As I watch President-Elect Barack Obama roll out his team with daily announcements the shallow side of me is not thinking about what role they will play in bringing about change or analyzing their previous policy positions and perspectives. No, that part of me is screaming, "good gravy, woman - how has your lazy self squandered your life so miserably?"
These people are smart, accomplished and intimidating as all get out. Seriously, the new administration is bringing out my inner Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" demons. When the pundits start waxing rhapsodic about how "youthful" some nominee is and they are the same age as me or younger and then lists their resume key highlights - pass the Haagen Dazs.
I feel like I should caption a picture of myself LolCats style with "Elitist - Ur Doin' it Wrong". Let's see, got a BA but not from an Ivy nor summa cum laude. I didn't even get my California college right forgoing Stanford and Berkeley for UCLA. Not as impressive unless you are a male basketball player. OK, moving on, I decided to get a Ph.D. then dropped out just short of writing my dissertation. So I'm almost a Dr. Yes, you're impressed now - almost Dr. Niles. But I did get it from the University of Chicago which has a slightly higher profile now outside of academic circles by virtue of Obama teaching there. Not studying - teaching. After he ran the law review at Harvard. Ivy League. More impressive. Then, since one master's wasn't enough to signal my devotion to the graduate student lifestyle, I got a second one. This time an MBA from another Midwestern Modest school - top ranked but not that you'd know it and not Ivy League. Not even from Kellogg which is the Midwestern MBA that gets props. Mine comes from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Ranked #1 or #2 off and on by Business Week and The Wall Street Journal but I guarantee you are not as impressed as if I had told you it was Wharton - like Ivanka Trump.
Yes, I am ridiculously over-educated. Yes, I have just annoyed you beyond belief for flaunting and then whining about such privilege. And yet those Obama appointees intimidate the crap out of me. (That's my fancy education in action in that sentence.) They are the glittering successful well-connected (Mary Mitchell at The Chicago Sun-Times calls them the "chic elite") wonks while I am a loser in a sea of 200,000 others.
Let's take White House Social Secretary to be, Desiree Rogers. Not only is she a stunning 49 going on 12 (the un-PC, beaten down by ageism and patriarchy version of me says that), but she is a Harvard MBA. President George W. Bush is a Harvard MBA, just sayin'. Not to mention:
Rogers will come to the White House from Allstate Financial, where she was hired last summer to create a social network of consumers and clients for the mammoth business. Prior to that, Rogers was the president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, a $2 billion utility that she had headed since 2004; she worked at the company starting in 1997 as its chief marketing officer. In the early '90s, she was director of the Illinois Lottery. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, and her daughter is a student at Yale.
Yep, it's official. I hate her.
On a serious note, I'm with David Brooks of the New York Times:
This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.
And though I am on the one hand, pettily jealous of their talent and success, on the other hand, I am extremely pleased that the President-Elect is surrounding himself with people who are better than and smarter than I, even if I want to hide under the covers sometimes.
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