David Brooks About Elena Kagan
In a recent op-ed David Brooks compares careerist automatons of a certain age with Elena Kagan.
These [are] bright students [at elite universities] who had been formed by the meritocratic system placed in front of them. They had great grades, perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular interests, admirable self-confidence and winning personalities…If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a professional and strategic attitude toward life.
Perfectly smooth and sanded, without a fissure or crack of interest — nothing to disconcert. Pure calculation and skillset, not much in the way of depth. Brooks says this recent instantiation of the 1950s, with its conformist impulses and happy surface, is disturbing. He says of Kagan,
What we have is a person whose career has dovetailed with the incentives presented by the confirmation system, a system that punishes creativity and rewards caginess. Arguments are already being made for and against her nomination, but most of this is speculation because she has been too careful to let her actual positions leak out.
In this sense, the same criticisms could have been levied against George Bush The Father. In his many high ranking offices, almost comical in its aggregate status — culminating in the presidency — it was often noted that Bush “never left a track in any office he ever held”.
If the system wants a certain type, the factories which produce those types, the universities, crank them out. This is like saying the sky is blue.
