There was an interesting article in The New York Times the other day about the euro. It noted that most people in rich West European countries like Germany opposed it, but their leadership, disdaining popular views on the matter, rammed it through anyway. The elitists believed they knew better when it came to a single currency. Except maybe they didn’t.
A united Europe isn’t exactly a new idea. The Romans pretty much did it. Napoleon did it for a brief period. And after two world wars that destroyed so much of the continent, it was not surprising that a number of its political leaders believed that unifying the place, initially economically via a single currency and then gradually following up with political unification, would prevent disastrous wars in the future.
A great, noble ambition. But tying an economy’s like Germany’s with that of Greece or Portugal and hoping it would all work out for the best? Most people in Germany, faced with the prospect of losing their beloved mark, hated the idea. There was a populist uproar. It was ignored. And now with the PIIGS crisis generated by the wobbly and over indebted economies of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain threatening the whole Eurozone, it appears the populists of Germany may have been smarter than their elitist leaders.
The same very smart folks versus ordinary people thinking has of course been much on view in this country in recent years, There was a banking crisis that started in the late Bush term and carried over to Obama’s. The smart folks, the elite, (pretty much the same folks in both administrations by the way), believed we should give endless money to the banks to save the system. No, said most Americans. Or, if you do give them all this government money (everyone’s money), do it in a way that guarantees it’s used to promote everyone’s interests and not just the banks.
The elitists won that argument, too. And the results have been…well, let’s say they have made Wall Street grin and the country as a whole groan.
Boosting our commitment in Afghanistan to $100 billion a year at the same time that our own economy is in such dire straits? Pouring more money into Kabul than into Detroit? Not a good idea most Americans, the populist ones, made clear. The elitist military and administration thinkers crowd, however, decided it was the best way to allocate our national wealth. Karzai is happy with this decision. Does that make it a good decision?
Sometimes people in power really do understand complex situations better than the bulk of a country’s population. Sometimes an elitist group, political or economic, should do things most other people think foolish or just plain wrong to advance goals that will ultimately work for the common good. Sometimes. But of late we’re seeing a rather different phenomenon.
What we’re seeing are a relatively small group of know-it-alls who clearly think they are the only ones who know what’s best for everybody else and time after time are going to do whatever they have the power to do and nothing can stop them because they have a public relations machine that can sucker the rubes whenever its necessary to do so.
Maybe, however, these best and brightest should take the credo of democracy to which they ceremonially pay homage on certain days of the year as having great validity. Maybe on most things the collective intelligence and intuition of the many exceeds the smart aleck thinking of the gifted and/or well-positioned few.
Populism isn’t a dirty word. Stop treating it like one!