The political elites (Erin)

Do we really want Joe Schmo Regular Guy as president? I've never really understood this predeliciton that the most powerful person in the World be a "regular guy or gal" who you could lift a beer with at Ye Olde Corner Tavern.

Obama's an elitist. McCain--born of privilege and married to even more privilege--is an elitist. W is an elitist, so are the Clintons. Reagan was definitely an elitist. Carter may have been the last non-elitist to be president, and look at how that turned out.

The bigger mistake, it seems, is pretending you are just a regular guy. Usually, it's just awkward (think Poppa Bush). Often, it's condescending (think Reagan and W and Clinton).

Daniel, I tend to agree with you here, but what's disingenuous is the pretense that Republicans are all elitists, but that Democrats are not.

But if you're talking about the voters on both sides, no successful party could possibly be all elites, because elites (by definition) are a rather small segment of society, and you can't win elections by only getting the votes of the 'elites'.

"anti-intellectualism"

The cliche is that most "intellectual's" do look down on the common folks.

The problem is most intellectual's forte is throwing verbal riposte's at each other. They seldom venture forth in the real world, hence they have a difficult time understanding why everyone isn't watching the DOW or in favor of "vouchers" so their children can be subsidized and attend better schools (please, no BS about choice) or why most people aren't concerned with the price of Arugala.

The reason people want a regular guy is because we don't need someone making policy that doesn't understand if you mandate the use of food for fuel, the price of food goes up.

It really doesn't take an intellectual to understand whats going on, its just that most people are busy working and raising a family without the privilages afforded most "intellectual's"

Obama and McCain are obviously both "elites", their problem is being an elite in a country of growing populism. A growth fertalized by their insatiable accumulations.

And I would wonder what the definition of 'elite' has become, too.

There's so many varieties.

There was a time when it meant having money and wielding power. I mean individual power, unique to them. A party boss, head of a corporation, or a country, or an organization where HE, as an individual, can get things done, or ensure things don't get done on his own say-so.

Lately, it seems to be.. having a certain accent, or being well read. It is a code word that means 'he doesn't talk like you and me. He reads different books (or reads at all, to be frank), etc.'.

Less 'Boss Tweed', and, yes, Frazier Crane. Think about it. As a character, did Frazier Crane have any power? Did he even have all that exceptional an income? Did he live all that privileged a life?

No.. he had a snooty accent, a job that required a degree, and listened to classical music and went to opera, and drank wine rather than being a plumbing contractor, who could've made twice his money, listening to country or pop, going to NASCAR races and drinking beer.

More and more, its more about aesthetics than reality. There's those who'd call me elite for using words like 'aesthetics', when I barely make minimum wage and work by doing things like watching kids and mowing lawns at a shelter.

That's what I'd say. Or asking them what the price of a loaf of bread, or a gallon of milk is. Heck, that's something most husbands don't know anyway, because in many families, they don't do the grocery shopping regularly.

And there's nothing more 'realistic' a high powered political wife with a full time corporate job and a laundry list of boards and causes she's working with that still has to post 'recipes' on her website, when I doubt that many non-elite wives do much cooking from scratch anymore unless they like to do it.

Not only do they act non-elite, but do it in a very prescribed, artificial way that honestly has nothing to do with how ordinary people really live, and it gets lapped up, and is expected.

How many voters out there went on vacation and 'cleared brush'? How many wives out there cook to the point where they actually write their own recipes?

Even average Joes live dozens of ways. Most of their wives aren't Mrs. Cleaver anymore, and yet it seems voters are asking politicians to embody that stereotype and call it 'regular folk'.

Karen Brown: "The cliche isn't that the Democratic CANDIDATES aren't elite, its that the party's policies aren't skewed to advantage the elites."

Each party advances policies that supports the interests of the various elites that support that party.

Each party has its moneyed interests, including the Dems, who, interestingly, have raised more money this election cycle than the GOP. Where is that all Democratic money coming from? It certainly isn't coming from the working poor. The Huffington Post, among other sources, provides information about donors to the various campaigns ... and it is eye opener to learn about the people who donated to Obama's and Clinton's campaigns: hedge fund managers, Silicon Valley executives, lawyers, medical doctors, Hollywood producers, real estate developers, etc., etc. George Soros and Warren Buffett, George Clooney and Hugh Heffner ... are all at the Party.

Take, for example, the money being poured into political efforts to legalize and provide taxpayer funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The money comes from corporations, hospitals, research institutes that hope to profit from this taxpayer boondoggle for an entirely gratuitous area of "medical" research. These same moneyed interests will be supporting Obama and the Dems this year.

Why diss Ronald Reagan and George W Bush because they enjoy "beer at a barbecue" ?

Is it W's fault that he'd rather clear bush on his property than go windsurfing off Nantucket?

You're arguing against a strawman, Erin. No surprise there. Dowd isn't claiming that Obama isn't part of an elite (see her lines about Obama's "aura of the Ivy faculty club" and stepping "up to the smarty-pants set", as well as her line that "Everyone who ever became president was in the elite one way or another, including Andrew Jackson") or that there isn't elitism among the Democrats, so your claim about her argument being disingenuous is itself disingenuous.

