I seem to have kicked up a little dust at Tapped yesterday with my post expressing disquiet at the fact that John Edwards didn't know who James Q. Wilson was (according to George Will's Sunday column).
Some of my attackers went after my “elitism,” a charge of which I think I made short work. But others wondered what knowing about the work of a particular scholar, and a right-wing one at that, had to do with getting elected.
The answer to that is it probably doesn't have anything to do with getting elected. It has to do with governing. We've got a fellow running the country now who is undoubtedly unfamiliar with a limitless number of scholars of all political stripes. I'm here to say that hasn't worked out so well. Maybe we need people who know things.
In contrast, as I noted in a follow-up post yesterday, Bill Clinton was familiar with the work of one as obscure to Americans as the French economist and thinker Jacques Attali. I am not saying that Clinton's conversance with the work of Attali made the economy zoom. But I am saying, unequivocally, that his knowledge of that and 500 other things like it informed the decisions that made the economy zoom.
So I've devised a little list. Let's call it the LQ Test -- find out your Liberal Quotient. I've Trebekked it up -- 25 questions in five different categories; given answer-style, you provide the questions. I think that, to be a president who understand this country and its history and can really think us through problems, a person should be able to answer 15 of them correctly. I think they're not that hard, but maybe it's just that they're not hard to me since I know the answers (some of which I even learned at West Virginia University!).
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS (DOMESTIC AFFAIRS)
For $200: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. warned of making common cause with the “doughfaces” of the far left in this 1949 classic.
For $400: Whenever Franklin Roosevelt barked to his aides, “Clear it with Sidney,” he meant that they should run the idea by this famous labor leader.
For $600: Two organizations were at the center of the civil rights movement of the 1960s -- the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and this one, known by the shorthand name “Snick.”
For $800: The Declaration of Sentiments, which begins “when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man…,” was agreed to and signed at this famous 1848 conference.
For $1,000: This Pennsylvania founding father was never a “governor,” but he is widely credited with writing the “We the People” preamble to the Constitution.
INNOCENTS ABROAD (FOREIGN AFFAIRS)
For $200: This man called his memoirs Present at the Creation; and, with regard to the dawn of the age of American global power, he certainly was.
For $400: The “Pentagon Papers” were prepared for the Nixon administration by this Santa Monica-based research and public policy firm.
For $600: These brothers at different times served Kennedy and Johnson on national-security matters—and from the point of view of the Vietnamese, not very well, either.
For $800: This world leader, overthrown by the CIA in 1953, supported agrarian reform to “put an end to the latifundios and the semi-feudal practices” of his nation.
For $1,000: Don't take it from Kissinger—it was actually this man, an earlier German émigré, who founded the school of realism.
DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT… (GENERAL POLITICAL HISTORY)
For $200: The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed this man's conviction, but only on a technicality.
For $400: These two early presidents died on the same day in 1826; fittingly, the day happened to be July 4.
For $600: Benjamin Harrison approved the annexation in the 1890's of this island kingdom; his successor, Grover Cleveland, opposed it.
For $800: DAILY DOUBLE!!!!: Meade and Longstreet, among others, have gone down in history because of their exploits here.
For $1,000: The Immigrants' Protective League was one of the many projects launched by this woman.
EGGHEADS OVER EASY (GENERAL INTELLECTUAL HISTORY)
For $200: This historian saw Ann Coulter coming a mile away -- he wrote Anti-Intellectualism in American Life back in 1962.
For $400: This conservative writer helped bring his movement to life, perhaps by knowing its “mind” so well.
For $600: This author of The Liberal Tradition in America argued that our political conflicts, while real, take place within a broad Lockean consensus (would that it were so now).
For $800: The “frontier thesis” of the history of the American West was laid out by this historian -- who eventually headed East, to Harvard.
For $1,000: The New York Intellectuals of the 1930s held many of their early debates in the cafeteria of this institution of higher learning, which they attended.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY (GENERAL KNOWLEDGE/WELL-ROUNDEDNESS)
For $200: 1947 was a good year for Oscar: In addition to the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, best picture nominees included this William Wyler tale of veterans returning home, which won the statuette.
For $400: John Lennon sang of this character that he would “challenge the world” by jumping “over men and horses, hoops and garters; lastly, through a hogshead of real fire.”
For $600: Her Dorothea Brooke, later Mrs. Casaubon, was a character in whom she sought to convey a woman's “awakening consciousness” about the world.
For $800: DAILY DOUBLE!!!!: Thomas Edison is more famous, but this man's alternating-current system actually won out over Edison's direct-current variation.
For $1,000: This important art movement got its name in 1905 when a Parisian critic, upon surveying a newly hung exhibition, exclaimed, “Matisse among the wild beasts!”
OK, this last one is a touch far afield, but hey, it's a $1,000 question! The other categories are really pretty basic for anyone who thinks of him or herself as a politically and historically smart person. I don't think 15 should be too much of a lift.
Note to Prospect staff: If you don't get 20, don't tell me! Click here for a version of the answers with questions filled in.
