Stereotypes are Fun!

David Brooks today:

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.

I’m sure there are people who qualify as more culturally elitist than I am, but they probably work at MOMA. () So, perhaps I just have my cultural bias blinders up, but this reminds me of exactly no one that I’ve ever heard speak about Palin. “Condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters”? Why? Because people implied (correctly!) that she doesn’t know anything about things going on outside Alaska? And apparently inside it, as well? Brooks says that Palin doesn’t have the kind of experience that is needed to run the country (it turns out that it’s hard), but can’t we put this nonsense about Tuscany away? If there were any Democratic politicians – or even progressive commentators as prominent as David Brooks – out there implying that people who vote Republican walked around in their overalls and straw hats, barefooted and carrying a jug of moonshine, we’d never hear the end of it. So why is it alright to accuse progressives and “elites” of being chardonnay sipping, effete, condescending pricks? This “real” America nonsense is irritating me. I don’t think Palin is qualified for the job – and yet, I’ve never been to Tuscany. I feel like I’m missing out on the finer things.

Meanwhile, Jeeves, I shall take my tea in the sunroom.

Vice Presidents Ahoy!

I agree with DP, I don’t much care one way or another about the vice presidential picks coming out soon. My guess is that it’ll be Biden – he seems to have to most momentum behind his name at the moment. And, I see that Marc Ambinder is reporting a chartered flight from Chicago to Delaware. I think, on the whole, Biden is a good choice. Of the ones being considered right now, he may be the best – definitely better than Bayh, who I have an intense dislike for for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on. And, David Brooks wants it to be Biden, but I won’t hold that against him.

As far as McCain goes, I think it’ll be Romney. Lieberman would be an interesting pick, but I think McCain is far too concerned with keeping the base satisfied to pick a former Democrat, no matter how many times he’s attacked his former party. On the whole, I hope he does pick Lieberman, if for no other reason than I think it will hurt McCain’s chances electorally.

David Brooks Explains it All

Another week, another head slapping David Brooks column. The thesis this week is that McCain, the man, really wanted to run a clean campaign – but, wouldn’t you know it, that blasted media (and here we picture Brooks turning his head and spitting on the ground) simply wouldn’t let him. I’ll let Brooks lay out some of the ways McCain tried to remake politics:

McCain started his general-election campaign in poverty-stricken areas of the South and Midwest. He went through towns where most Republicans fear to tread and said things most wouldn’t say. It didn’t work. The poverty tour got very little coverage on the network news. McCain and his advisers realized the only way they could get TV attention was by talking about the subject that interested reporters most: Barack Obama.

McCain started with grand ideas about breaking the mold of modern politics. He and Obama would tour the country together doing joint town meetings. He would pick a postpartisan running mate, like Joe Lieberman. He would make a dramatic promise, like vowing to serve for only one totally nonpolitical term. So far it hasn’t worked. Obama vetoed the town meeting idea. The issue is not closed, but G.O.P. leaders are resisting a cross-party pick like Lieberman.

That mean old Obama just wouldn’t agree to do exactly what McCain wanted! What other road is there, other than to imply that Obama wants to commit treason to win the presidency, is in any case not ready to be president, and is, apparently an airheaded celebrity?

Other than the fact that this is almost exactly the thesis laid out by David Broder a few weeks ago (twice, actually), Joe Lieberman, postpartisan!? Is there any figure in American politics right now who is engaged in more nakedly partisan posturing?

Brooks (and Broder) are arguing that, because Obama wouldn’t agree to McCain’s terms, it’s Obama’s fault that McCain is running a despicable, Rovian campaign. Because McCain’s message isn’t able to find any purchase with Americans, it’s Obama’s fault that McCain is forced to imply that Obama is a traitor and a mysterious, frightening Other. And because Obama isn’t winning by double digits (“Everyone said McCain would be down by double digits at this point.” And who are these people, David? Thanks for providing some sources!), it’s McCain who’s really winning.

Is there any aspect of his campaign that McCain is responsible for? Or, is the magnetic sway of the aura of Obama’s powerful Elitist Liberal Infatuation Generator so powerful that even the staffers of the McCain campaign are unable to escape its seductive pull? John McCain didn’t want to run a sleazy, by-the-numbers campaign. He wanted to help engender an era of post-partisan politics where Davids Brooks and Broder could skip merrily down the Mall, hand in hand, to a voting booth in a secret garden and cast their votes for their favorite Maverick War Hero, ensuring that no substantive policy differences would ever be discussed – because implying that people have different “positions” on “issues” is simply too gauche.

But, damn it, McCain was losing. Principled standards are for winning campaigns.

Requirements

David Brook’s new column is a frustrating piece of writing. His basic thesis seems to be that Barack Obama, a smart, charismatic guy who has succeeded at most of the things he’s turned his hand to, and who came from a relatively humble background, isn’t really, “fully,” a part of American society.

If Obama is fully a member of any club — and perhaps he isn’t — it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama’s age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It’s not clear what the rest of America makes of them.

So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.

My question is: this is a problem? Beyond the larger issue of the defing down of “winning” that has been going on all this season (Obama is “only” consistently ahead in the polls, but he should be winning in a blow out! What’s up with that?), I’m curious as to why Brooks says that Obama was in the law school, but not of it. “He was a popular and charismatic professor, but he rarely took part in faculty conversations or discussions about the future of the institution.” Obama was not a tenured professor. If he didn’t take the time to join in faculty politics, I fail to see how that makes him any less a part of the program. According to Brooks, it isn’t enough to be popular and charismatic. You also have to belong in some sort of deep, existential sense. Or something.

Brook’s main complaint seems to be that Obama hasn’t done anything long enough – like, say, just at random here, John McCain (who has done everything he does for a long time now). It doesn’t matter that Obama is a smart, accomplished man – because Middle America, with its deep-seated love of “traditional values” are unsure about him. So unsure about him, in fact, that they keep saying they’re more likely to vote for him than his opponent. People like Brooks worship the idea of the “independent” politician, the one who isn’t beholden to interest groups and the “Washington elite.” But when your guy is a Washington elite, and as tied into the Republican Party as McCain, suddenly Brooks discovers the values of staying in one place and being a Rotarian for the past thirty years.