Lauren Burdette | Palin 'populism' v. Ivy 'elitism'

Just when you thought politics were getting boring again, Sarah Palin burst back onto the political scene this week with her new book Going Rogue: An American Life. Her memoir is part autobiography, part political gossip/accusations. An overabundance of folksy similes — “our government was growing as fast as fireweed in July” — and life advice — “God doesn’t drive parked cars” — may not impress Penn students, but they do further Palin’s relationship with the groups that supported her so fervently in 2008.

Full disclosure: I think Sarah Palin is the least-qualified person for national office since Dan Quayle. Her woefully inadequate knowledge about the rest of the world is shocking, and her counterintuitive sense of entitlement and self-righteousness disgusts me. And I think most Penn students agree.

So I picked up her book prepared to scoff at her version of the 2008 race. My eventual reaction was more nuanced: I discovered, for instance, that both Palin and I became involved in politics because we saw a disconnect between what the people needed and government policies.

Palin espouses that her background as an “average” American, outside of New York and Washington, makes her a good candidate for national office. But the notion that people from elite backgrounds cannot connect to Americans is completely false (case in point: George W. went to Yale). The out-of-touch elitism is not new to the 2008 presidential election, although it is a phenomenon that Penn — and all Ivy League students — should be aware of and actively combat.

Let’s face it: We, like all who attend elite schools, are an incredibly select group that spends four years with some of the brightest individuals in the world. We develop a groupthink mentality that dismisses people who do not have a college education, or assumes our school name makes us more qualified for leadership positions.

And the majority of Americans who do not graduate from one of these schools easily equate Ivy League with that know-it-all from fourth grade. Columnist Russell Baker famously wrote, “Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy stuck-ups and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirts, no matter how hot the weather gets.”

Most of the Republicans at Penn I spoke with don’t see an anti-elitist thread within the party. College senior and former chairman of College Republicans Zac Byer said, “I don’t think anybody is dismissing expertise and experience. Rather, I think everyone has a different conception of what experiences matter.” Similarly, Engineering junior Andrew Hicks said, “I don’t think it makes much sense to say one type of American will run the country better than another.”

But Engineering sophomore Peter Terpeluk, a Palin supporter and current vice chairman of CR, believes many Americans equate elitism with liberalism, the origin of many of the attacks on the right. “Half the reason people like Sarah Palin so much is because a lot of the elite members of the media and political world have made normal Americans feel their views and opinions are absurd.”

Ivy Leaguers are no more “un-American” than Texas ranchers, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or Alaskan moose-hunters. Having a quality education is not something we should be ashamed of, but nor is it something we should flaunt. Much of the antipathy towards elites comes from Ivy Leaguers’ perceived lack of appreciation for the lifestyle of other less-educated Americans. It is this underlying sentiment that Palin understands and represents.

Penn teaches us to understand and respect a variety of cultural and intellectual backgrounds, and it’s important that — once we’re back in the real world — we extend this, and appreciate what people from all educational backgrounds bring to the table. It also wouldn’t hurt to sit down to dinner in your undershirt every once in a while.

Lauren Burdette is a College senior from Overland Park, Kansas. She is the former president of Penn Dems. Her e-mail address is burdette@dailypennsylvanian.com

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.