Members of the Obama administration might like this quote:
Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action. … Subtlety is lost, and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion. Life is visceral rather than intellectual. …
Here’s the irony. Many of those in Washington and in the academic world who would agree with that sentiment today ? especially in the context of the current health-care debate ? were likely on the other side of the fence when this quote was delivered … October 19, 1969 … by Vice President Spiro Agnew.
Here’s the rest of the quote, as reported in William Safire’s Political Dictionary entry for “effete snobs”:
The most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
