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And Another Thing ...
Part of the slam against Hill's supposedly subpar experience seems to be that she spent much of her career in a provincial backwater like Little Rock. But isn't it elitist and credentialist and regionalist, too, to imagine that political talent can come to the fore only via New York or D.C.? American elections do not work that way. (And amazed Democrats stand around going, "Hey, but our guy had the perfect résumé! And a house in Nantucket!'') Apparently, voters are kind of intrigued with pols from Arkansas, which produced not only the Clintons and Mike Huckabee but that slouch William Fulbright.
This is not how it works in much of the world, I know. I went to graduate school in Belgium on a fellowship, and afterward ended up applying for an internship at the European Commission, handed out every year to 200 twentysomethings from all over the planet. To get the thing, you totally had to know somebody; all the French kids had been to l'ENA and had parents who were former ministers of something or other, and even my American roommate had grown up riding horses with the Reagans. (Oh, I had an in, too, of course: The bureaucrat who processed the applications was sweet on a Belgian friend of mine.) Anyway, the experience was highly instructive in that I saw first-hand how "meritocracy'' works. Even now, whenever I see that word I think, sure, right - affirmative action for (the right) white people. And if we're really all for diversity - or feminism, for that matter -- that means that there have got to be any number of acceptable routes to the front of the line.
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