In a semantic mess, wanting the best has become "elitist"
"Elite" and "elitism" as terms have transformed into political slurs in Britain and the United States. Simply defined, elitism is a belief in government by the few, while elite means "the best". But the conflation of their meanings, born of not a little ignorance and slovenly language, has produced somewhat different strains of anti-rational toxin in the past few decades.
The British, especially with regard to education, often confuse elitism with meritocracy. Admission on merit to elite state schools by passing exams - a practice common in the US and much of Europe, but not in the UK since the demise of grammar schools - may in fact afford one of the strongest barriers to class-based social elitism, whether based on inherited status or wealth.
One difference between the uses of elitism as a political epithet on the two sides of the Atlantic is that Americans now pin the label/libel almost exclusively on liberals, while the British tend to apply it to conservatives of various sorts. The American understanding of elitism has little to do with money or class per se - otherwise George W Bush would have to be considered a hopeless elitist, in view of his inherited privilege. Instead, elitism stands for a way of life supposedly out of touch with the "values" of ordinary Americans.
Republicans are slapping the elitist bullseye on Barack Obama, though his is a story of earned privilege through scholarships, hard work and brains. His supposedly elitist traits include a Harvard Law School degree; a command of the spoken and the written word; and (horrors!) a body too thin for the comfort of ordinary obese Americans. If Obama were running here as a Labour candidate with a similar background - as, say, a boy who grew up to earn a double First at Oxford after being raised by an English working mother whose Kenyan husband abandoned her - he might be called many things by the opposition, but elitist would probably not be one of them.
The political definitions of both elite and elitism in the US are now being broadened to include knowledge itself. Last spring, when Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton proposed a summer "gas tax holiday" and Obama opposed the plan, reporters asked Clinton why not a single liberal or conservative economist thought that a temporary gasoline tax exemption would be of any use. Clinton airily dismissed all expert economic analysis as "elite thinking". To escape the charge of elitism, a US candidate may now be required to display not only a beer belly, but also a preference for ignorance over expertise.
All epithets with "elite" at the root, whether slung about by left or right, should be retired from political discourse. They bear about as much relation to the real problems faced by either nation as charges of witchcraft. Although witches, who might pose a challenge to family values, may well be considered elitists.
Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason: Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy, published by Old Street Publishing (£18.99, ISBN 9781905847662), is available from 1 September.
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