« More World Cartoonists Views On Barack Obama’s Election
Obama’s Presidency Likely To Mean Return Of More Consensus In Politics »
Obama: Balancing Heart and Mind
At his press conference Friday, the President-Elect said he was rereading Lincoln for “inspiration,” but he may also want to take another look at David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest.”
Like JFK, Barack Obama values brains, but Halberstam’s book might inspire him to be wary of the hubris that can blindside academic brilliance without accompanying insight into the realities of human behavior, as it did with Kennedy’s overachievers who went on to bring down LBJ with their tunnel vision of the Vietnam war.
Obama has shown the self-awareness and empathy–some call it “emotional intelligence”–needed for leadership but, in overturning all the clichés about “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” the real test will come in creating and managing a government with all those qualities.
“The second most remarkable thing about his election,” Nicholas Kristof writes, “is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual…
“Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse—a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance—doesn’t get very far either.”
But, Kristof adds, “It doesn’t help that intellectuals are often as full of themselves as of ideas.”
