Jessica

Vozel

Read Jessica's bio and previous columns here

September 29, 2009

The Death of the Myth of Liberal Elitism

In this time of economic crisis and homestretch presidential campaigning, an interesting shift is happening. The rhetoric of liberal elitism is dying.

In 2000 and in 2004, President Bush and his campaign advisors carefully constructed a persona of down-home Texas patriot to obscure Bush’s obvious deficiencies. And it worked. Al Gore and his high-falutin’ intelligence and John Kerry and his ketchup-heir wife were left in the desert dust kicked up by George W. Bush’s cowboy boots. Some of that rhetoric continues to discredit the left in 2008 – Barack Obama eats arugula! – but it seems that Americans are starting to realize that Republicans are not the party of the people but the party of the wealthy and, yes, the elite.

While it may be unfair as well as erroneous to place all of the blame for the recession and last week’s climax (we hope) on President Bush, he was the man in charge when it happened, and that means difficulties for his party in this election. 

This shift didn’t start with the Wall Street crisis, though recent events have surely helped it along. More likely it began when John McCain forgot how many houses he owned – a detail that the Obama campaign was sure to repeat many, many times. In part, to help combat this incipient change – because nothing kills a campaign like the word “elite” – McCain chose Sarah Palin, PTA-hockey-mom-moose-hunter-middle-American-accented extraordinaire (or, I should say, ordinaire) as his VP candidate.

McCain was rewarded for this choice with a spike in the polls. Then Sarah Palin spoke without a teleprompter on national and economic security and it became clear that she didn’t quite know what she was talking about. The appeal of her mythical “regular-ness” began to fade. Things aren’t going so well in America, and ordinary leaders just aren’t going to cut it anymore.

Why this desire to have someone like us in the White House in the first place? As Sam Harris said in a recent issue of Newsweek, “there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country.” According to Harris, Republicans have cultivated that love by insisting that liberal leaders and wannabe leaders are overeducated snobs who “think they are better than you.” George W. Bush and John McCain, on the other hand, will shake your hand and speak in plain terms and admit to their own shortcomings.

Forget the details, like which party actually looks out for the middle class. Think of how degrading it will be to have a liberal in the White House talking down to you all the time from their high horse of funny-sounding food choices and Ivy-League-education. Well, yes, President Bush went to Yale, but he was a C-student, not a know-it-all. It’s different. 

Republicans want to have it both ways, and for too long they have been lucky enough to get just that. They are the party that benefits the rich – a symbiotic relationship that keeps the powerful in power and the wealthy rolling in dough – yet they require that pesky middle-class vote. So they create the myth of elite liberals and down-home conservatives to veil the truth – that Democrats support labor unions and fair access to health care and will cut taxes for the middle-class. It goes deeper than this, though. Republican talking points aren’t enough to shift a whole nation’s way of thinking. There’s something uniquely American about wanting to see a regular person achieve great success. If we can’t have power, prestige and wealth, we’d like to see someone like us who can.

But as Wall Street crumbles and politicians struggle to fix what was broken by those who are so far removed from average Americans that they don’t even take them into consideration when making business decisions, Americans begin to see the inner-workings of government and economy. We realize that Republican deregulation helped this to happen. We see, after Friday’s debate, that Barack Obama has a clear understanding of how to fix the economy, while John McCain struggles to assure his surrogates that things won’t become too difficult for them while still maintaining that he advocates for the middle class. The double-speak is becoming obvious. The veil seems to be lifting. According to a CNN post-debate poll, 58 percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama will do a better job at handling the economy if elected.

I doubt that the term “conservative elite” will catch on in the political lexicon. However, given our present economic state, combined with Obama’s impressive grassroots campaign and ability to speak articulately about the concerns of (but not down to) the middle class, we may be witnessing the death of the myth of liberal elitism.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # JV060. Request permission to publish here.