Around the turn of the twenty-first century,

the Election 2000 Fiasco (which paved the way for the Iraq Mess)

illustrated that the American meritocracy ... was FUBAR.

What's wrong with it can, perhaps, be traced to the

rhetorical incompetence of, e.g., Ivy League graduates,

and which can be remedied by a redesign of (especially)

higher education ... towards a new rhetorical education.