Judging Kagan, Judging Us

I like to think of David Brooks as The New York Times' "Chronicler of the Powerful and Rich." He's gotten some pretty extravagant (and hilarious) criticism for his work as the Chronicler of the P&R -- work which should basically be read as a twice-weekly "What Should I Think?" guide for Upper East Side Manhattanites -- but for the most part, honestly, he does a really brilliant job of it. I love the guy.

Particularly brilliant, I think, is his piece on Elena Kagan:

About a decade ago, one began to notice a profusion of Organization Kids at elite college campuses. These were bright students who had been formed by the meritocratic system placed in front of them. They had great grades, perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular interests, admirable self-confidence and winning personalities.

If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a professional and strategic attitude toward life. They were not intellectual risk-takers. They regarded professors as bosses to be pleased rather than authorities to be challenged. As one admissions director told me at the time, they were prudential rather than poetic.

If you listen to people talk about Elena Kagan, it is striking how closely their descriptions hew to this personality type.

Kagan has many friends along the Acela corridor, thanks to her time at Hunter College High School, Princeton, Harvard and in Democratic administrations. So far, I haven’t met anybody who is not an admirer. She is apparently smart, deft and friendly. She was a superb teacher. She has the ability to process many points of view and to mediate between different factions.

Yet she also is apparently prudential, deliberate and cautious. She does not seem to be one who leaps into a fray when the consequences might be unpredictable. “She was one of the most strategic people I’ve ever met, and that’s true across lots of aspects of her life,” John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor, told The Times. “She is very effective at playing her cards in every setting I’ve seen.”

Tom Goldstein, the publisher of the highly influential SCOTUSblog, has described Kagan as “extraordinarily — almost artistically — careful. I don’t know anyone who has had a conversation with her in which she expressed a personal conviction on a question of constitutional law in the past decade.”

Kagan seems like a lot of kids I've known: perfectly reasonable and perfectly well-liked; highly strategic and highly effective; and totally, utterly averse to risk (and its rewards). I buy Lawrence Lessig's case that this is what our conservative Court needs most: not a "great dissenter," but a great "majority maker" for liberals. And I also get that Kagan is nominated to be judge, and that reasonableness and carefulness go with the territory.

But I read Brooks' account of the meritocracy and I nod. I think: "What about us?" Not judges, not majority-makers, we don't have to be perfectly reasonable, perfectly well-liked. In fact, I think there's a lot to be said for that George Bernard Shaw line that "all progress depends on the unreasonable man [or woman]"; that progress depends on people who aren't afraid of trouble; on those who believe in life as a playing out of Beckett's injunction to "try again, fail again, fail better." I don't think Kagan (at least not by reports) would agree that this is how life unfolds, and that's fine. Neither would the Organization Kids, definitionally, and that's fine too. But that doesn't mean Brooks is wrong; his critique -- that the meritocracy creates new power and thus new people -- is still trenchant. Just look at Ivy League universities today...

Thoughts?

Photo credit: NYTimes