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Over the summer, David Brooks offered a compelling indictment of the far-right forces that dominate Republican politics, noting they “do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.”
This is especially true of Newt Gingrich, who likes to think of himself as his own scholar and intellectual authority. Indeed, the disgraced former House Speaker has a bad habit of destroying important institutions that provide credible scholarship, but which interfere with his larger agenda.
We’ve seen this with Gingrich’s attack on the federal agency in charge of medical effectiveness research and the elimination of Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment in the 1990s, and last week, we saw it again when Gingrich announced his intention to eliminate the Congressional Budget Office. The Republican presidential hopeful described the non-partisan budget office as a “reactionary socialist institution” — and he wasn’t kidding.
Bruce Bartlett did a nice job today putting this in a larger context.
Mr. Gingrich’s charge is complete nonsense. The former C.B.O. director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, now a Republican policy adviser, labeled the description “ludicrous.” Most policy analysts from both sides of the aisle would say the C.B.O. is one of the very few analytical institutions left in government that one can trust implicitly.
It’s precisely its deep reservoir of respect that makes Mr. Gingrich hate the C.B.O., because it has long stood in the way of allowing Republicans to make up numbers to justify whatever they feel like doing.
Right. In much the same way Dick The Butcher wanted to kill all the lawyers in Henry VI to promote lawlessness, Gingrich wants to scrap independent budget analysts who’ll get in Republicans’ way. Washington should simply rely on the real expert — Newt Gingrich — and not on those alleged wonks sitting around with calculators.
It’s part of a long-standing pattern for Gingrich, who seems to go out of his way to target legitimate authorities who stand in his way. Reflecting on the former Speaker’s reign, Bartlett added:
…Mr. Gingrich did everything in his power to dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw it. When he became speaker in 1995, Mr. Gingrich moved quickly to slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories.
Of course, when party control in Congress changes, many of those employed by the previous majority party expect to lose their jobs. But the Democratic committee staff members that Mr. Gingrich fired in 1995 weren’t replaced by Republicans. In essence, the positions were simply abolished, permanently crippling the committee system and depriving members of Congress of competent and informed advice on issues that they are responsible for overseeing.
This anti-intellectualism, alas, is now a standard approach to expertise in Republican circles, who necessarily assume those with objective knowledge might interfere with GOP policies, and should therefore be discredited, fired, and/or ignored.
This is not a healthy attitude when it comes to quality policymaking.
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Kathryn on November 29, 2011 10:51 AM:
Newt Gingrich is the poster boy for what's wrong with the Republican Party, thus he"ll probably be their nominee.
DAY on November 29, 2011 10:51 AM:
Too many Americans think the nation is like a giant airplane, that flies on its own, never needs refueling, and it does not matter who- if anyone!- is in the cockpit.
c u n d gulag on November 29, 2011 10:54 AM:
Newt:
"Thou shall have no other intellectual's before me!"
Which might not be so bad if this moron actually knew anything at all.
But, on the Republican side, one not totally lobotomized PIG could be President.
Who do you think has done more harm to this country?
McCarthy?
Nixon?
Reagan?
Rush?
Newt Griftrich?
FOX News?
Little Boots?
Others?
emjayay on November 29, 2011 10:55 AM:
On a related topic, PBS 13 in NYC ran two interesting documentaries about the Korean War last night. The second one was an otherwise seemingly very nicely done production centering on a situation where our guys were supposed to hold a location at all cost against waves of Chinese soldiers and were aided by a platoon of heroic Greeks.
Two talking heads: Historian Newt Gingrich and Ollie North. Both said stuff that seemed reasonable, but there must be about a hundred thousand more knowledgeable and credentialed experts on Korea or military tactics or anything else pertinent available. WTF? Anyone?
Danp on November 29, 2011 10:56 AM:
Brilliant piece, Steve. I especially like the Shakespeare quote. I have often wondered whether this "Cade Rebellion" scene was the inspiration for the Tea Party Movement. It's an astroturf campaign to overthrow Henry. It's focused on a dubious claim to the authenticity of Henry's claim to the thrown. They hang a clerk merely because he can write his name. And who these days would refer to someone as Joe the Plumber, except someone so familiar with Dick the Butcher?
