The Crusade Against Excellence; M. S. Rukeyser

THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE IF THE RECENT TV quiz scandals represented a mere trade malpractice, their significance would be circum scribed. But it seems to me that the recent episodes are surface symptoms of a deeper malady. The elaborate rigging to "control" programs on the air evidenced not only moral shortcomings, but also a lack of artistic integrity. The authentic artist seeks to portray the real nature of man, not a preconceived set of circumstances bearing no 'relationship to reality. In the market place for air time, opportunistic packagers and producers of programs were unwilling on quiz shows to run the risk of bringing selected personalities to the mi crophone, and let the chips fall where they may. They feared that truth and sincerity might yield oc casional dull spots, and an impatient audience would protest by turning the knob on the dial. Thus, they cynically downgraded the nature of man, and "hopped up" synthetic characters who appeared to know more than they did.

Mr. Rukeyser is a business consultant, lecturer, and writer of the nationally syndicated column, "Everybody's Money." 170 THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 171 This desecration of decency in the clamor for "rat ings" should be fully explored. Apart from ethics, mor als, and political science, this scramble for rank does not make sense even in crass box office terms. The clamor for ratings is based on loose thinking stemming from the half-truth that "all men are created equal." This phrase-corrupted by demagogues-is utterly misleading unless qualified to mean that men are created with a right to equality of opportunity. Uncritical dedication to the phrase has been the curse of the American educational system and other phases of the national life. Because of a lazy attitude toward the nature of a free society, hundreds of thousands of children have been psychologically bruised. Fanatics in the name of democracy insist on shoving all through precisely the same educational mill. Thus the pace and the curriculum, if geared to the average, are too fast for the slow learners and inadequate for gifted children.

Wiser pedagogues are coming to recognize the need for plural standards related to the aptitudes, abilities, IQ's, and other characteristics of individuals. Enrichment of national life calls for a new respect for individual differences. Confused idealists have tended to weaken the national fabric through their passion for uniformity and conformity. On the TV issue, dismiss from consideration for the moment decent ground rules for the use of the ether, which is in the public domain. Even if we look only at strictly commercial considerations, this senseless drift toward programs that purportedly appeal to the lowest 172 MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSER common denominator is far from prudent. The old Roman regime of "bread and circuses" has been widened to include Westerns and tales about cops and robbers. It is putting the whole matter in the wrong frame of reference to argue that either federal bureaucrats or the networks should act to restrain the wickedness of spon sors. As a matter of fact, if sponsors are to get their money's. worth out of TV programs, they must relate their activities to their objectives. When the goal is to sell gum at five cents a package, the widest possible listening· audience is obviously desirable-and, for the sake of argument, the correct approach may be Rock 'n Roll. However, if the purpose is to "make friends and influence people" in order to improve a climate in which voluntary enterprise operates, then it is desirable to attract the opinion-making elite consisting of teach ers, ministers, professional men, and executives, and the Philharmonic Orchestra and exciting discussion forum may indeed be in order. It is obviously mixing "horses and apples" to rely on head counts by pollsters irrespec tive of the nature of the adventure upon which the business enterprise may have embarked.

And it is discrediting the free enterprise system un warrantably to cast the sponsor in the role of villain and to investigate ways and means of forcibly restrain ing his depredations. It is high time for those who finance free TV and radio as sponsors to set voluntary standards for themselves. Perhaps the issue can be lifted to its correct perspec tive by recalling that Dr. Alfred N. Whitehead, the THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 173 eminent philosopher and··mathematician, in his famous speech before the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, observed: "A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions." The Need for Business Statesmanship Business statesmanship is capable of canons of respon sibility based on something more than a blind worship of "ratings." To me, the crux of the matter is that the managing directors of American corporations should responsibly take over as "decision makers" in this important area of human relations. This would entail giving "come uppance" to little men on Madison Avenue, among the packagers, and in the networks, who are governed by worship of the false idol of the fast buck.

This is nothing more than enlightened self-interest. For every experienced analyst knows that, unless cur rent transactions build up permanent capital in the form of good will, they are consummated at too heavy a cost. Business leaders should instruct those at the merchan dising fringe that no sale is worth-while unless it builds a friendly attitude toward the company. Otherwise, the immediate profit is made at the unreasonable cost of dissipating long-term, intangible corporate assets in the form of public esteem and good will. Thus corporations would be better off if they re174 MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSER treated into anonymity rather than pay for exposure as·patrons of crooked programs that promote mediocrity in public taste. Whenever the corporate name is put before the pub lic, management should undertake to make it a symbol of public decency and service to customers. Besides consummating the immediate sale, the com pany, in its public exposure, should, in the words of a brochure which this writer put out in 1938, "sell the business (and the free-choice system) as well as the product." Unless the businessman each year puts some thing back into the system in the form of better public appreciation of liberty, he is like the antisocial farmer who mines the soil, returning nothing in fertilizers, bet ter seeds, crop rotation, and other evidences of con structive behavior. Such a negative approach of taking everything out and putting nothing back is indeed destructive.

