On a recent campaign trip in Wisconsin, President Bush, in an effort to sway the minds of voters in a state he narrowly lost in 2000, denounced John Kerry as being "out of touch" with regular voters. This has become a familiar criticism, one that Bush and his Republican allies have been directing toward both Kerry and his new running mate, John Edwards.
The Republican theory is simple: John Kerry is part of the Eastern Establishment and the "elite," a term that once simply meant the best of a class, but which Republicans have somehow twisted to mean over-educated snobs who don't care about regular Joes like you and me. For Republicans, Kerry is a member of this "elite." He went to Yale, married into money, became a career politician and took up the luxurious life of the privileged.
This is all true and to some extent, Bush and his cronies have a point. John Kerry does seem a bit out of touch, though I think his perpetually vacant expression and his inability to arouse any passion has as much to do with it as his background.
Kerry's high life is no secret, but why in the world does George W. Bush think he has the right to claim that he is any more in touch with the average American than his competition? Both candidates share similarly privileged backgrounds.
Bush often tries to paper over his moneyed existence as he presents himself as a man of the people. But his family history of money and privilege traces back to his grandparents and great grandparents on both sides, some who made their money and found a niche in the very Eastern Establishment that Republicans vilify as a stronghold of the "elitists." His maternal grandfather, for example, was president of the powerful Wall Street investment house W.A Harriman and Co.
Bush himself (although he did spend one year at a public junior high school) went from Andover to Yale, was helped to avoid any meaningful service during Vietnam and then was set up and bailed out of various business ventures. He really isn't some self-made Lee Iacocca. He rode the coattails of his family's name and wealth to achieve prominent positions. To some degree we can sympathize. Bush, like any of us, used the resources that were available to him. And obviously, using these resources, he was shrewd enough to obtain the rank of president.
But isn't it extremely disingenuous of the president to present himself as some populist man of the people, criticizing his opponent as being out of touch, when he himself has eaten every meal of his life with a silver spoon? At the very least, John Kerry spent a couple of years hunched in the Vietnamese jungle eating K-rations.
Comically, this is shaping up to be a campaign in which four millionaires -- Bush, Kerry, Cheney and Edwards -- castigate each other for being "out of touch" with the American people. The reality of American presidential politics is that most serious presidential contenders are going to have money and/or are going to come from privileged backgrounds. Otherwise they simply can't afford to effectively run for the nation's highest office. We should probably overhaul this system because, in some ways, it's not very democratic. But for now, it's our reality.
Kerry is more honest about this reality than Bush. The Democratic contender is not trying to disguise his origins. But the president wants to hide his so that he can convince low income and middle-class voters that he is one of them, though none of his economic policies look out for their best interests. That seems pretty duplicitous to me, but by now what else should we expect?
Michael Green is a graduate student of creative writing. He can be reached at amarestat@yahoo.com.
