Elites Out Of Touch? Who Knew!

The estimable Michael Barone writes today that “On Guns and Climate, The Elites Are Out of Touch,” and he cites compelling polling data to support that conclusion.

Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion. And on some issues, they clearly do. But on some issues, they don’t. Two examples of the latter phenomenon are conspicuous at a time when Barack Obama enjoys the approval of more than 60 percent of Americans and Democrats have won thumping majorities in two elections in a row. One is global warming. The other is gun control. On both issues, the elites of academe, the media and big business have been solidly on one side for years. But on both, the American public has been moving in the other direction.

Barone could have added racial preferences to his list of controversial issues sporting a large gap between elite opinion and the public at large. There is by now a large body of survey data confirming this divide, although it is complicated by the fact, as the Gallup Organization has recognized, that

[s]upport for affirmative action has been known to vary depending on how the question is worded, particularly when the question describes the programs in more detail. Surveys conducted in the past five years by the major polling firms show a range of support from as low as 38% (when the term “racial preferences” is used) to as high as 64%.

Actually, support for race preferences often garners less, sometimes much less, than 38% support. As I pointed out here, a 2007 Pew survey found that only 34% of respondents agreed with the statement: “We should make every possible effort to improve the position of blacks and other minorities, even if means giving them preferential treatment.” Moreover, only 42% of Democrats agreed (compared with 17% of Republicans). (Incidentally, as I noted, Pew’s summary of its findings left out these inconvenient facts, noting instead public support for “affirmative action.”)

And Gallup itself has found strikingly low support for race preference policies, as shown in this list of results published in USA Today. For example, a June 2003 Gallup poll asked the following question:

Which comes closer to your view about evaluating students for admission into a college or university – applicants should be admitted solely on the basis of merit, even if that results in few minority students being admitted (or) an applicant’s racial and ethnic background should be considered to help promote diversity on college campuses, even if that means admitting some minority students who otherwise would not be admitted?

69% said merit only; 27% thought race “should be considered.”

When asked, “Do you think that businesses should or should not be allowed to consider race as a factor in making hiring decisions?” 87% said no; 11% said yes.

And let’s not forget that, despite forceful and highly funded opposition from virtually united elite opinion centers, substantial majorities in the blue states of California, Washington, and Michigan voted to prohibit preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or gender. Indeed, the gap between elite and non-elite opinion on race preferences may well be larger than the gaps Barone mentions on guns and climate.

Finally, I think the gulf between non-elite and elite opinions of both gun control and racial preferences reflects something more than simple disagreements over those policies. Most Americans believe that the 2nd Amendment’s protection of the right to own and bear arms recognizes their right to, well, own and bear arms, subject only to reasonable regulation (much as the right to free speech is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner regulation), even if they have no interest in actually exercising that right. They believe, in short, that the Constitution’s text imposes a real and binding restraint on government policy and, perhaps even more fundamentally, that the meaning of that text is clear enough to general readers.

Elite opinion, by contrast, dismisses this notion as naive literalism. Back in 2004, in Interpretation: Reading Literally vs. Construing Liberally, I argued that a then-recent article by Jeffrey Rosen was “a useful reminder … that one of the most significant differences between liberals and conservatives these days [and, I would add now, between elite and non-elite opinion] is a, or rather, the, matter of interpretation.”

In passing, Rosen defines strict constructionists as “those who believe the Constitution should be read literally,” which makes me wonder: what do lax (permissive?) constructionists believe — that the Constitution should be read figuratively? What they believe, I believe, as I pointed out with some heat if not light here, here, here, here, and, recently, here, is that legal texts should not really be read at all; they should be construed, and construed liberally.

Similarly, with regard to race preferences, as we saw above a substantial majority of Americans continues to believe, rather deeply, in the traditional value that Gunnar Myrdal called “the American Creed”: the principle that every citizen has a fundamental right to be treated “without regard” to race, creed, or color. Elite opinion, by contrast, has abandoned that principle; it has been preaching for a generation that benefits and burdens should be distributed on a “race conscious” basis, with “race conscious,” like “affirmative action,” being a euphemism for racial preference. According to survey data, however, that preaching has been successful only with the small choir made up of elites in academia, board rooms, editorial offices, and elected Democrats. It has come nowhere close to converting the congregation of non-elite citizens.

Elite opinion, in short, is not simply “out of touch” with non-elite public opinion. It is affirmatively antagonistic to it (remember “bitter,” “clinging”?), and to the traditional values and interpretive methods on which that opinion is based.