John McCain can't remember how many houses he has (he has to check with his staff and get back to us). Immediately he's hit by some with the charge of being an elitist.
Yet I recall watching an episode of Oprah once -- only once -- where she stated with a straight face that she was really upset because she had been about to make a meal when she realized she'd left her favorite cooking pan "in my other house." And all the nice suburban ladies trying to get by with their median household income of 48k did not bat an eye. She's Oprah. She's supposed to have many houses and favorite cooking pans. Now, obviously, Oprah's not running for president. But she could and she might just win. We love her for being so much more fabulous than us.
And, so, this is our public conundrum: what exactly is the elitist tipping point? Where does regular end and aristocratic begin? Is it a dollar amount? An attitude? Can one be poor and out of touch, rich and down to earth? It's almost become an annual ritual: Fortune 500 companies revealing their executive compensations to much public ire.
But when a guy like Bill Gates -- off and on the richest man on earth -- reveals that he often flies coach, he's derided as being either a skinflint, or too showy with his austerity.
In every election cycle that I can recall there comes a moment -- or a few -- where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and a shield: vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.
Folksiness is a queer thing. You can be from a well-to-do family, attend an ivy-league school and be a "regular Joe" like George Bush, or you can be from a well-to-do family, attend an ivy-league school and be "haut monde" like John Kerry.
Or you can grow up living on food stamps in a single parent home, attend an ivy-league school and be an "elitist" like Barack Obama for implying that people get upset and myopic when they lose their jobs.
Though it's nearly indefinable, elitism's like porn: you know it when you see it, and what somebody else likes doesn't necessarily turn you on.
And yet, we're electing the president of the US; still the most powerful person in the world. I don't want an underachiever working on my car's transmission. Why would I want someone regular sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, give me somebody who's demonstrated a capacity to excel. The cliché gotcha question of journalist is asking candidates what's the price of a gallon of gas at a particular locale. Can the candidate demonstrate with a single answer that he (or she) is a person of the people? Brother, I don't care if the candidate knows the local price of gas. I care if he fully understands the metrics that drive up or down a barrel of oil.
So the question isn't how many houses John McCain owns. The question is: does he understand what's negatively affecting the equity of those houses and what can be done about it and how can such gross fluctuations be prevented in the future?
He'd better hope he doesn't have to check with his staff to answer that one.
OBAMA/BIDEN 08
Perhaps she could win the Presidency, but she isn't running. Obama is. And that brings up the great Catch-22 of the elitism question.
As the first man of color with a real shot at the Presidency, Obama has had to walk a very thin line. He has had to convince millions of white people who never visualized themselves voting for a man of color to do so. Had he affect a W-like fake folksy quality, it would have been a disaster. Works for W, because under that faux-Texas Rancher, everybody knows is the son of Connecticut Patrision former President. Everything about Obama has to exude his Harvard-bred qualifications. But then, after he dazzles us with his intellect, his opponents can point to the fact that he is "not one of us" which let's face can mean so many things.
It's an effective tool, because Obama can't break character to combat it. The saddest part of it is that McCain was shown how effective it would be by the Clintons.
First, rich countries produce material things that other countries want. Oil, say. When the rich folks in this country wanted cheaper labor, they moved the factories and middle management to China and India, then pocketed most of the savings that would once have been middle class salaries. They also filled the air with hallucinatory theories telling us that we can have a healthy economy, a huge trade imbalance and cavernous debt.
Second, people worth more than about 10 million dollars distort the economy. More luxury goods. All that extra money looking for passive profits creates bubbles- tulips, real estate, oil futures. We only benefit when it's invested in American businesses. (The only legit capital gains deduction)
Because the resources of the earth are limited. Agricultural land, building materials, sunlight. People have an instinct about what's fair and a competing instinct to take more than their share. Our leaders ought to be honest about this and not completely degrade the instinct for fairness.
Define the financial elite at, say, the 95th percentile. Leaders above that are not in the same boat as the people they are leading.
Republicans have shifted the word elite from financial elite to mean snobby, intellectual and effete. Maybe folks in a diner will think for a minute that they have more in common with the financial elite than with thinkers like the founding fathers, who care for what is fair and sound and lasting.
