Campaign '08's candidates and American ambivalence about elites

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Class of ’08
The Snare of Privilege
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 25, 2008


(Todd Heisler/NYT)
REGULAR GAL Wellesley and Yale credentials aside, Hillary Rodham Clinton has pretty much avoided the “elitist” label.

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Wellesley ’69, Yale Law ’73 and the first lady of the land for eight years, is suddenly a working-class heroine of guns and whiskey shots. Barack Obama, Columbia ’83 and Harvard Law ’91, visits bowling alleys and beer halls and talks about his single mother who lived on food stamps. John S. McCain III, United States Naval Academy ’58, the son and grandson of admirals and the husband of one of the richer women in Arizona, chases after the conservative, anti-elite religious base of the Republican Party, and prefers to talk about the “cabin” at his Sedona weekend retreat rather than the Phoenix home lushly featured in the pages of Architectural Digest in 2005.

In an increasingly populist country, it’s not surprising that all three presidential contenders have been sprinting away from the elitist label for much of this primary season. But do they really expect to get away with it? More to the point, should they? Don’t voters want the best and brightest, and best-credentialed, rising to the top?

Not exactly. Americans have been ambivalent about elites since the nation was founded by revolutionaries who were also, in many cases, landed gentry. And status and wealth still play an outsize role in our supposedly classless society. Our presidential history is a case in point. Although there has long been an anti-aristocratic bent to American politics, voters have put some famous aristocrats (including two Roosevelts, one Kennedy, all Harvard men) into the White House, and have all but idolized them as well. Over the last 20 years, every president has been a graduate of Yale....

***

Ivy League credentials aside, what matters in the end to most voters, when it comes to choosing a president, is not academic pedigree, but rather the candidates’ ability to make an emotional connection and to win trust and confidence. The most famous aristocrat-presidents of the 20th century, John F. Kennedy and Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all had that gift, and it outweighed the advantages — and drawbacks — of education, wealth and privilege.

This year’s focus on the crucial swing states, and their large working-class populations, has made inspiring those voters and playing down elitist credentials a political necessity. At the very least, Mrs. Clinton’s lopsided primary victories in West Virginia and Kentucky show how much more work Mr. Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, must do with this critical slice of the electorate....The lesson has not been lost on Mr. McCain, whose third-generation Annapolis lineage makes him perhaps the most elite of the three candidates and is married to a woman whose money financed his political career....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/weekinreview/25bumiller.html?ref=todayspaper

[Eric J in MN]

1. Are ordinary people obssessed with whether politicians are elite...

...or just pundits?

I think it's just pundits.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. You may have a point, EricJ! nt

[izquierdista]

3. ..every president has been a graduate of Yale...

Considering the state of the country, that there is reason enough to pull their accreditation and put them into academic receivership.

Maybe if some trustees from competent schools were appointed, they could go through the records and revoke the degrees of legacies and other boobs who bought their degrees.

[Igel]

4. I saw this yesterday.

I thought it a bit of a muddle. A muddle with an agenda, but still a muddle. It doesn't help that I don't support her agenda, but it would be a muddle even if I supported her agenda.

The woman blurs the difference between "elite" (both a noun and an adjective) and "elitist" (also both a noun and an adjective).

Elites are suspected of elitism; if they show they're not elitist, most Americans drop their jealousy. If they show they're virtuous, we tend to like them.

Elitists are usually despised. When they try to show they're not elitist and fail, they're run out of town. Even if they're virtuous, we still tend to dislike them.

An elitist who isn't also elite is simply a "snob".

I've always suspected that elitists are so into their assumption that being a member of (their) elite = being a good person = a right to have some sort of power that they don't see a difference in the definitions of 'elite' and 'elitist'.

[MasonJar]

5. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School should be

able to use proper grammar. "Is our children learning" is the speech of a rube and not a very bright rube at that. That's our pResident!