In putting their best foot forward, sponsors should associate themselves with activities that reflect quality, good taste, and standards. Business will improve its prestige if it encourages ex cellence. This requires sufficient forbearance to be will ing to reduce boob appeal in order to register the fact that they stand for truth, common honesty, and the sci entific approach to better living and improving public taste. It would be falling into a superficial booby trap to limi t the downgrading of excellence to radio and TV. Magazines of mass circulation are faced by similar THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 175 temptations. Opportunistic editors are forever mindful that Hhoking" up the news· might sell more copies than dependable objective reporting. But even from strictly commercial standards, a balanced diet is to be desired. As the Saturday Evening Post has pointed out, it would not make sense for it to exclude everything except its most popular feature, "Postscripts." The late William Randolph Hearst, who is credited with originating Hyel low journalism," had sufficient balance to respect qual ity. He always wanted in his newspapers thoughtful and significant pieces to round out the "cheesecake," the comics, and the lurid sex tales.

Professional Responsibility In my own specialty of finance, investment, and busi ness counseling-to corporate clients, it would be a shock ing default not to aspire undeviatingly for a high de gree of objectivity and accuracy. Thus, it would be a degradation of professional responsibility to try to ex pand an .audience· by saying that a financial panic is lurking immediately ahead when your true opinion is that some overdue profit taking might cause a mild intermediate reaction in stock prices. Yet when radio crooners and unspecialized announcers herald the day's occurrences at· the security market places, there is a dis cernible tendency among some to improve their ratings by exaggeration and by unwarranted sensationalism. The sub-surface trend runs deep. Syndicate salesmen of newspaper features advise distinguished. contributors 176 MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSER to "write for the crowd." This is a mandate for over simplification and for gilding the lily. There is too little concern for stimulating others to go through what the late Graham Wallas called "the painful task of think ing." In the craze for quantity merchandising, even su perior word usage is discouraged on the theory that other than primitive language will narrow your audi ence. So what? In a good society,··there is a multiplicity of audiences-one for Irving Berlin and another for Johann Sebastian Bach.

The passing public excitement and indignation over the rigging of quiz shows ··will get precisely nowhere in the way of constructive improvement unless we relate the episodes to the larger problem. The Creative Role in Society To put the matter bluntly, if we are to survive as a free Republic in the battle for "competitive co existence" with the Soviet Union and its allies and satel lites, then we must respect an elite of creative minds. While there is a role in our society for the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the tempo of our inventors, scientists, engineers, theoreticians, and executives should not be slowed down to the pace of the lowest common denominator. In this context, there should be rising respect for quality radio and TV stations whose listen ing audience may not be the largest, and for· quality magazines of limited circulation, which keep the lamps of learning lit.

THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 177 Those who are aware of the trend of the new com petition for survival should not retard their construc tive inquiries because of the slow-wittedness of the un aware. In the free market place for ideas, there must be venturesomeness and risk taking. It is stultifying to inhibit dreams until the dullest minds regard such new concep ts as self-eviden t. The blazoning forth of the banners of mediocrity is a reflection of misguided political leadership. New Dealers, Fair Dealers, Double Dealers, mixed economy advocates, modern Republicans, and others have set back the processes of civilized progress by pandering to mediocri ty. The downgrading of public taste is closely related to the drift toward a "welfare state." Despite the political blue-sky appeal behind the question-begging term "wel fare," the collectivist formula for a "welfare state" is a deviation from an individual free choice society. The "welfare state," being the antithesis of a merit system in which each is rewarded for his degree of excellence, is a device for assuring robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to unduly reward the inefficient and the unpro ductive. In its nature, the "welfare state"· rests on boob appeal and glorification of mediocrity. Its advocates in evitably find themselves crusading against excellence.

