Who are today’s Best and Brightest?

They are the people we should be electing and selecting!

Today there is some unshakable idea that the Best and Brightest get into the Ivy League Schools, and generally reside there. This idea is at best decades old, with Notre Dame previously having a better record of National performance and image. And given the recent decades record of performance, our Best and Brightest certainly most likely do not come from the Ivy League Schools. The question is begged because so many hired staffers still come from the Ivy League Schools. And these hired staffers form much of our present federal government in Washington, D.C., be they working in the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, or the bureaucracy. In all cases, how many of our Best and Brightest think of themselves as citizen politicians, and offer some time out of their lives to rule this Country?

The record of performance suggests two serious trends with repercussions for our Country are going on.

One trend is that of younger less experienced Americans are coming to D.C. with all their limitations while they start their careers. The first four years of the recent Iraq War provides such an example, with lack of unity of effort between bureaucracies and even the executive and the legislative branches. Older more experienced Americans might have avoided all the failures we as a Country have suffered as a result. Less we pick on Bush and the Republicans, it goes back to Clinton and the Democrats, too. Clinton issued an edict telling all bureaucracies to work together, as if that is good enough. The buzzword is interagency working groups. And actually it goes way past Clinton coming to the Presidency in 1992. McNamara’s “whiz kids” did more harm than good to our Country, as did our Best and Brightest advisors to President Kennedy that got us into Vietnam…both these ideas are debatable, in civil terms, of course.

The second trend is the bitter acrimony between the two National Parties, usually called partisan politics, which has run off many of our Best and Brightest citizen politicians and potential hired staffs. As so many Families have done the math, monetarily and politically, the answer is that going to D.C. or doing the same more Locally, is just not worth the effort. So while techniques like the politics of personal destruction may work as a political “war method”, it is drawing down the benefits of our Best and Brightest taking some years out of their busy lives to work in the National or Local interest.

Since many are from the school of thought that says one never complains without offering future options, there are options. The most appealing is for Americans to include considerations for supporting future Best and Brightest type candidates when voting. This is most appealing, so American, and so New World. There are other much less appealing options, like civil war or worse, like generational warfare. The thinking behind these other terrible options is that no one group of Americans should drag the rest of us Americans down in pursuit of their goals. Hence support our Common National Interests, and the candidates that think that way. The recent financial homeowner defaults on mortgages involves at best about 1 in 20 mortgage owners, yet this group of risk takers and their enablers may take many more down with them. Now this is an example of what is happening today, and what future Best and Brightest should act on, vice react on. Most of us don’t won’t to be presented with a problem to solve…rather we would prefer to solve problems ahead of time. Now that is “leadership”, and nurturing getting our Best and Brightest back into our Governments is in our National Interests.