of course he’s elite
by Ari Holtz
Published: April 15, 2008
The press can always be counted on to hyperventilate about false issues. The hyperventilation of the moment involves Sen. Barack Obama’s recent comments about small-town Americans. At a San Francisco fund raiser, Obama stated that many such Americans are bitter and cling to guns, religion, and nativism for comfort. Flip the channels and find the Norah O’Donnells, Wolf Blitzers and Shepherd Smiths of the world bloviating on and on about what it all means. They argue that Obama is becoming a Michael Dukakis figure, a detached, liberal elitist who can’t win the general election because he can’t connect with common folk.
But, your humble columnist asks, elitist as compared to whom?
Elitist compared to Sen. Hillary Clinton, an aristocrat who has spent the last 25 years as the wife of a governor and president, as well as a senator from a powerhouse state? Or elitist in comparison to Sen. John McCain, a member of a dynastic military family and husband to a member of one of Arizona’s wealthiest families?
There is little logic to the political season, and there is less in Clinton and McCain’s tag-teaming of Obama. Are these two really suggesting that Obama is less connected to real America, whatever that is, than they are? How quickly it’s forgotten that the Clintons’ recently released tax returns showed $109 million in earnings since 2000. This income was made from book deals, speaking fees and service on corporate boards, amongst other investments. It seems likely that average Americans, whoever those are, don’t have such lucrative financial opportunities. Clinton also calls amongst her friends such luminaries as Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Elton John. These don’t seem typical of the folks turning up at the Targets and Applebee’s in Johnstown, Altoona and Erie, Pennsylvania. Nor are the Arkansas Governor’s mansion, White House or a multi-million dollar home in well-heeled Westchester County, New York, representative of the average union worker, service employee or middle-class American’s dwelling. Do you think that the Clintons are in danger of being foreclosed upon because they can no longer afford their mortgage payment? I imagine they paid in cash. There is simply nothing, nada, zero connecting Hillary Clinton to the small-town Americans she is acting so appalled for.
Mr. McCain has little more of a case. His grandfather and father were the first pair of Four-Star Admirals in the United States Navy. His wife, Cindy McCain, is the daughter of Jim Hensley, founder of one of the largest companies in Arizona, Hensely & Company, which distributes Anheuser-Busch products. Do you think that your average small-town Pennsylvanian has a multi-millionaire father-in-law whose business and political contacts could get him or her elected to Congress? Not bloody likely. McCain, like Clinton, has no claim on the descriptor “average.” He is not like you.
The argument could be made that Barack Obama is the most like an average American of all the three candidates. He was raised by a single mother. He has only been in national public life for 4 years. He began his career organizing in poor, African-American Chicago neighborhoods. But, alas, Obama is really not average either. Graduating from Harvard Law is not average. Speaking at the Democratic Convention as a state senator is not average. Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, is not average.
Why should he be? Why should any of them be?
By definition, an individual this close to being President of the United States of America cannot be average. If he or she could, however, we shouldn’t want it. Americans should want to be led by our best and our brightest, those who stand out, are not common, usual or average. There is, without a doubt, a populist base to our national culture. We were born out of a rejected monarchy and built a government that is to be of, by and for the people, not a ruling class. This does not obligate us, however, to be ruled by the mediocre middle while disqualifying the outstanding for being better than us. The best amongst us should lead. These best will likely be more successful and richer than us. They will shop at different stores, get more expensive haircuts, and might even (God forbid!) eat arugula and wind surf. Certainly, a politician can pretend to be like us - he can avoid discussing the fact that he is the son of a president, grandson of a senator and graduate of multiple Ivy League universities. He can pretend to be a cowboy from Texas. But that doesn’t make it so. He will still be a Connecticut blue blood.
So, let’s dispense with the nonsense. Obama is better than us. Clinton is too. McCain as well. They are all more successful than us, have more money than us, and are long disconnected from living anything resembling an average American life. And this is fine. We should want to elect the greatest American, not the most average.
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April 15th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Your point is well taken, and I am so tired of this push to have a president who is an average Joe.
But I think the real problem is not that Obama is not average, but that he can’t come across as average. George W definitely didn’t come from an average background, but (whether through his ignorance or through the lessons he took to develop a Texan accent) he was able to come across as the guy next door. Yale Law School alum Bill Clinton wasn’t average either, but he was so good at connecting with “the folks”.
Hillary and John McCain both seem to be better at feigning these connections than Obama, who takes more after John Kerry than after Bill Clinton.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:49 am
I agree wholeheartedly with this. I don’t want “the Avergae Joe” running America, because the Average Joe would probably spend most of their time sitting at the desk in the Oval Office annoying everyone around themselves by saying, “Can you believe it, I’m actually sitting at the desk in the Oval Office!”
I know I would.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Haha… so true.