T2 on November 29, 2011 11:08 AM:
Gingrich is a blowhard and has a massive ego. These two things are not at all uncommon in politicians. Gringrich has built a career and then ruined a career and is now trying to rebuild a career on nothing more that big words that mean nothing, and the bluster to say them convincingly. He also excels in making his adversaries seem stupid in comparison.....as long as they are the likes of Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney. Put him in front of someone who is actually as intelligent as Gingrich would like for everyone to believe he is, and the result is usually pretty confusing.
Jon on November 29, 2011 11:08 AM:
The GOP as a whole respects wealth and power, not institutions. The proof is ubiquitous and obvious to anyone with eyes backed by a live brain. It is the primary reason that the label "Conservative" is more absurd applied to the GOP than the label "Liberal" is when applied to the Democrats.
walt on November 29, 2011 11:17 AM:
Newt is the classic know-nothing except he poses as an intellectual. He enthralls quite a few inside-the-beltway types who are essentially fluffers for the plutocracy. Fortunately, the sad oddness of Newt is forever shadowing the bad boy, the provocateur who loves to be outrageous. For all his lack of humility and respect for others, Gingrich's most telling shame is the one he tries to hide: a wounded little boy puffing himself up by putting down others.
flyonthewall on November 29, 2011 11:21 AM:
This is the typical attack the messenger when you don't agree with the message. That's all they have at this point. When the morons say it's Obama's policies that are the problem, I simply ask what they are. Crickets is the sound I hear.
Ron Byers on November 29, 2011 11:21 AM:
The abolishment of committee staff was part of Newt's plan to defang the committee chairmen in favor of the office of the speaker. It worked. We now have a congress where all power is held by a handful of people who don't really have to work collectively with others in their own party let alone people on the other side of the isle.
BroD on November 29, 2011 11:28 AM:
The facts are what Newt wants them to be and they mean what he would like them to mean (at any given moment.)
Danp on November 29, 2011 11:28 AM:
The abolishment of committee staff was part of Newt's plan to defang the committee chairmen in favor of the office of the speaker
I think I might argue that he put the power in the hands of the Republican think tanks (or their donors) and lobbyists. It certainly eliminated the independence of Congress as an institution.
Molly Weasley on November 29, 2011 12:09 PM:
Thank you for using the Shakespeare quote correctly. Too many times, "First we kill all the lawyers" is used against attorneys in general. Instead, the aim was to promote anarchy.
TCinLA on November 29, 2011 1:11 PM:
Given that the Republican party is a collection of morons led by charlatans and con artists, of course any Republican plan about anything is going to be "harebrained" (that's actually an insult to hares, which in my experience are mostly pretty darn smart). And naturally they don't want their con games exposed as con games until they've fleeced the rubes.
TCinLA on November 29, 2011 1:18 PM:
emjayjay:
As someone who has written a few cable documentaries, things like what you saw on your local PBS station probably started out on the Military Channel, where Oliver North has a show about "American Heroes." I once interviewed with the company, and it was easy to see (for someone like myself who actually is a military historian) that what they wanted was stuff "good enough" that people would accept it and not notice the wingnut propaganda and disinformation that would be included. Trust me, if Oliver North tells you it's Tuesday, you need three different calendars and two independent witnesses to confirm that. He is scummier than Newtie, if such is possible.
Sadly, I'm not surprised that whatever moron is employed at your local PBS station as the programmer was taken in by this. PBS is such a pale shadow of its former self.
Gregory on November 29, 2011 1:19 PM:
Someone confident in the intellecutal underpinnings of their ideology wouldn't have had to write -- and, obviously, live by -- a memo like "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control."
Why, look, there Newt goes again, calling the freakin' CBO a “reactionary socialist institution.” That isn't an intellecutal or even ideological critique; it's charged languaged intended to produce an emotional reaction.
Gingrich's signature political style -- emulated by such luminaries as Karl Rove, who at least makes no claim to intellectualism, only having "the math" -- belies his claim of being some sort of egghead.
Victory on November 29, 2011 1:20 PM:
How's the saying go?
New Gingrich: A stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like.
