HANSON

Posted at 7:43 a.m. ET

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson has some of the smartest things to say about this election campaign, basing his views on an actual knowledge of history, a knowledge not shared by many members of the chattering classes.

Hanson discusses the unprecedented assault against Sarah Palin.  He concludes, reflecting on whether she's tough enough for high office:

And? She is still smiling and apparently unmoved. Had they done this to Biden, he would have gone berserk. Wait--they didn't do this to Biden, and he seems near berserk in his daily gaffes.

And...

The point is this: I think it is much harder for a mother of three or four in an out-of-the-way Alaskan town to get elected to city council and the mayorship, then take on the entire Republican establishment and get elected governor than it is for a Barack Obama to emerge from Chicago politics into the Illinois state house and later Senate. The qualities that allowed a Palin to succeed without the power spouse, the identity politics, the Ivy-League cachet, the fawning New York editors and DC insider-press will ensure she does not implode on the campaign trail--and won't in office either.

Barack Obama, in contrast, on numerous occasions has complained how tiring, how hard, how unfair, how racist the campaign has turned out to be; Palin never.

Isn't it nice to know that someone has noticed.

Again my point? That the much deprecated "life experience" is every bit as important to leadership as is abstract learning. Both complement each other, but so far I think Palin understands the symbiotic world of word and the world of deed far more so than does Obama. And again, we are not talking about McCain, where the contrast only widens-and is far more important.

Tell that to the faculty at Harvard.

While civilization advances on the shoulders of the educated, it is carried along by the legs of the muscular classes. And the latter are not there by some magical IQ test or a natural filtering process that separates the wheat from the chaff, but rather by either birth, or, as often, by their preference for action and the physical world.

Second, I have seen no difference in intelligence levels between those who inhabit the world of the physical and those who cultivate the life of the mind. That is, the most brilliant Greek philologists seemed no more impressive in their aptitude than the fellow who could take apart the transmission of an old Italian Oliver tractor, fix it, and put it back together--without a manual. And I knew three or four who could. The inept mechanic seemed no more dull than the showy graduate student who could not distinguish an articular infinitive from an accusative of respect.

Well said.

For most of you readers, all this is trite and self-evident. But apparently not for hundreds in politics, the media, the universities, Hollywood, and the foundations who seem to think that a fumbling nervous Obama in interviews, who grasps for a word and utters vacuous platitudes is "really" contemplative, like his Harvard Law professors; but when a Sarah Palin seems nervous under scrutiny from a pseudo-professorial, glasses-on-the-lower-nose Charlie Gibson, she is clearly an empty head with an Idaho BA.

Even better said.

A Ronald Reagan knew more about human nature, and thus what drives the Soviet Union than did all the Ivy-League Soviet specialists that surrounded Jimmy Carter-much less the Sally Quinns and Maureen Dowds of that age. We in America, unlike the Europeans, know this intuitively, grasp that a Harry Truman figured out the Russian communists far better than did the Harvard-educated aristocrat FDR.

A knowledge of history - demonstrated.

What is wisdom?

Not necessarily degrees, glibness, poise, or factual recall, but the ability to understand human nature. And that requires two simple things: an inductive method of reasoning to look at the world empirically, and a body of knowledge and experience to draw on for guidance.

Palin in empirical fashion bucked the Republican establishment and the old-boy network when she thought it was unreasonable; Obama never figured out or at least never questioned Tony Rezko or the Chicago machine, Trinity Church or the Pelosi-Kennedy liberal mantra--unless it proved advantageous.

I wish there were more writers like Hanson.  I wish I could point to one prominent newspaper editor in the United States and say he's the equal of Hanson.  But we live in an age where wisdom is defined by the diploma on the wall and the quickness of the insult.  If you don't believe that, look at American history, and contemplate the names of those who'd be laughed out of the room by today's elites.  Start with Andrew Jackson, then list Lincoln, then continue with both Roosevelts, and include Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

That tells the story.

September 23, 2008.