The Best and the Brightest

​Despite the hyper-partisanship that is roiling In the United States, Ivy League dominance transcends political affiliation. And many of the most prominent people fighting to keep American institutions alive come from the Ivy League, too. But what I’ve described so far—GOP elites turning with petulant ferocity on the institutions from which they derive their power—is new. The failure of the elites who have always run the country—on the left, in the middle, and on the right—is not. The greatest study of the failure of American expertise is still David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest; it was written before I was born, but the process it describes, in rich detail, has been more or less completely replicated twice in my lifetime. Institutionally approved people, the top men and women, with the best intentions and the fullest education and access to the best available information, create elaborate policies that misunderstand the most basic facts about the world, leading to immense suffering for ordinary people. That is the Ivy League way— “brilliant policies that defied common sense,” in Halberstam’s phrasing.