28 United States The Economist November 6th 2021
GlennYoungkinandIvyLeaguepopulism
V
irginia’s schoolsdon’t teach critical race theory, but Glenn
Youngkin’s old school does. The hypothesis that America is
structurally racist, which the victorious Republican candidate for
governor falsely claimed was being fed to Virginia’s children,
emerged at Harvard in the 1980s and has been taught there ever
since. Toni Morrison, a novelist of black America whose book “Be
loved” Mr Youngkin’s campaign attacked, also had ties to his alma
mater. Yet it is a safe bet that the privateequity baron won’t dis
courage his four children from following him there.
A visitor from Mars might find Mr Youngkin’s populist scare
tactics at odds with his record of elite institutions (Rice, Harvard,
McKinsey, the Carlyle Group) and immense wealth. The Martian
should then be challenged to find an upandcoming Republican
with a much humbler résumé. Populist leaders, from Peron to Or
ban, are more often elite figures than workingclass heroes; and so
it is in the Republican Party. The antielitism fervour that has cap
tured the right is largely a creation of rich Ivy Leaguers.
Donald Trump, a billionaire alumnus of the University of
Pennsylvania, won in 2016 with help from Steve Bannon and Jared
Kushner (both of Harvard). His media cheerleaders included Ann
Coulter (Cornell), Kayleigh McEnany (Oxford and Harvard), Tuck
er Carlson (Trinity College), Steve Hilton (Oxford) and Laura Ingra
ham (Dartmouth College). His chief imitators include Ron DeSan
tis (Yale and Harvard), Ted Cruz (Princeton and Harvard), Josh
Hawley (Stanford and Yale) and Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo and El
ise Stefanik (all Harvard). A workingclass movement this is not.
To some extent it reflects Ivy Leaguers’ dominance of politics
and the media generally. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the first
presidential duo not to have attended an elite institution for 36
years. And the closure of local newsrooms has seen the Ivies
emerge as the main source of journalistic talent. A recent study of
150 interns at leading newspapers found that 65% studied at the
country’s most selective universities. Yet, in a way, that makes the
hollowness of the magacrowd’s populist credentials even more
striking. American politics is not witnessing a revolt against the
elite so much as a power struggle within it.
To distinguish themselves from their opponents the populists
often turn on the institutions that launched them both. As a precociousteenagecolumnist,MrHawley slammed the Ivies for be
ing “elitist” while he was still attending (an expensive private)
high school. Such attacks recall a long conservative tradition.
William F. Buckley, father of the conservative movement, made
his name by lambasting his former teachers in “God and Man at
Yale”. Combining erudition with a willingness to shock, he was
kicking the postNew Deal liberal consensus of the early 1950s.
The young fogeyish columns Mr Cotton wrote for the Harvard
Crimsonin the 1990s, decrying feminism and the “cult of ‘diversi
ty’”, share some of that spirit. “My first end was not to persuade but
rather to offend your sensibilities,” read his valedictory piece.
Some Ivy League populists also recall the slightly awkward in
siderishness of Buckley, a nouveauriche Catholic. Mr Trump still
seems to consider himself an interloper from Queens. Mr Cotton
is a son of Arkansas farmers; Mr Hilton a scholarship boy who at
tached himself to the British Tories’ most entitled faction. When
such figures rail against their former teachers and classmates,
some wounded part of them really means it. “It’s much easier to
hate people you’ve been around than people you don’t know,” ob
serves Yascha Mounk, a Harvardeducated scholar of populism.
Yet Buckley’s irreverent conservatism was not rooted in resent
ment but ideas, and firmly within the democratic tradition. He
mocked his teachers to assert the superiority of classical liberal
ism over their progressivism. He did not rubbish the very idea of
expertise, as Trump populists do. Their antielitism is intellec
tually unmoored, unrestrained and, as in Mr Youngkin’s populist
turn, largely manufactured. It lumps together real gripes—includ
ing Buckley’s stillvalid critique of the academy—with an ever ex
panding list of imagined ones: against the fbi, the Senate parlia
mentarian, voting machines and other shadowy forces deemed to
be denying conservatives power. It aims to stir resentment, not
solve problems; to weaken institutions, not improve them.
At the heart of this development was a realisation in the 1990s
that outrage sells. Highachieving conservatives had previously
found refuge in thinktanks, Wall Street and the law. Henceforth
they began gravitating to the conservative newsentertainment
industry, where owning the libs became a blood sport. The fact
that Ms Coulter, Mr Bannon, Ms Ingraham and Ms McEnany left
law and finance for the media illustrates the trend. Mr Trump’s
success lay in turning that entertainment business—hitherto a
slightly discreditable sideshow—into the Republican main act.
Inevitably, the handful of conservatives who have resisted him,
such as Bill Kristol and David Frum in the media and Liz Cheney
and Ben Sasse on the Hill, also tend to be products of elite institu
tions. But his Ivy League enablers are far more numerous and in
fluential. He could not have remade the right as thoroughly as he
has done without them.Under new management
Conservatives long argued that campus liberalism produces ambi
tious narcissists, not public servants. It is ironic that the best evi
dence for that (see the competitively unprincipled Mr Hawley and
Ms Stefanik) is on the right. There are still many civicminded
swots on the centreleft: such as Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg, of
Yale, Harvard and Oxford. The conservative critique rests on a mis
placed assumption that the Ivies still shape the political culture in
both parties. In fact Trump populism is less an elite project than a
business venture with elite management. Mr Youngkin, an experi
enced manager with flexible viewsand a modest flair for culture
warring, looks like a solid recruit.nLexington
Virginia’s governor-elect is the latest Republican culture warrior with an expensive education