The Apple fell very far from the tree
Lee Fang, now writing over at the Nation points out how different it used to be:
The entire controversy might have been avoided if Romney had simply followed the path set by his father, George Romney, who took steps to clearly transition from his perch as the head of American Motors Corporation to public service. The elder Romney, who stepped down exactly thirty-seven years and a day before Mitt Romney’s announcement about heading the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 1999, made a conscious effort to severe ties with his auto business.
On February 10, 1962, at a press conference with Mitt in downtown Detroit, George Romney announced his intention to run for Michigan governor as a Republican. Widely respected by both parties, George, even with minimum political experience, was seen at the time as a potential challenger to President John Kennedy. The GOP cheered a new leader—Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) celebrated the news as “a real contribution to the strength and vitality of the Republican Party”; shareholders lamented the loss of a successful businessman to the world of politics.
In fact, when George initially informed the board of his intention to resign and run, he was asked to take a leave of absence instead. Richard E. Cross, the American Motors Corporation legal counsel, told the Los Angeles Times that he was “obviously reluctant” to see George go, especially since company profits were surging with record sales of the AMC Rambler. George had been referred to back then as the “prophet of the compact car” for introducing the Rambler in 1950 as an executive at a company that later merged with AMC.
The Wall Street Journal, on Monday, February 12, reported that at 9:00 am, George planned to attend a company board meeting so that he could officially request a leave of absence as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation. It was “inconsistent with my principles that I become a candidate for public office and maintain my business responsibilities,” said George, as he explained why he planned to forgo his salary and bonus.
George, however, changed his mind and decided it would be prudent to officially resign as CEO. Before the end of the day, George had set up a management transition team. Roy Abernethy, the company’s executive vice president, would be promoted as president and chief operating officer, along with Cross, who would serve as AMC’s chairman.
The board elected George as vice chairman, but granted him an indefinite leave of absence without pay. He even had time left over to attend a political meeting in Lansing that same day. In November, after he won his election, George stepped down from his largely ceremonial role.
That’s quite a difference, isn’t it?
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.
He’s right. They did have a stewardship mentality. Granted, it was often paternalistic and exclusionary, but in America at least, white males of all social strata were allowed into the club once they had achieved success. But once there, they were required to assume the mantle of community pillar and caretaker of the institutions they’d created and served. George Romney is a good example of how that worked. He wasn’t born into money and didn’t have a college education. But as a successful businessman and civic leader he adhered to those standards. A surprisingly large number of people in that position did, whether through some form of noblesse oblige, personal integrity or simple adherence to the social norms.
Obviously, the system was horrible in many ways — no women, no minorities, undemocratic and cruel. That’s why it had to be challenged. But the idea of stewardship of institutions through generations was a worthwhile civic value and it’s gone. In today’s world, George Romney’s peers would ostracize him for being a naif. A chump. A foolish betrayer of what’s really important.
Brooks blames all this, of course, on lax morals of our liberal society (even as he extols the Masters of the Universe for being hard workers and taking care of their children, as if that makes them special.) But he needs to look closer to home to see what’s happened to civic and istitutional leadership. It is, as driftglass pointed out, largely a result of the Randification of the ruling class:
The public intellectual who has been more responsible that anyone for the giddy, amoral rapacity and bone-deep contempt for institutions which Mr. Brooks now decries is not Ed Asner (whom Mr. Brooks despises) of Noam Chomsky (whom Mr. Brooks really despises), but the very, very ,very Conservative Ms. Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand, who helped put Mr. Brooks’ hero, Ronald Reagan, on the “Government is the Problem” path to the White House.
Ayn Rand, who gave Mr. Brooks’ hero, Alan Greenspan, the intellectual terrarium within which he built his entire view of economics.
Ayn Rand, who taught an entire generation of Conservatives that “altruism” was contemptible fascist trickery on a par with Nazism, that all religions were lies and all belief in the divine was a sign of mental illness, that all taxes of any kind are slavery, and that the very idea of stewardship which Mr. Brooks longs for — the notion of owing some sort of moral obligation to one’s fellow human beings, present or future — was Stalinist twaddle of the lowest order.
“The language of meritocracy (how to succeed)” did not eclipse “the language of morality (how to be virtuous)”, Mr. Brooks. Instead, Ayn Rand and her heirs have spent half a century insisting that the language of meritocracy was the language of morality — that rapacity was virtue — and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a dirty Commie stooge who hated freedom, liberty and America.
That’s exactly right. The “morality” (amorality, actually) of capitalism has smothered civic virtue, for sure. And David Brooks needs to look no further than his own social circle and intellectual soulmates to figure out how that happened.