WASPS ON THE RUN ! GREAT FUN !

 Kagan Fades Establishment's Insular View of History !

 
 Wall Street Journal 5/15/10
That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP

Great Article, Worth Repeating et el.

On a recent morning at the Links Club, New York's wood-paneled

preserve of the old banking elite, a small crowd of white-haired

members gathered for breakfast.
Alamy.

The Daughters of the American Revolution gather in New York

(undated)

The talk around the tables, over poached eggs and toast, was of

Europe and sovereign-debt markets. Some were quietly

negotiating deals. The crowd was mostly older, though it included

a smattering of 40-something and 50-something members.

While undeniably upper-crust, the scene, which included a Latin

American and an Asian, was a far cry from the Links Club of 20

years ago, when doing business was forbidden and the strictly

homogenous crowd of Protestant blue-bloods spent their mornings

comparing golf scores and vacation homes.

"It's changed with the times," said one former member. "That's

both our gain and our loss."

In the long downward spiral of what used to be known as America's

Protestant Establishment, there have been several momentous

milestones: Harvard's opening up its admissions policies after

World War II. Corporate America's rush in the 1980s to bring more

diversity to the corner office. Barack Obama's inauguration as the

first African-American president.
Associated Press

A Kagan appointment would end the Protestants' high-court run.

History may reveal another milestone—Elena Kagan's nomination

to the Supreme Court. If she is confirmed, the nation's nine most

powerful judges will all be Catholic or Jewish, leaving the court

without a Protestant member for the first time.

Of the 111 Supreme Court Justices who have served, 35 have been

Episcopalians, making them the largest religious group on the

court, according to court historians. The court's first non-

Protestant was Catholic Justice Roger Taney, appointed by

President Andrew Jackson in 1836.
1:36

President Barack Obama announced that Solicitor General Elena

Kagan as his nominee to the Supreme Court.

Whether the court's religious makeup even matters in today's legal

world has become a subject of hot debate. Yet by ushering in a

Protestant-free court, Ms. Kagan is helping to sweep away some of

the last vestiges of a group that ruled American politics, wealth

and culture for much of the nation's history.

"The fact that we're going to zero Protestants in the court may not

be as significant as the fact that her appointment perfectly

reflects the decline of the Establishment, or the WASP

Establishment, in America," said David Campbell, associate

professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

Seen from the distance of time, the changes are stunning. In the

1960s, the vast majority of corporate managers were Protestant,

according to E. Digby Baltzell's famous 1964 tome, "The Protestant

Establishment."

The percentage of Protestants in Congress has dropped to 55%

from 74% in 1961, according to Pew Forum. The corner offices of

the top banks, once ruled by Rockefellers and Bakers, now include

an Indian-American and the grandson of a Greek immigrant.

In old-money enclaves like Palm Beach, Fla., Nantucket, Mass.,

and Greenwich, Conn., WASPs are being priced out of their

waterfront estates and displaced on their nonprofit boards by

Jewish, Catholic and other non-Protestant entrepreneurs.
Associated Press

Debutantes at the Waldorf (1949)

A survey by Pew Research found only 21% of mainline U.S.

Protestants had income of $100,000 or more, compared with 46% of

Jews and 42% of Hindus.

Until the early 1980s, when a flood of new wealth began to

democratize the American elite, the path to power and status in

America was straight and narrow. It usually began with old-line

families in the lush estates of Greenwich, Boston, New York or

Philadelphia and wound its way through New England boarding

schools, on to Harvard or Yale and finally to the white-shoe law

firms or banks of the Northeast or the corridors of power in

Washington.

John J. McCloy—the Philadelphia-born, Harvard-educated lawyer

and banker who served as assistant secretary of War during World

War II and on several corporate boards, including Chase

Manhattan Bank's—became known as "the Chairman of the

Establishment."

His son, John J. McCloy II, a Connecticut-based venture capitalist,

says Ms. Kagan's nomination is a sign of the nation's commendable

meritocracy, but also a "dangerous departure" from Establishment

mores, since Ms. Kagan, while a brilliant scholar, has no

experience as a judge.

"I think we're losing something fundamental with the

Establishment," he said. "The Establishment was really about

people who became leaders because they were confident and

highly competent in their areas."
Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Hotel guest at a poolside fashion show in Palm Beach (1961)

The Protestant downfall can be attributed many things: the

deregulation of markets, globalization, the rise of technology, the

primacy of education and skills over family connections.

Yet many also point to the shifting dynamics of the faith itself,

with mainline Protestantism giving way to the more fire-and-

brimstone brands of Evangelicals in recent decades. The Episcopal

Church, usually seen as the church of the Establishment, has seen

some of the most pronounced declines in recent years.

Rev. Mark S. Sisk, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York,

said the polarized landscape of religion today hasn't favored more

moderate faiths like Episcopals.

"When it comes to elective office, I can't think of anyplace in the

country where being a middle-of-the-road Episcopalian would be a

great plus," he said.

He added, however, that tracking the ups and downs of

socioreligious groups like WASPs was no longer relevant.

"That kind of calibration of 'what members of my team are on the

front lines' seems to me to be an antique kind of thing to do," he

said.

Meantime, WASP culture has been left to live out its days as a

fashion statement, on the shelves of Ralph Lauren stores, or as a

social badge at defiantly old-world clubs like the Knickerbocker

Club in New York or the Bath and Tennis Club in Palm Beach.
Associated Press

Eleanor Roosevelt before the DAR (1934)

In "The Protestant Establishment," Mr. Baltzell pointed to the

prejudice and insularity of the elite as the eventual causes of its

decline. "A crisis has developed in modern America largely

because of the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment's

unwillingness, or inability, to share and improve its upper-class

traditions by continuously absorbing talented and distinguished

members of minority groups into its privileged ranks."

Jamie Johnson, the documentary filmmaker and heir to the

Johnson & Johnson fortune, said he believed the destructive

effects of wealth over multiple generations were also a factor.

"The generations of affluence bred a certain kind of casual,

passive approach to life and wealth building," he said. "Lots of

people just got lazy."

Write to Robert Frank at robert.frank@wsj.com
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