However, I will set your mind to rest about one thing. In your writings, you make it pretty clear that you have a problem with elites and think they are often pernicious. Often, people can be worried about becoming the very thing they despise, but you don't have to worry about that, Erin. I don't think you'll ever be described by anyone as an example of an elite of any kind.

Cosimano has it right. Politics, whether of the electoral or revolutionary nature, is generally a struggle between different elite factions, with the general public just picking sides between such factions. Even very radical historical events like the French and Russian Revolutions can be described as such. The peasants and the proles rarely lead political movements, and in the very few circumstances where they have, it generally went very badly for everyone, including them.

The point is, Reaganite, if they really DO enjoy beer at a barbecue, or if its something they do to look like 'one of the people'.

Or if all regular Joes like beer at a barbecue, for that matter. To be honest, I think the only thing more insulting than these guys putting on regular joe airs, is the cliche of regular joes they convey in order to do it.

Yeah, unless you are a NASCAR (heaven forbid you like Formula One) racing, drink beer, wear plaid button down shirts, and enjoy clearing brush on your private hobby ranch during your vacation, you're elite.

Because that's what Americans do. At least as long as they're not effete snobs.

Most of you defending Obama have missed the point. The elite status that matters most in elections is not an elitism of wealth or of education. It is an elitism of regard for oneself at others' expense -- in other words a snobbery, a lack of moral cultivation and social grace.

Franklin D. Roosevelt held elite status in terms of wealth and in terms of the opportunity that he had had for an education. (Whatever else he was FDR was not a scholar). What Roosevelt did not do however is to hold himself above those whose votes he was asking for. Roosevelt had spent time taking polio treatment in Warms Springs, Georgia, where he learned to respect and to admire those who played a central part in granting him the presidency -- small-town, rural working-class whites. Roosevelt made no claim to be a different person than he was. But part of him at least was a *gentleman,* which meant he had *manners* enough to comport himself *decently* toward those who were not like him. He did not do so consistently, but he did so more often than not.

There should be no need to belabor the point that Roosevelt's demeanor was different in this regard than the demeanor Obama betrayed to San Franciscans with regard to Pennsylvanians.

I don't think you'll ever be described by anyone as an example of an elite of any kind.

Anyone who has a voice louder than others in the public square is an elite. Thus, if you are blogging on a widely-read website and blog, you are an elite. if you tsk-tsk people for not thinking outside the box because you won't accept the belief of an early 20th Century Russian-American philosopher-sociologist, you are an elite.

And there's nothing wrong with being an elite, unless anti-intellectualism is going to reign.

Daniel,

What understanding of "the little people" -- as you term them so condescendingly -- did Obama show in San Francisco? One man's candor is another man's slander. What would you say to Pennsylvanians who do not see themselves in the way that Obama -- and you -- seem to do? Do you have more insight than those people themselves on their own lives? If so, then that presumption is itself the elitist attitude of which those people are quite right to complain. You reveal enough of yourself on this blog that it would not be hard for one to be equally as "candid" and equally as slanderous in stating "inconvenient truths" about you as Obama was candid and slanderous in San Francisco with regard to Pennsylvanians. But then I won't do that, because, unlike Obama and possibly unlike you, I feel that other people are entitled to a basic respect that includes a recognition of their own self-understandings. If you can't understand why recognition such as that is due to others, why in fact it is a moral necessity, then there is no point in further conversation with you. Our ethical assumptions don't jibe.

In the movie Gladiator, the Senator played by Derek Jacobi (forget the character's name) is hailed by a friend of his in the crowd at the gladiatorial games. The friend makes a crack to the effect that he's surprised to see Jacobi's character out slumming among the commoners, to which Jacobi's character responds to the effect, "I never claimed to be of the people, but I am for them." That, in a nutshell, is my view on the whole matter.

Daniel,

Whether or not Obama is praised by conservatives for attitudes of his toward African-Americans has no bearing for me. I am not a conservative myself. In any case, I can't recall Obama having said anything remotely as derogatory toward African-Americans has what he said in San Francisco about Pennsylvanians. And while there are clearly some African-Americans offended by things that Obama has said, and clearly some Pennsylvanians who agree with him, in general, the bulk of African-Americans -- a large majority -- support Obama's candidacy, while a bulk of Pennsylvanians of the sort that Obama was derogatory toward in San Francisco -- again, a large majority -- do not support his candidacy.

There is also the small matter of Obama's being African-American himself and having represented an African-American constituency in his time in Illinois. Even if Obama's points about African-Americans are debatable ones -- which they are -- they represent points informed by an internal debate within the African-Americans community, not points made by someone who is lacking in any real experience with that community, someone whose ideas are based on self-serving prejudice and preconception -- i.e. on "elitism" and snobbery. A working-class, rural, smalltown Pennsylvanian would receive a better hearing for his ideas about Pennsylvanians than Obama does, but he or she would do so because his or her ideas would be intelligent and educated ones -- which is more than can be said for Obama's ideas on this particular point.

