, and not just of the self-created variety, as we saw in TWW (IE: hiding his ailments).

Re: valuing intelligent and elitism. This is fine by itself, but the backlash against intelligence is actually a backlash against hubris, and a recognition that while some problems are the result of incompetence, plenty are the result of overthinking. You will scarcely find genuine brilliance unaccompanied by arrogance and a world-changing ambition, and such ambition doesn’t often stop at reforming the broken things, but the ones that genuinely work.

I think any electorate is bound to overcompensate, and it may well be that Americans do not value intelligence in their leaders as much as they should right now. But the backlash is still sensible in a lesser degree, and stems from the recognition that sometimes competence in our leaders is not enough — restraint and perspective can be just as important, and both are things your more modestly intelligent folk are a bit more likely to have than your typical super-genius.

Just my thoughts, of course.

Appreciate the comments, Kate. There has to be a home for us Bartlett-craving idealists somewhere…

PS I’d gone to bed the night the planes hit the WTC in New York and was recording the show. The ‘we interrupt with breaking news’ bit is embedded forever in my tape of that episode – a weird juxtapostion in so many ways.

Vision is one thing – action is what really counts. All we get from this Government is spin and rhetoric. A feel good message and a $900 cheque with the tax payer to pick up the bill.

I doubt Bartlet would think much of our so called “education revolution” or Rudd’s “fiscal conservatism”.

And at the risk of turning this into a West Wing quote-a-thon…

I think my favourite quote also comes from Sam, when he’s asked whether Bartlet should announce an imminent cure for cancer in the State of the Union:

I think ambition is good. I think overreaching is good. I think giving people a vision of government that’s more than social security cheques and debt reduction is good. I think government should be optimistic.

Indeed.

“We can do better, we must do better”.

Watching the West Wing made me sometimes weep at the reality. Obama still gives me hope though. He has to. Or we will go nuts.