Sitting atop these troubled institutions, we have too many “leaders” of extraordinary mediocrity and conventional thinking, like the three hapless presidents blinking and stammering in the glare of the television lights. Assaulted by the angry, noisy proponents of an absurdist worldview, and under pressure from misguided diktats emanating from a woke, activist-staffed Washington bureaucracy, administrators and trustees have generally preferred the path of appeasement. Those who best flourish in administrations of this kind are careerist mediocrities who specialize in uttering the approved platitudes of the moment and checking the appropriate identity boxes on job questionnaires. Leaders recruited from these ranks will rarely shine when crisis strikes.
Walter Russell Mead | “Twilight of the Wonks” | March 26, 2024
RESOURCES
- Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
- Download the HeidelApp on Apple App Store or Google Play
- The Heidelblog Resource Page
- Heidelmedia Resources
- The Ecumenical Creeds
- The Reformed Confessions
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
- Why I Am A Christian
- What Must A Christian Believe?
- Heidelblog Contributors
- Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to
Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
Heidelblog
The Heidelblog has been in publication since 2007. It is devoted to recovering the Reformed confession and to helping others discover Reformed theology, piety, and practice.
More by Heidelblog ›
Valuable post.
I’m surprised to be the first one to comment.
For people who want to understand the move in politics from “old school” ward politics to professionalism of “city administrators” at the municipal level and “congressional/legislative” staff at higher levels, this analyzes the problem and the social trends that removed politics from the purview of ordinary voters and put most political decisions into the hands of unelected but highly educated bureaucrats — and has now produced a huge populist backlash against the “policy wonks” and the educational system that produced them.
What we saw with utterly incompetent presidents of major educational institutions who couldn’t understand the need to be right rather than “woke,” and let their universities descend into anti-Semitic chaos that we haven’t often seen in universities since 1930s Germany, can largely be explained by people who think “depoliticizing” and “professionalizing” institutions that are supposed to serve the public is a good idea. When those institutions respond to an elite educational system and not to voters or donors or parents or constituents who are paying the bills and supporting the institutions, horrible thing can and have happened.
This article is a long read but it’s more than worth it to understand the undercurrents driving much of our current social upheaval, the collapse of American institutions, and the rise of populism as a revolt against the “professionalism” of much of the last century.