Qalice on November 29, 2011 1:21 PM:
Even with his huge ego, Newt is only a small part of the Republican machine. He and it are working toward the same goal: abolishment of the two-party system. Republicans have their own facts, their own religion and their own history, all of which prove that Democrats are evil and craven -- and all of which increasingly vilify nonpartisanism. This was borne home to me in 2010, when some of them went after the League of Women Voters -- an organization that carefully guards its nonpartisan reputation. I'm a member and I can guarantee that a refusal to be tempted by partisanism is infused into every meeting and action of the League. For myself, even two parties is too few -- but when too many of the Powers That Be decide otherwise, democracy itself is at risk. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I think that's the endgame for contemporary Republicans.
HenryC on November 29, 2011 3:23 PM:
Newt is anything but and anti intellectual. He just disregards anyone's intellectualism but his own. He is as arrogant as your average college Professor, wait that is what he is.
Johnny B Goode on November 29, 2011 3:38 PM:
Look at the world. It is the result of expertise that we should all hold disdain for. Steven Benen is a dope.
Speaktopower on November 29, 2011 3:52 PM:
What a bunch of baloney. What we have now is a government made up entirely of self described intelligentsia and “experts” who have no real world experience, and have no idea how their policies and departmental decisions will impact the real world. They are no more “expert”, at anything, than Steve Benen himself, who obviously styles himself an “expert” on US government and constitutional law.
They see what they deem a problem, through the lens of their being no problem that cannot be solved through force, and create a rule or order to “fix” it. This includes everything they see wrong with the country, through an authoritarian lens, and everything wrong with the human condition, through the Marxist lens of altering the human condition through government force.
It is now more difficult and more costly to do business in the USA than it is in Europe, and THAT is why we are slowly failing as entrepreneurial spirit gets crushed under the edicts of “experts” and an endless parade of government functionaries all calling themselves “experts”.
They are nothing of the sort. Where they have some knowledge they completely lack the wisdom to apply it judiciously and with humility. Where they lack knowledge they substitute bureaucratic arrogance and contrived certainty.
The idea that their jobs should be sacrosanct and life long, or that they are somehow more than functionaries and bureaucrats, and must be vested with power over us, is not merely in defiance of our founding principals of liberty, but speaks to political ideologies that are distinctly anti-American and authoritarian.
W.F. Buckley said it best when he said, “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”
Our Founders created a society with no rulers, only representatives, and trusted free men and women to govern themselves more than any other people in human history. Over educated idiots want to rule us, because they are misanthropic on an epic level, and do not believe that we are capable of living in freedom, which is the crux of this pitiful article.
Phillip on November 29, 2011 4:10 PM:
William F. Buckley Jr's quip that liberals are a "herd of independent minds" really comes to mind as I read these comments.
It's ironic how you all don't see how you trust in the credentials of your own institutions to the point of hubris. This leads to such folly, just like the medieval Church's insistence on a terracentric universe. And which we see today in the new religion of global warming. All who question the credentialed authority are dismissed, even as its policies, culture, and institutions drive the world into the ground.
Meanwhile, Democrats who haven't drunk this kool-aid, such as President Clinton, compliment Newt for his original ideas and his willingness to found "thoughtful solutions" to problems and work collaboratively with others.
But that kind of thinking is alien to the author and to the commenters here. For you, politics is about identity. Not being "that" kind of person. It's comical that someone here used the word "objective", considering that your embrace of relativism and power politics.
Fortunately, the country is going to reject your "progressive" form of fascism. I can't think of a better person to lead the charge against you the Mr. Gingrich, faithful soldier in the Reagan Revolution and the only leader in our time to have balanced the federal budget.
Bring it on! :)
MiddleWay on November 29, 2011 4:19 PM:
I'm with Phillip . . .
This "article", and the majority of posters, are sticking their heads in the sand. As an 08 Obama voter, this "oh, look how stupid the republicans are" silliness makes me less likely to vote for Dems, not more likely. Do you not see that the left moved too far, too fast? Do you think anyone is really buying this obvious propaganda?
SouthernMan on November 29, 2011 4:30 PM:
It appears to me that Newt is starting to get the left rattled. I see the democrat's attack machine is in high gear. What amazes me about the liberal tripe one reads on these blogs is how so many of the authors cannot express an opinion or argue a point without resorting to juvenile name calling. They must have been the kids in school who liked to belittle their classmates with childish ridicule until someone punched them in the mouth. Then they went crying to the teacher, or into their house to hide, because their silly words could not protect them.