Why is it so difficult for you to admit that Obama was wrong in saying what he said in San Francisco about Pennsylvanians? Why is it so difficult -- seemingly -- for Obama to admit the same? A simple apology from him would have made this controversy go away, and it would have lent credence to his claims to be "a new kind of politician," someone who would be "a president for all of the people" -- claims whose credibility one has to take on faith, given Obama's very thin resume of doing things as opposed to giving speeches. It seems to me however that Obama is beginning to fill out his resume, but he is filling it out with evidence of arrogance, ignorance, and a lack of empathy for people who are not like him. He seems to me to be a man who will "listen" to others, but who cannot *hear* -- or who chooses *not* to hear -- certain voices that are different from his own.

With that I say farewell, and urge you at least to consider that Obama -- and you -- may be wrong on this particular point. The world won't stop turning if he is or if you are.

I don't think anything is wrong with Chablis, brie, or lattes, for that matter. (Which you can now buy at McDonalds and any gas station convenience store..)

Its just that in the end, elite is now mostly interpreted as being intelligent, rich or not, powerful or not. And it is NOT being viewed as being a 'good thing'.

Personally, I WANT the person running the country to be smarter than I am. Because I know I couldn't do it, and if they are as smart as me, then that means they couldn't do it either.

Actually, Augustus, if you made that charge about me regarding my alleged views of the people of Pennsylvania, my defense would be a simple one: as someone born and raised in Texas, I have never really given much thought about the people of Pennsylvania one way or another, except for the generalized feelings of pity I have for those unfortunate enough to be from the lesser states of the Union.

Also, words like slander and candor have generally agreed-upon meanings, and you should refrain from using them if you can't use them correctly. Further, you shouldn't launch into long whines when you are called on your inappropriate usage of such words. It doesn't make you look good. Have a nice day!

I live in Pennsylvania (just outside Allentown). Obama's description fit a big chunk of people I know. A lot dont. It probably just isnt good politics to characterize a group to which you do not belong. Truth is irrelevant.

Steve

How much money does McCain get every time someone drinks a Budweiser?

Daniel, now that you mention it, John McCain certaily isn't an average Joe Sixpack is he? I mean, how more elitist can you get than to live at the Hilton for all those years AND while on active duty in Vietnam?

I don't think Dowd realizes that to most of America, an Ivy League education, New York Times and Atlantic subscriptions, MacBook and iPod, not to mention organic fruit tea, sounds pretty much like the trappings of a different kind of elitism--the liberal kind.

Ah, yes, because it's elitist to read a major metropolitan newspaper, use a laptop and mp3 player, and drink a certain type of tea. No common people ever do any of those things.

You can call those things 'liberal' if you want. They are not 'elite'. It is not 'elite' to own a $150 mp3 player, or a $800 laptop, or a $1.50 newspaper. Those are not the purchases of solely the super-rich, or even the moderately rich. (Or the country is in worse shape than anyone thinks.)

You know, this whole 'elite' concept pissed me off at the start, and I think I figured out why. It's literally replaced 'rich and powerful', except with the caveat that it's pure culture. And being culture, it's incredibly easy to manipulate.

So instead of the hard and fast fact that McCain is a multimillionaire, with a wife in control of a beer distribution empire, and Obama is a guy who's not particularly rich, the media gets to pretend that Obama is 'elite' and McCain is some normal guy.

The Fraser comment about is correct. We pretend politics is between Frasier Crane and Sam Malone. That is not relevant. The question is, to slip into another TV show, which one is the Rich Texan? Which one is Mr. Burns?

But the people are seeing through the crap. The question isn't what people do in their free time, or where they grew up. The question for each politician is simple: Are they one of the rich being put in place to propagate more money upward, or are they there for some other reason? (Almost any other reason is better.)

Incidentally, as I've pointed out before, by excluding more and more people from the right, all you're doing is moving the left/right line closer to the right.

The average person in this country is a not a beer drinking NASCAR fan. Even actual beer-drinking NASCAR fans aren't 'beer-drinking NASCAR fans'...they might do that, but they've got an iPod, or drive a hybrid, or have a Nintendo Wee, or blog (heh), or own a poodle, or like vodka, or going to the beach, or jogging, or classical music, or whatever extremely goofy thing the right will pretend, next week, makes someone a 'liberal elite'.

People are not stereotypes, and throw enough crap into your stereotype of 'others', you'll very soon hit things the people you're talking to do and care about. But go ahead and talk about how they're out of touch, and call them liberal elites for those hobbies. Maybe you'll convince them they, themselves, are liberal elites.

It will work about as well as calling commonly held political positions, like being in favor of some sort of health insurance reform, or not worrying about gay people, 'leftist'. People will decide you're correct, they are indeed leftist.

Now guess how people who think they're 'leftists' or 'liberal elite' vote.

(Yes, yes, I'm aware Obama did the same thing, and it bit him in the ass, and he lost some votes there. But that is notable as an exception. Whereas the right does it all the time.)