Robert Taft was not your average citizen. His grandfather was Alphonso Taft, Attorney General and Secretary of War under Ulysses S. Grant. His father was William Howard Taft, who served as president and Chief Justice (and has the distinction of being our most rotund president). He graduated first in his class at Yale College and Harvard Law School, editing the Harvard Law Review at the latter institution. He served three terms as a Senator from Ohio, where a committee after his death chose him as one of the body’s five greatest senators.

Robert Taft was no common man.

In fact, while campaigning at a rally, the Senator’s wife was asked if, indeed, her husband was a common man. “Oh no,” she quickly replied. “He is not that at all. He was first in his class at Yale and first in his class at Harvard Law School. I think it would be wrong to present a common man as a representative of the people of Ohio.”

Fast-forward to today. Robert Taft could never be elected in the contemporary Zeitgeist. He’s an (gasp!) elitist.

Today’s political world decries elitism. Populism is the name of the game. Candidates fight to be recognized as a “man of the people.” All want to brag about their “humble beginnings” and how much they represent the “common man.”

This populism leads politicians to promise bigger and better things. Democrats prattle about entitlements while Republicans go on about defense, compromising by spending trillions of dollars on both, keeping us on the path to financial ruin.

This is folly. Our politicians dumb themselves down to get elected; regardless of the strategy’s political effectiveness, it will lead to our eventual destruction. This destruction won’t come quick, for Rome wasn’t burnt in a day, and it won’t come from without, but from within. But it will undoubtedly come, slowly, if not surely.

The only way to stop our inevitable cultural decline is to recognize our natural aristocracy.

Nature “has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal,” John Adams said. “Although, among men, all are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.”

What he’s saying is that some people are naturally better at some things than others. Usain Bolt is faster than any man alive. Eric Clapton knows the blues like nobody’s business. Kobe Bryant is the best basketball player alive. (That just happened!)

These people are, dare I say, elite. If I want to win a race, I want Bolt. If I want to hear the blues, I call on Clapton. If I want to win the NBA Finals, I get Kobe. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our representatives be elites also.

Returning to the voice of Adams, who is most eloquent on this issue, he said, “There is a voice within us, which seems to intimate, that real merit should govern the world; and that men ought to be respected only in proportion to their talents, virtues, and services. But,” and this is a big but, “the question always has been, how shall this arrangement be accomplished?”

For Adams, indeed all of our founding fathers, the answer lied in the United States Constitution. But this document has been torn to shreds by our supposed representatives who have ceased trying to be elite and have settled for populist blather, which columnist George Will recently called a “cathartic response to serious problems.”

The only way to stop our imminent destruction as a people is to have the best govern us. We need statesmen who actually do right by the people. We need the elites. We need men like Robert Taft.