Dana Blankenhorn

The 1898 Game

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The cycles of American history are important because they can show us where we are, and let us know that our reactions to events are not as unique as they appear.

Our history has been marked, so far, by six generational crises from which we managed to escape, and which defined all who went through them:

1. The 1800 Crisis, about the limits of our democracy and adherence to those limits.
2. The 1828 Crisis, a new balance between sections and the myth of "the people."
3. The 1860 Crisis, about Union, slavery, and the nature of our economy.
4. The 1896 Crisis, about balancing power between business and government.
5. The 1932 Crisis, about rescuing the economy and unity.
6. The 1968 Crisis, about culture, global war, and values.

The 2008 Crisis has much in common with the 1896 and 1932 crises, in that our problems are primarily economic. But it also has much in common with 1860 and 1968, in that our people seem culturally divided. (History is viewed like a picture on Google Earth -- everything below appears compressed and one-dimensional.)

There should no longer be doubt that 2008 was important, in the same way that our other crisis years were important. The assumptions of the past era had collapsed, our problems seemed ready to bury us, and we were ready to hear a new story about ourselves.

But we are now two years past that crisis. We have reached its center, its core. We are in the middle of cultural, economic and literal war, a time that tries mens' souls and has people wondering aloud whether this path is, indeed the right one.

Now is the time for heroes.

The Harvard Problem

One unspoken fact about this Administration is that it is largely based on Harvard.

Harvard people fill the top ranks of the Obama Administration. There were 20 Harvard people on his transition team.  His top finance guy, Larry Summers, was the President of the place. Summers' opponent within the Administration is a Harvard professor. Most of Obama's health reform ideas came from Harvard, and a Harvard guy is in charge of his health IT, too. 

Sure, George W. Bush was a Harvard MBA, but the political era of which he was a part explicitly rejected Harvard. Harvard represented the elite intellectualism Nixon campaigned against all his life (never mind that Henry Kissinger came from Harvard) and, while the elites were sprinkled throughout every Administration of the last 40 years, they came in despite their school.

Harvard has a reputation, best seen in the late David Halberstam's masterwork, The Best and the Brightest. Harvard people are taught that intellectual rigor, breaking complex systems down like mechanics do a car, then rebuilding them, is the way forward. And, as Halberstam notes, that approach is what got us into Vietnam.

Thus the politics of the last 40 years has been dominated by anti-intellectualism. Conservatives already consider Harvard ties Obama's Achilles Heel. 

I agree it could be. That's because politics is not just a game of intellect. Being right is not always good enough. There comes a time for banging heads and "Harvard boy" Obama has not yet shown a willingness to do that.

But there is also something incredibly dangerous about this anti-intellectualism.