I'm going to have use that line about sharing the code word. yes indeed, can all those Obama supporters please give us the code words for arrogant, egotistical, sexist and elitist? And don't forget corrupt and fraud.
I think that must be why.....when see I Ridley's name next to a piece ...I pull it up eagarly.....
Looking for an argument?...........Not at all.....
Ridley almost never "echoes" the conventional wisdom.......
And Ridley rarely seems to be DELIBERATELY saying something controversial just to provoke a reaction.
In short, Ridley almost invariably makes me THINK.....
These musings on "elitism".... are a case in point........
I like to remind people who get excised about the weath of various politicians the following: ......
To my mind..... the President who did more FOR working people than any other,........was FDR .....born to VAST wealth.....
And the President who did more TO working people......Ronald Regan........ came from EXTREMELY humble roots.
Good piece
tm
FDR is the poster child of elitism (and tyranny). Ronald Reagan ushered in the return of America being the "land of the free".
The tyrant Roosevelt who saved the American economy as a warm-up to saving the entire free world....and introduced the tyrannical Social Security system, ran roughshod over the rights of poor Wall Street speculators (who had done so MUCH for our country up to 1929 (SEC),........heartlessly violated the rights of predatory capitalists by allowing their workers to unionize and be guranteed a minnimum wage.........
Thank God Regan finally reversed all that awful New Deal/Great Society concern for PEOPLE and restored FREEDOM to wher it belongs.....in the hands of CORPORATIONS!......the FREEDOM to break the unions,.....steal the workers pensions.......move thier jobs overseas.......move the CORPORATION's address to a plaque among thousands on a wall in the Cayman Islands and pay less tax than any ONE security guard patrolling the now-empty factory in the U.S. .....Ah! freedom!....the freedom to have THREE minimun wage jobs and still have no heath care..........and best of all.....the freedom to make unrestrained war on the peasants of Central America for wanting food and health care .
We Irish have developed a quaint mythology over the centuries best summed by Mom's
"Tawmee......ya' think no one sees when ya' get away with doin' wrong?? Well, Gawd sees Tawm and we'll all have to answer to HIM"
You can fool SOME of the people ALL of the time.
tm
intelligent.
If there's one thing that the 2000 campaign should have taught us, it is that presidential elections are now completely symbolic. Nobody chooses candidates anymore based on: 1) their competence and/or ability; or 2) their positions on the issues.
It's all about how candidates - as perceived through the media filter - align with the voters' idea of what America is, and who Americans are. It's all about ideals; reality never enters into it.
And this is why the winners are still those who conjure up images derived from Westerns: the quiet, but tough, lone gunman (Cooper/Eastwood); the wise, strong-but-fair patriarch (Lorne Green); etc.
GW Bush did it in 2000, and McCain is doing it now.
And you do live up to half your name. You are mad (angry, not insane).
The Polish American inlaws beamed with pride every time they were called "salt of the earth." My parents would also have beamed at such a label. Sadly, it made me cringe and I don't think it should have.
Simply being rich does not make you elitist, and being poor does not mean you are not successful. Some of us see success as living through the trials and tribulations of life while retaining your integrity and morality, and helping those who are less fortunate than we are.
On the other hand, how can Americans trust a man who doesn't appear to know the number of his own houses or can't distinguish between Brittany Spears and Barack Obama, between Purim and Hallowe'en, or Sunni and Shia? Who seems to have one thing only to stand on, a brief period in his long life when he distinguished himself with courage and loyalty over thirty years ago.
I don't care how much dough his wife brings to the table, what kind of shoes he wears, or if he flies in his wife's Lear jet from one Architectural Digest mansion or condo to another--John McCain's political career has largely consisted of talking out of one side of his mouth, voting out of the other; his fuse is notoriously short; he thinks bombing innocent civilians of another nation is funny, and he will if elected permanently transform the Supreme Court into a group of right-wing juidicial activists determined to reduce the Constitution to the narrow interests of a financial, political, and cultural elite.
This is a prime example of what the post is about. You think people who have different politics from yours are just stupid, and you have a snobbish attitude towards them. This is a problem with many Obama supporters.