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Mandarins as a group are at a crossroads right now. The system that produces them has matured. The proof is that Mandarins hold the White House. They have not, however, been able to generate a wide consensus around themselves as leaders, a general acceptance of them as a group that ought to be in charge--even though they've spent years being carefully, expensively trained for leadership roles. Almost the opposite of what was planned for the Mandarins has happened: the consensus is that they shouldn't be in charge. The Episcopacy, a much more elitist and less fairly chosen group, had far broader public support during its mid-century heyday.
Why are the Mandarins so unpopular? Partly because there's a sense among everybody else that they haven't earned what they have. The country is willing to celebrate rich entrepreneurs like Ross Perot and Bill Gates, but it isn't willing to accept that, say, someone's having won a Rhodes Scholarship is an achievement on the same scale, meriting the same deference. An equal difficulty for the Mandarins, but more correctable, is that they like to impose rules on the rest of the country that they don't have to play by. The best example is the Vietnam War, which the Mandarins dreamed up and then didn't fight in. Lifers and Talents see the Mandarins as being selectively compassionate--about racism and sexism and international human rights, but not crime or falling wages--and then creating remedies that affect everybody but them. The idea that (in the words of President Reagan) "government is the problem" is a proxy way of voicing the suspicion that the Mandarins are going to use government to assuage their consciences in a way that inconveniences everybody else.
Clinton, as the 1996 campaign begins, has a choice. He can try to confront his path's deficiencies head on, fix them, and thus get for the Mandarins the political legitimacy they now completely lack. Or he can pretend not to be one.
Nicholas Lemann, author of The Promised Land, is working on a book about success in America.