From the COVID-19 models to the Afghanistan off-ramp, these are not salad days for “experts”.

The “establishment”, the “best minds”—the people we “should listen to”—have beclowned themselves and endangered us.

We need better experts, people who remain apart from politics and preconceptions. And we need better leaders, because sometimes a hallmark of great leadership is knowing the experts are wrong.

Case in point: the much-studied Cuban missile crisis of 1962. If President John F. Kennedy had listened to the experts, we might have had a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Or even President Ronald Reagan confidence in his own Cold War compass. Virtually every successful facet of his approach, which led to the financial collapse and political implosion of the Soviet empire, ran counter to the experts around him (ironically including some of 1962’s “experts”, too).

 

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