From a short-term standpoint, such negativism had its maximum appeal when fear was rampant during the maladjustments and widespread unemployment in the years following the panic of 1929. If the nostrums had appeal under such abnormal circumstances, they are 178 MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSER obviously ill-timed in a period of quickened economic development. Certainly the fallacious economic dogmas, concocted during the depressed early nineteen thirties, whatever their original merit or lack thereof, are today "old hat" in the context of high level employment in the dynamic nineteen sixties. Progress is made by courage in shed ding outmoded illusions and prejudices. West Germany, in its stupendous economic recovery since the end of World War II, showed the social utility of pursuing the principles of freedom and prudent eco nomics. West Germany, having earlier been through the inflation and socialist wringer, uncompromisingly turned its back on soft money theories and collectivist doctrines, and recently the Social Democratic Party in Germany, heretofore fountainhead of authoritative doc trines of socialism, threw Marx out of the window, and the British Labor Party has similarly sought to achieve popularity through soft pedaling planks for government ownership. There have been like trends in France and in Italy.

Without regard to provincialism and special pleading, let's encourage our fellow citizens in this struggle for sur vival to put their best foot forward and to foster excel lence-not hamstring it. A great sermon, a stirring edi torial, a revealing article, a fresh expression in business or in the arts of man's capacity for creativity and im provement-these are instruments of progress. Let's not choke off creativity on the ground that tired, worn out, tested appeal themes are safer.

THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 179 Do We Deserve to Survive? Instead of measuring our survival prospects in a vacuum, we should examine the more fundamental ques tion: "Do we deserve to survive?" If we answer this in the affirmative, then we need have no fear that economic slavery behind the Iron Curtain will be more produc tive than a free society. In our soul-searching, we should not confuse the labels of free individual choice with the reality. We should give new and vigorous expression to the libertarian philosophy, and should make clear that it provides the fountains and springs from which creative improvement flows. In backing a free society, we should make certain that we are not kidding ourselves. We should re-examine the effect of fastening inharmonious collectivist ideas on a free society. We should take a fresh look at the effect of trade union equalitarianism on the philosophy and prac tice of an incentive system. We should study anew the human consequences of offsetting incentives with a steeply graduated income tax, which tends to dilute ma terial rewards. We should determine whether costly "featherbedding" is patriotic at a time when high pro ductivity is the sine qua non for survival of the whole free world.

Obviously, this clash between excellence and medi ocrity is not exclusively an American problem. Under Stalin, Russia attacked excellence through murdering generals-and later paid a price in military weakness when defending itself against Nazi Germany. And Hit180 MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSER ler, in dismissing scientists because of religious faith and political views, frustrated his own ambition to dominate the world. Some of the deported creative minds acceler ated pursuit of the splitting of the atom in this coun try, and gave us the atom bomb before the enemy achieved it. The Answers Are ('('Rigged" in Russia Back in 1948, Eugen S. Varga, described at the time as the Soviet Union's number one economist, suffered disgrace because his objective pursuit of knowledge brought him into conflict with the communist party line. Varga wrote with extreme caution, but he bucked the propaganda line. His conclusion that there was no neces sary conflict between the economic interests of Soviet "socialism" and American and British capitalism in the first postwar decade was intolerable to the Stalinists.

Varga was bringing the message that capitalism was not on the verge of collapse. He· was unfrocked for such effrontery, though subsequent events have proven the correctness of his forecas t. What Varga said and wrote are of less significance than the fact that he as the head of the Russian Insti tute of Economics was not permitted to express his true thoughts, findings, and appraisals. The point is that Russian economics was rigged just as quiz programs were. What a price the world pays for rigging. If the Russian Praesidium had listened to its expert, it might have avoided the cold war, and could have started, a decade THE CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE 181 and a half earlier, rapprochements for international co operation, such as Nikita S. Khrushchev is now mouthing. The stakes are heavy in this matter of counterfeiting the coins of communication. To the economically illiter ate, the cost of calling gray black may seem trifling, but, in the race between civilization and catastrophe, it is important to respect the scientific approach.

When government steps in to dull the rewards for ex cellence and to supplement the productivity of the in ept, it releases forces of savagery which retard progress. In a well ordered society, in which excellence is fostered, there is, of course, room for sweet charity, without en cumbering the machinery for social progress. But the processes of civilization are impaired when in sincere politicians, seeking votes at any price through boob appeal, or hucksters, looking solely at ratings, re enact Gresham's law in a new area. Gresham admon ished that "bad money drives out good" and, by the same token, uncritical worship of boob appeal stops the flow of information and inspiration to those capable of creative innovation. In the circumstances, those who contribute a mite to upgrading public taste are on the side of· the angels.