Who is that borrowing man?

I got a chance to meet several fellow government PhD students of Janice at Cornell this weekend. They were without exception interesting, competent and bright. Also, not a single one of about seven questioned, three or four of whom are from New York, could answer this 8th-grade civics question:: Who is Richard Ravitch?

I could of course have made it tougher and asked who the lieutenant governor is. Ravitch wasn't ever elected to his job though, and I thought there was more of a chance of getting a right answer by asking it the other way.

Hu-huh.

"I have this vague recollection of a heavy-set guy with glasses,'' one recent graduate opined, but she could go no further.

Another, a political theorist who is trying to figure out a way to get Plato into her students' consciousnesses, explained she didn't have time to try to keep up with current events with so such research to do.

I was going to ask her if she knew who Eliot Spitzer to get a sense of how interested she is in pop culture, but I didn't want to hog the conversation.

The exercise reminded me a little of the practice of hiring interns, when I would also ask questions about who their public officials are. Mostly they didn't know, below the level of governor, but the ones that did always excelled.


People often ask me, what is wrong with New York and how can it be fixed? I think this little story offers at least a clue to the first question.