At Time.com, Christopher Hayes suggests that blame for America’s recent economic decline should be principally directed at “the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order.” According to Hayes, the elites who are “supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly” have become increasingly corrupt and incompetent. Hayes makes a strong case, or at least Gallop does, that public trust in these elites continues to wane:  

For more than 35 years, Gallup has polled Americans about levels of trust in their institutions — Congress, banks, Big Business, public schools, etc. In 2008 nearly every single institution was at an all-time low. Banks were trusted by just 32% of the populace, down from more than 50% in 2004. Newspapers were down to 24%, from slightly below 40% at the start of the decade. And Congress was the least trusted institution of all, with only 12% of Americans expressing confidence in it.

Unfortunately, the second half of the essay goes downhill, as Hayes tries to prove that two of the primary causes of these institutional failures are concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability.

His main example of why erosion of transparency and accountability are now lowering public trust in elites – the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church - actually works against his argument. The Catholic Church has been secretive and hierarchical for going on 10+ centuries now. If anything, the Catholic Church of the 1970s – when Gallop started tracking public confidence in elite institutions – was more secretive and hierarchical than today’s version. Also, in previous eras, the former victims of childhood abuse were more reticent to share their experiences, in part because they encountered stronger social pressures from family and church members to keep quiet. Of course, the rising levels of transparency and accountability within religious institutions/communities have been a good thing, but they don’t do much for Hayes’ argument.

In his next example, Hayes’ pivots to go after another favorite target of the left: CEO pay. For the sake of argument, I’m willing to concede that rising CEO pay levels might contribute to ”concentration of power.” However, in making this shift, Hayes conveniently drops the part about transparency and accountability, I suspect because he knows that the general public has access to more information about CEO salaries and other internal corporate business matters than they did 35 years ago.

Hayes then loses track of his argument altogether,  to go after yet another favorite target of the left:  

Take the problem of climate change. It’s beyond our ability to recognize the imperceptible upward creep of global temperatures, so we must rely on the authority of those who are doing the highly complicated measuring. But at a moment when we desperately need élites and experts to use their social capital to warn the populace of the dangers of catastrophic climate change, skepticism is rising. A comprehensive Pew poll released in October found that only 57% of respondents think there’s evidence of warming (down from 71% last year), and just 36% think it’s because of human activity (down from 47%). This is the danger of living in a society in which the landscape of authority has been leveled: it’s not there when you actually need it.

In other words, rather than carefully build a coherent and complete argument, Hayes tosses out two weak examples, and then immediately rushes the stage, grabs a microphone, and begins preaching his faith. I would argue that one cause of public distrust in elite institutions is the inability of many elites to understand their own limitations. As the Washington editor of The Nation, Hayes is a bit of a media grandee, himself. An excellent writer, he is able to partly disguise the logical weaknesses of his essay with smooth, rhythmic prose. After watching him make such a flimsy effort at proving his own points, though, I wonder if he just tosses out the same groupthink explanations for every political question he considers. And, if so, what does that say about our elite institutions?