Mike on November 29, 2011 4:34 PM:
Jesus H. Cribnotes! Have you never read the story of Cade's rebellion? Even years later, calling someone a lawyer would have gotten you challenged to a dual. You, who rally to the defense of "credible scholarship"?
I followed the link to the article. I had to check the calendar to make certain it was from April 1st. Bartlett defends the CBO with data from...the CBO. And please explain the difference between "long and deep institutional memories" and "business as usual". Perhaps I've forgotten how wonderful the Congress was in 1994.
OnOurOwn on November 29, 2011 4:40 PM:
" In essence, the positions were simply abolished, permanently crippling the committee system and depriving members of Congress of competent and informed advice on issues that they are responsible for overseeing."
Funny, things worked pretty well under a "crippled" Congress. Again, data do not support the argument...
Chuck on November 29, 2011 4:40 PM:
Look. The conservative attack dogs have found this post. Good dogs.
Anti-intellectualism? Check.
Contempt for expertise? Check.
Calling out false equivalances? Check.
Insinuating that Obama voters are blind? Check.
Your work here is done.
OnOurOwn on November 29, 2011 4:46 PM:
Liberal lap dog check list:
Ignore the facts? Check.
danN on November 29, 2011 4:47 PM:
"Gingrich moved quickly to slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories". EXCELLENT - translation is he got rid of beaurocrats who knew how to waste taxpayer money.
CBO - problem here is they analyze bills based on (often deceetful) parameters provided by congress - e.g Obamacare will save a billion while providing care to an extra 30 million and not addressing healthcare costs.
STate on November 29, 2011 4:57 PM:
As a righty, might I suggest that disdain for the recommendations of academia and intelligentsia by Republicans is due to the overwhelming percentage of liberals in those arenas? The fact that one is educated or intelligent does not automatically make him/her correct in his/her political views. Why on earth would anyone expect right-leaning people to trust the motives of advice given by left-leaning groups?
Kain Anderson on November 29, 2011 4:58 PM:
Wow... "important institutions that provide credible scholarship" and you're lumping the CBO in with that?
How many examples of CBO failures do you need before you cry uncle? They were off by a factor of 500 to 1000% on Medicare. The CBO does brag that their predictions on the economy favor those of the Blue Chip average, but doesn't that really mean we don't need the CBO and can just use the Blue Chip average? We already know the CBO blew the estimates on Obamacare and we're not even 2 years out yet. Yeah, you can say that nobody could have predicted Medicare's explosion 80+ years ago, but that's kind of the point. The CBO is basically used as a political bludgeon by the parties (the most recent big example again being Obamacare) to justify the passage (or defeat) of legislation when in reality the CBO numbers are just educated guesses as opposed to "important institutions that provide credible scholarship." When you're down to guessing, it's better to get multiple opinions (i.e. the private sector) and try to make the best prediction possible instead of relying on a single guess just because you believe it to be non-partisan.
Better yet, isn't the whole problem with Progressive Big Government the idea that they think someone in Washington is smart enough to coordinate something so complex that the most educated scholars and economists on the planet can't even agree on it? Newt isn't anti-intellectual, but rather anti-arrogance because it's the arrogance of the Progressives who think they know how things work well enough to control it all like a master puppeteer when in reality all they keep doing is crashing the system over and over again and blaming it on the free market system, Republicans, "stupid" common people, and pretty much everyone but themselves.
Voice of Reason on November 29, 2011 5:02 PM:
Fantastic reactions! It must be very frightening for Democrats when both their moral highground and supposed intellectual superiority are exposed for not. Welcome to the end your brief reign of incompetence!
Renaissance Nerd on November 29, 2011 5:11 PM:
There's a reason Gingrich and many others distrust experts--they're all for sale. You can find a psychiatrist on boths sides of every trial; 'climate scientists' found exactly what they were paid to find, and science in general has become a religious grove of yes-men, paying court to government bureaucracy. Experts/Intellectuals/Scientists are destroying themselves by becoming political; nobody else did it to them. As far as anti-intellectualism goes, anyone who has actually looked into the origins of that pernicious philosophy is against it. Only though who think it means 'anti-smart-people' are pro-intellectualism. There's a reason communists killed all the intellectuals except their pets. And that's what an intellectual has become, a government pet. What's to honor and admire?
bigtuna on November 29, 2011 5:13 PM:
One of the few agencies to have closed in the Era of Newt, along with OTA, was the US Bureau of Mines. Once a leader in the development of new technology, a conduit of clear information regarding mines and mining, it was also involved in developing new technologies to improve miners health and safety.
