Intellectuals and Politics
Over at The Stone recently, Gary Gutting had the following suggestion for the 2012 Presidential contest:
The best evidence of how capable candidates are of fruitfully interacting with intellectuals would be to see them doing just this. Concretely, I make the follow suggestion for the coming presidential election: Gather small but diverse panels of eminent, politically uncommitted experts on, say, unemployment, the history of the Middle East, and climate science, and have each candidate lead an hour-long televised discussion with each panel. The candidates would not be mere moderators but would be expected to ask questions, probe disagreements, express their own ideas or concerns, and periodically summarize the state of discussion. Such engagements would provide some of the best information possible for judging candidates, while also enormously improving the quality of our political discourse.I’ve made a point of not watching the myriad GOP debates. But if the candidates would agree to do something like this — something that isn’t just a string of talking points without argumentation — I know that I’d watch. Would they agree to do this? Almost certainly not. There’s just so little to gain and so much to lose, especially considering the rampant anti-intellectualism in America today. It’s a shame that we can’t see our candidates for public office have an in-depth discussion like this, but it’s not surprising and it’s not likely to change.
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