Somewhere along the way, a lot of Americans began wanting to see a leader who is perceived as being not too stuck-up, eloquent, polished. That is, a leader who is "just like us."
The phrase pops up again and again in this presidential election.
A reporter at Salon.com was writing recently about John McCain's appearance on a TV cooking show. When the Republican presidential candidate revealed that he buys his food at Costco, the reporter pointed out, "Just like us!"
Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said Democrat Barack Obama is "just like us." Even US Weekly proclaimed it so. Earlier this year the gossipy magazine ran a photo spread of Obama shopping at a grocery, riding a roller coaster, adding hot sauce to a bowl of gumbo. He is, the magazine asserted, "Just like us!"
Never mind that both McCain and Obama have mounds of money and staffs of people to help them wash their socks. Not like us. Forget that McCain and his wife, Cindy, have at least seven houses. Not like us. No matter that Obama was the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review. Not like us.
Giving The Voters What They Want
This year's candidates are trying their best to give those voters what they want. Not just leadership, but "like me"-dership.
The problem, of course, is that someone "just like us" is not necessarily the best choice. As only we can really know. "Democracy means that Joe Sixpack should choose the president. It doesn't necessarily mean that Joe Sixpack should BE the president. But many people don't acknowledge the difference," says Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
But the yearning to vote for someone similar to us is there, Pinker says in an interview, probably because of "simple coalitional thinking."
Pinker lays out the equations: Elite equals coastal and northern Midwest equals Democrat. Whereas Joe Sixpack equals Southern and Western equals Republican. "Everyday people are not judged in terms of their lack of expertise per se," Pinker says, "but because such lack is a tag — like a uniform — of being in the same coalition."
One British newspaper calls the practice of a politician proving that he can easily consort with the proletariat "proling." We see it at all levels of governance. We want our mayors to get out on the street and fix potholes. We love it when congresspeople fly coach. On the other hand, politicians who don't know how to use grocery-store scanners or what the price of gas is, off the top of their heads, are seen as "out of touch."
'Your Kitchen Table Is Like Mine'
In this age of YouTubification, we can know if they are like us when they are simply living their lives — shopping, partying, exercising.
During the 2008 campaign we have seen McCain grill ribs on TV and Obama drink a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer on the campaign trail. When Joe Biden was introduced as the Democratic nominee for vice president, he assured the average everyvoter: "Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills."
And at every opportunity McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, points out that she's not a member of the "Washington elite." She's a hockey mom and a moose hunter. She doesn't use a lot of fancy-shmancy words; she is plainspoken. McCain and the Republicans believe that she appeals to voters' hearts, not their heads.
Writing in The New York Times recently, Pinker summed up the McCain and Palin political philosophy: "Expertise is overrated, homespun sincerity is better than sophistication, conviction is more important than analysis."
A lot of people "see something of themselves in Palin," says Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. He's referring to a recent Pew survey in which 70 percent of the respondents said that Palin is "down to earth" (versus 55 percent for Biden). The question is whether that likability translates into votes. Only 37 percent of those interviewed say that Palin is qualified to serve as president if necessary, Doherty adds.
In Andrew Jackson's Footsteps
The idea of a candidate who is popular to the middle and working classes is not new. This strain of American politician grew out of Andrew Jackson and westward expansion, explains Douglas Brinkley, a professor of American history at Rice University and author of many presidential biographies, including the upcoming The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, 1858-1919.
For the first 50 years of the country, Brinkley says, its presidents followed in the footsteps of its Founding Fathers who were, for the most part, the cultural elite — classically educated, at ease in Europe, fluent in several languages.
Jackson, the seventh president, was elected in 1828. "Jackson's presidency was a revolt of the inferior backwoods people," Brinkley says. "Intellectuals were seen as effete. Jackson and his people considered themselves the authentic Americans."
And there, Brinkley says, were planted the seeds of "the anti-intellectual tradition" in American politics. The politicians speak in broken syntax. They are xenophobic. They have little sense of a global culture. Palin "is the female exemplar of that tradition," says Brinkley, a tradition rooted in small towns and rural communities.
Jackson was a military hero and legendary brawler. He didn't go to college. Though he won the popular vote in 1824, he lost the election. He blamed the elite establishment for his defeat. Capitalizing on his popular appeal, he won the White House four years later. Since then, throughout American history, there have been presidential candidates who attracted the anti-intellectual voters.
Though Abraham Lincoln was well-educated and a world-class writer, he was mostly self-taught. For the election of 1860, the Republican Party played up his rustic, rail-splitter roots to help him win.
Other "folksy" presidents have run against the Washington elite, including Andrew Johnson and Harry Truman. They operated in sharp contrast to well-educated men and members of the upper classes, such as the Roosevelts; William Howard Taft, who went to Yale University; Woodrow Wilson, who went to Princeton University; and Herbert Hoover, who went to Stanford University.
Looking High And Low
There have been those who walked that fine line between highbrow and homespun: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, for instance. Another Yale University graduate, George W. Bush, understood the dichotomy and reinvented himself as a Texas oilman.
John Kennedy, born to an aristocratic family and educated at Harvard University, never really tried to appeal to middlebrow America. Instead, in 1960 he selected a rough-hewn running mate: Lyndon Johnson, an earthy Texan given to slamming Ivy Leaguers.
"Johnson often said, 'Those Harvards don't know nothing,' " Brinkley says. Kennedy, of course, was one of those "Harvards," but "Kennedy understood the country's strong anti-elite tradition," Brinkley says.
Consequently, the Democrats hoped that Johnson would attract the anti-elite American voters. This year the Republicans are banking on Palin to do the same thing.
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