David Brooks, one of the few quasi-conservative columnists at the New York Ties has written a thoughtful and counter-intuitive op-ed that raises what must be considered uncomfortable questions about America's current governing classes.

Brooks asks a simple question- is our contemporary and relatively meritocratic way of selecting leaders today in both business and government better than the past era of WASP ascendancy?

On the surface, the answer would appear to be yes.  That is certainly the politically correct notion.  Brooks seems, on the other hand, to be inclined to disagree.  By contrast he seems to think some of these changes hhave led to a certain degree of dysfunction in or current government and other institutions.

Here are some interesting sections,

"The promise of the meritocracy has not been fulfilled. The talent level is higher, but the reputation is lower.

Why has this happened? I can think of a few contributing factors.

First, the meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only marginally related to the skill of being sensitive to context. It is not related at all to skills like empathy. Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.

Second, this new system has created new social chasms. In the old days, there were obviously big differences between people whose lives were defined by “The Philadelphia Story” and those who were defined by “The Grapes of Wrath.” But if you ran the largest bank in Murfreesboro, Tenn., you probably lived in Murfreesboro. Now you live in Charlotte or New York City. You might have married a secretary. Now you marry another banker. You would have had similar lifestyle habits as other people in town. Now the lifestyle patterns of the college-educated are very different from the patterns in other classes. Social attitudes are very different, too.

It could be that Americans actually feel less connected to their leadership class now than they did then, with good reason.

Third, leadership-class solidarity is weaker. The Protestant Establishment was inbred. On the other hand, those social connections placed informal limits on strife. Personal scandals were hushed up. Now members of the leadership class are engaged in a perpetual state of war. Each side seeks daily advantage in ways that poison the long-term reputations of everybody involved.

Fourth, time horizons have shrunk. If you were an old blue blood, you traced your lineage back centuries, and there was a decent chance that you’d hand your company down to members of your clan. That subtly encouraged long-term thinking.

Now people respond to ever-faster performance criteria — daily stock prices or tracking polls. This perversely encourages reckless behavior. To leave a mark in a fast, competitive world, leaders seek to hit grandiose home runs. Clinton tried to transform health care. Bush tried to transform the Middle East. Obama has tried to transform health care, energy and much more.

There’s less emphasis on steady, gradual change and more emphasis on the big swing. This produces more spectacular failures and more uncertainty. Many Americans, not caught up on the romance of this sort of heroism, are terrified.

Fifth, society is too transparent. Since Watergate, we have tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that middle-aged people should be clothed. This isn’t Galston’s point, but I’d observe that the more government has become transparent, the less people are inclined to trust it."

In some ways I think Brooks is correct.  Long-term accomplishments, not momentary gains, are the historical criteria for success.  However, our age is an age that demands instantaneous responses, even if they are ill advised and poorly considered.  Additionally, I do think that while technical knowledge is important, it is also very narrow, just as Brooks outlines.  This leads to an inability to always see the connections between what may at first glance seem disparate events. 

Leadership must be executed within context and by one who can see both the past and a plausible vision of the future.  Today, implausible visions of the future seem to be the rage and historical knowledge appears to be seen as anachronistic as the past is not seen to necessarily be prologue to the future. 

As we now face such challenges as health care reform being rammed down the collective American throat, deficits as far as the eye can see, rising international powers, proliferating WMDs and general international anarchy, it would be nice to have leadership that really gets the connections between the past and the future, as opposed to idealistic mirages as so many in our leadership class have, if they have any vision whatsoever.