Meritocracy: there's another anecdote!

Chris hit a number of my points on this topic, and I've already gone off on Ross Douthat but I have one last illustrative anecdote about why exactly Palin's 'intellectual incuriousness' pisses me off:

The lowest point for Hillary Clinton in the primaries was when, in reference to her support for the lifting the gas tax, she said, in response to a request that she name a single economist who backed her proposal: "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists. We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."

Clinton's offence was not the act of disagreeing with the economists. No meritocracy is perfect, and the experience of the economists doesn't mean we're all compelled to be slaves to their judgement. (A good lesson to keep in mind this week, as McNamara, one of the 'best and the brightest' is eulogized in Times under the headline: Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93).

Meritocracy fails if experts, once certified, become unquestionable. All 'elite' status is supposed to do is to move the burden of proof to the challenger. If Clinton had challenged the premises or the methods of the economists, that would have been fine, but she essentially attacked them for being informed experts, denying the validity of their knowledge qua knowledge.

Clinton did this once. Palin and Bush do/did it constantly. Faced with a factual fight they couldn't win on its merits, they consistently tried to change the rules, refused to play a game they couldn't win. They weren't just undermining the 'winners' in the meritocracy, they were undermining the very idea of merit.