But that isn't important to Newt. So, to echo a younger post about Michael Gerson, the reason democrats say things like" republicans want to cut the safety for workers' - it is because NEwt was speaker when, in fact, they cut research and training for workers.
Don on November 29, 2011 5:53 PM:
So, this would be the same C.B.O. that sang the praises of the stimulus but now are saying...oops?
Kain Anderson on November 29, 2011 6:04 PM:
@bigtuna - you sir have provided an excellent example of a straw man. You equated shutting down the Bureau of Mines with "cutting the safety for workers" without providing a single concrete example. 60% of the BoM's duties were offloaded to other bureaus. I suspect mine safety would be one of those offloaded duties, right? So your example is basically bogus isn't it?
Gern on November 29, 2011 6:18 PM:
It is fundamentally flawed to assume scholars and intellectuals are immune to bias and political influence. Particularly when so much research is funded by politicians. In that respect republicans have more respect for the facts than they do with the opinions of scholars and intellectuals. The fact that so many democrats want to blindly follow the advice and opinion offered by intellectuals without questioning them or asking to see their evidence (much less being critical of it) is deeply troubling and shows how far those who questioned authority in the 70s have fallen.
Joe on November 29, 2011 6:56 PM:
This article is a sham. Whether you like Gingrich or not, this country was much better off with leaders that were bold, decisive and had a street smart common sensical approach to the problems this country has faced. The Progressives that snarl in the faces of these kind of people tote their intellectual prowess. How far has that gotten us since 1960? You be the judge. Better yet, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? One graduated from an obscure college, one attended Harvard and obtained a law degree. One took us out of a great recession and ended the cold war, the other has made a great recession worse and has reignited Russia as a power to be dealt with, and has weakened this country's image even further across the world. I choose Reagan. One can only hope that 60 million citizens decide not to vote again for a charming articulate weakling.
Joe on November 29, 2011 7:00 PM:
this is what you would call one moronic statement. Nothing more than big words? the bluster to says words convincingly? Would you not acknoweldge that the incumbent has been far more guilty with that to go along with deeds?
Gringrich has built a career and then ruined a career and is now trying to rebuild a career on nothing more that big words that mean nothing, and the bluster to say them convincingly. He also excels in making his adversaries seem stupid in comparison
Rob H. on November 29, 2011 7:15 PM:
It's quite hilarious to read a column from someone who supports Obama that criticizes anyone for not caring about expertise. Did none of this occur to them in 2008?
God Save Us From "Intellectuals" on November 29, 2011 7:53 PM:
Brooks comment (and the author's agreement) of they (the Republican party) “do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.” is incredible. Many of the problems we have are because half-baked Ivy League ivory tower social theories have been put into law followed by 10x explosions or more in government taxes to fund the nonsense, bankrupting this nation for today and generations to follow. The poster child for intellectual authority combined with total incompetence is the current occupant of the White House.
Give me practical experience vs. "intellectual authorities" and "legitimacy of (ivory tower) scholars" any day.
Mike B. on November 29, 2011 7:54 PM:
I'm with Philip too.
The writer doesn't recognize that Brooks' comments are a bashing of Jacksonian Democracy. Jackson felt that elitists could not make better choices for America than the average American. He had a complete disdain for them. It's what his whole Presidency was about. It's about time Democrats got some of that back. Who do the Democrats trust? The UN? The IPCC? Europe?
Regarding intellectuals, 15 years ago, Danish climatologist, Henrik Svensmark hypothesized that it was the sun, and its effects on clouds that determined climate. The IPCC and the AGW crowd crushed him, denying him funding, essentially blackballing him. It was one writer who pressed on, and 15 years later, CERN(the inventors of the World Wide Web) proved him right. Didn't hear about it? Duh.
Does anybody with a brain really believe the IPCC? And why is a railroad engineer its chief?
DC Economist on November 29, 2011 8:05 PM:
Bennen remarks that skepticism "is not a healthy attitude when it comes to quality policymaking."
Because Obama/Pelosi-era blind faith in so-called "experts" and high priests of Keynesianism and Glabal Warmism got us such "quality" policies in the first place?
Laughable.