Today the Wall Street Journal picks up the T-word to describe Mitt Romney. First used for that purpose ten days ago by William Kristol on Fox News Sunday, it is the word that describes Romney, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton best: technocrat. Slick Willy Clinton was known as a wonk, but he believed in the idea of economic management by five smart guys in a DC room and repeated their notions and nostrums ad nauseum to any TV camera in reach.
Of Romney, the WSJ says
- The main question about Mr. Romney is whether his political character matches the country's huge current challenges. The former Bain Capital CEO is above all a technocrat, a man who believes in expertise as the highest political virtue. The details of his RomneyCare program in Massachusetts were misguided enough, but the larger flaw it revealed is Mr. Romney's faith that he can solve any problem, and split any difference, if he can only get the smartest people in the room.
The ideological left, who call themselves progressives but who are worthy only of the label progressivist, are the premier technocrats of our day. It is by following their collectivist principles instead of the principles of individual freedom and responsibilities over the last century that we have arrived at the Western world's economic collapse.
Unless Romney can articulate his weakness for the technocratic top-down solution, the source of his Massachusetts health-care debacle, how can we believe that he will lead us into battle with the forces of technocracy to turn this disaster around?
