Yuval Levin analyzes a key problem plaguing elites in our society.
What troubles many Americans who find themselves frustrated with our institutions has less to do with doubts about competence than with suspicions of motives. Populist conspiracy theories don’t allege that elites are feckless — in fact, they often assume the people in power are much more capable than they really are. But they take those people to be radically self-indulgent at the very least, and to have their own and not the public’s best interests at heart.
Populist publics are more worried that contemporary elites are unrestrained than that they are incompetent. The problem is not with who gets into our elite universities, but with the fact that too little is demanded of them once they do. It isn’t that Americans don’t respect the credentials of their leaders but that they think those leaders look down on the public and are unconstrained by a meaningful code of conduct.
If this is an important source of the public’s frustration, then our leaders face a dangerous kind of trap: Their attempts to overcome public doubts by demonstrating technocratic prowess or progressive high-mindedness can only reinforce the sense that they are unaccountable.
Treating public resentment as evidence of willful ignorance, and thereby effectively equating yourself with neutral, elevated expertise, is ultimately a way to avoid accountability. …
… We know there are things a decent accountant, physician, journalist, or religious leader would never do. We have faith in them at least as much because of what we believe they wouldn’t do as because of what we think they’re good at. They act in accordance with a discernible code that defines them as professionals, and that’s a crucial part of why we entrust them with influence over parts of our lives. When they violate that code, we lose our trust in them — even if they’re otherwise still very capable.
Such a code of elite responsibility, writ large, is a key missing ingredient in our contemporary public life. We don’t just mistrust our elites because they can’t do what they claim, but also because it seems there is nothing they wouldn’t do. It turns out that democratic publics prefer evidence of responsible restraint and accountability to evidence of technocratic prowess.
