By virtue of his highly superior brain
I’ve got to disagree with Clive Crook’s observations in the Financial Times on the problem with the Democrats:
Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.
It’s not that I don’t believe that far too many Democratic politicians think just this way but that I don’t think it’s a problem reserved to the Democrats. That is the problem with Fordists of all sorts—technocrats who believe that our society can be managed by a collaboration among Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government.
While it may be the system in the Land of Oz that the new ruler is selected by virtue of his highly superior brain, his magnificent heart, or his courage, here on this side of the rainbow it just ain’t so. Power isn’t conveyed by the All-Powerful Wizard of Oz to his successor but is temporarily delegated by the people to their leaders. Unfortunately, the leaders now believe that they have their power because they deserve it.
