Draining the swamp — of expertise
We demand qualified doctors, lawyers, and athletes. What about presidents?
The United States is a nation of credentials. We demand qualified doctors and lawyers. We define scientists and academics by where they studied and what they’ve published. The entire notion of sport celebrates the talent and training necessary to be the best. In nearly every professional industry (far too many, by some measures), we’ve crafted standards to measure and convey expertise and experience.
The reasons for doing so are often obvious. The accused deserve representation by a capable lawyer. The sick deserve treatment by a trained surgeon. The student deserves qualified teachers. But this nearly universal expectation has roots in something more fundamental. It reflects a culture of hard work and striving, contributing to an idea that expertise matters, and that it is derived from effort. It empowers people to specialize, raising the collective bar of what society can accomplish. It helps build a sense of trust among individuals and institutions, among communities and the larger systems that make up our world.
But there’s one glaring exception to this expectation. There’s one line of work in which expertise is not just ignored but shunned, where experience signifies not strength but rather weakness or even corruption, where credentials that in any other field would be met with demand by employers are instead met with disdain. That field is government, and the employer is the voter. The job, today, is the presidency.
Admittedly, “president of the United States” has a job description unlike any other. The presidency is a public trust with public obligations. The president, especially abroad, speaks for an entire nation. The presidency has unique responsibilities, such as unifying the country in times of crisis or tragedy, that distinguish it from most other jobs for which customers traditionally demand expertise and experience. It’s also different in that only those who’ve held the job can fully grasp its burden. As President Obama said in his 2016 DNC speech, “nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office.”
But one might think these distinctions would be cause to hold presidents to a higher standard of expertise and experience, particularly when it comes to temperament and character. One might expect the person commanding the most powerful military in the world to be held to higher standards of intellect and introspection. One might hope the person looked to for guidance and inspiration around the world would be held to higher standards of integrity and moral character. One might think we would select the person whose words move markets on something more profound than who we want to have a beer with.
Sometimes, thankfully, our confusing expectations give us the right person at the right time. Yet in politics, too often actual qualifications aren’t considered qualifications, while obvious disqualifications are rarely disqualifying.
The 2016 election put America’s double standards of expertise (not to mention race and gender) on full display. While the losing candidate had extensive policy proposals and decades of competent government experience, the winner actively disparaged the very notion of expertise and ran on a resume of reality television and race-baiting. The outcome was a timely reminder that plenty of Americans share the winning candidate’s assertion that “the experts are terrible.” But why?
The presidency is an impossibly complex role, in an impossibly complex nation. That we could be so quick to waive the most basic requirements for the most difficult job in the world speaks to our irrational view of what the president does and what the presidency says about us. This irrationality reflects part of what Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, calls the “death of expertise.” But it also highlights a contempt for government that goes far beyond the current occupant of the Oval Office.
This contempt has taken over one of the two major political parties. It has contributed to shrinking budgets that have forced many talented and experienced public servants to find work elsewhere. It has infected political discourse to the point that simply keeping the federal government open is seen as an accomplishment. It has burrowed so deeply into the American psyche that fewer than three in ten Americans view the federal government favorably — lower than 23 other professional sectors surveyed — even though most federal employees are career civil servants who work in critical but thankless jobs, often for lower pay than they’d earn elsewhere.
These trends have culminated in a government controlled by people committed to “deconstructing the administrative state” and demonizing the very concept of government itself.
The Trump administration has accelerated the destruction of expertise beyond anything in recent memory. It has eviscerated the State Department. It has actively suppressed scientific evidence that doesn’t match its political beliefs, while either defunding the agencies charged with studying it or filling them with people opposed to their very missions. It has staffed roles previously held by PhDs with entirely unqualified campaign aides — when it staffs them at all. It has devolved from attacking economic analyses it disagrees with to ignoring them altogether. It has nominated racist bloggers with no judicial experience to federal judgeships, dismissing the recommendations of the American Bar Association and Republican and Democratic senators alike.
Each of these steps is simply the logical conclusion of an anti-government strain of partisan thought that has grown louder and more powerful with each election cycle. For a generation of political operatives, including many who’ve worked in government for most of their careers, the death of expertise in public life and the dysfunction of government aren’t byproducts. They’re the end products.
Why does it matter? Sometimes, the consequences are immediate: inadequate responses to natural disasters. Poor management of taxpayer resources. Reckless economic policy. Self-inflicted national security crises. Less obvious, but just as damaging, is the broad erosion of faith in government perpetuated by obvious incompetence. It’s hard to escape a vicious cycle of distrust.
But perhaps the most significant consequence is the destruction of potential. The potential for the United States to inspire and play host to the next generation of researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The potential for the United States government to be powered by the most innovative and capable scientists, judges, economists, and diplomats, too many of whom are driven away from public service by our toxic and dysfunctional politics.
The potential for the United States to develop treatments that will stop the next pandemic, or build prosthetic limbs that work as well as the real ones, or craft algorithms that harness the power of artificial intelligence. The potential for the United States to inspire and grow from a culture of opportunity and ambition, of effort and hard work, of drive and determination.
Most importantly, draining the swamp of expertise and experience makes it far harder for America to realize its potential as a beacon of moral authority. “Political rhetoric and ideals,” Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson wrote recently, “can raise the moral sights of a nation and point men and women to responsibilities beyond the narrow bounds of self and family.” But not when idealism is replaced by cynicism. Not when we scoff at that potential, instead of striving to realize it.
Eviscerating government and disparaging expertise perpetuate a race to the bottom in every aspect of society. Every time politicians demonize experience and demonstrate that knowledge and skill are not to be praised but instead buried or dismissed, they plant a seed of cynicism and distrust. These seeds are dangerous and contagious, sparking tribal flames that spread as populist fantasies and conspiracy theories.
The solution is not, of course, to trust blindly in experts or elites. Look no further than the financial crisis or the Iraq war for evidence that confirmation bias, conventional wisdom, ulterior motives, and moral equivalency plague all human beings, experts and elites very much included.
Or, consider that for most of this country’s history, actual experience and expertise have been seen as secondary qualifications to race, gender, religion, and sexuality — for the presidency and for too many other positions. Disrupting the straight, white, male, Ivy League-educated entry requirements for the White House, as for other positions throughout American society, is undoubtedly positive and long overdue.
The United States is the most dynamic and powerful nation in the world in part because it has welcomed new people, cultures, and ideas that have challenged and shaken up the status quo. Fighting America’s disdain for expertise doesn’t mean discarding that innovative spirit. It simply requires rebalancing of the way we view government so expertise is valued as it is in nearly every other field: as something to be prized, sought, respected, and challenged.
This column was originally published in the Medium publication ‘Extra Newsfeed.’