The end of experts

Perhaps the best example of this is our president-elect. Now that the campaign is over, I have no problem admitting that he probably didn't have the resume to be president. Barack Obama seemed to suggest this himself, arguing instead that he was uncorrupted by experience. Young people in particular decided that they would rather place their faith in new ideas and new faces than long resumes.

The explosion of blogs and blog-readers reveals our generation's lack of trust in traditional experts. I know many more people under 30 who read Andrew Sullivan, a leading blogger for The Atlantic, than read David Broder, known to older generations as "the dean of the Washington press corps."

While young people seem more suspicious of expertise than the population as a whole, there is some evidence that even the older generation has lost faith in the value of experience. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson recently appointed Neel Kashkari to dole out funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, also known as the government bailout. His age: 36.

All this makes sense. We have good reason to doubt expertise.

Back in 2002, everyone knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

A few years ago, everyone knew we would have another Clinton in the White House. In 2007 a Tiger-favorite, The Economist, predicted a Hillary Clinton victory claiming that " both Mr Obama and Mr Edwards come across as too lightweight (America tried lightweight in 2000 and came to regret it)."

In 2005, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argued that, "private regulation generally has proved far better at constraining excessive risk-taking than has government regulation.'' Mr. Greenspan, would you like to respond? "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity - myself especially - are in a state of shocked disbelief," he said last year.

Of course, the experts always make mistakes every once in a while. Yet, lately it seems like they have been wrong about everything. The result is the anti-expertise revolution.

Malcolm Gladwell, one of America's foremost public intellectuals, recently joined the movement. In the Dec. 15 New Yorker, the only publication on campus worshipped with equal fervor to The Economist, he wrote that for many professions it is impossible to identify any indicator of future success. A quarterback's college success does not necessarily translate into a Super Bowl ring. (Thus, the current suspicion of Tim Tebow). He noted that, past a minimum point, aspiring teachers' "credentials" do not correlate with actually being a good teacher. As such, he argues that we should simply hire as many teachers as possible and be willing to fire those who do not succeed and reward those who do. His argument is the essence of the anti-expertise revolution: Credentials mean nothing so just hire anyone.

It is unclear how undergraduates should reposition themselves to succeed in an anti-expertise America. It is well worth asking, if a good CV won't matter all that much by the time we graduate, why bother with all this reading period cramming?

Sure, the movement against expertise has many followers in our generation. But every great revolution has a counter revolution. Most Princetonians, including me, have not truly bought into our generation's distrust of expertise. For better or worse, we still put a great deal of stock in learning and book smarts.

Perhaps there is still hope for those currently slaving away in their carrels in Firestone with the expectation that a Princeton degree will still hold value come graduation. Look no further than the Obama administration.

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Much like President Kennedy, Obama has assembled a gaggle of advisers with such impressive resumes that The New York Times' David Brooks remarked, "If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we're screwed." (Obviously, he meant to say the Harvard-Princeton game.)

While Kennedy's group of "the best and the brightest" led us into Vietnam, the jury is still out on this current bunch. Yet, if these experts fail, the value of expertise will follow their careers' trajectory.

I think they will succeed. But then again, I'm not an expert. So who am I to say?

Adam Bradlow is a sophomore from Potomac, Md., and a member of Wilson College. He can be reached at abradlow@princeton.edu.