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The best two paragraphs I read today
...the campaign against Obama has metastasized into a variant of class warfare. It's the resentment of the meritocracy. What the GOP realized was that Obama did come across different than the average American, but not so much because he was black as because he was effortless. The very set of supercharged talents and qualities that allowed Obama to levitate past the boundaries of race and class make him different than those who haven't rocketed upward on the strength of their intelligence and charisma and charm. After all, if you're a fumbling, struggling individual out in suburban Ohio, how can you believe that this guy who doesn't look to have struggled a day in his life cares about your pathetic problems? Obama, in other words, is elite. As in "A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status." Obama isn't an economic elite, but he is a social and intellectual elite. And it's that creeping sense that he's different, that he's better and knows it, that McCain is trying to exploit.
The Obama campaign, similarly, has realized that McCain is an elite, and that voters won't believe that a guy who has so many houses that he can't keep track of them will care if they lose the small condo they call home. This election, in other words, is becoming a contest to decide which type of elite voters hate -- or fear, or mistrust -- more: A social elite or an economic elite?
Here is the first Google Images entry for "mediocre."
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 26, 2008 at 09:31 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
"This election, in other words, is becoming a contest to decide which type of elite voters hate -- or fear, or mistrust -- more: A social elite or an economic elite?"
What comes across more clearly in memory?
Images and sound and speeches, or a text statistic in a newspaper about how many houses someone owns?
Also, is Obama considered an elitist because he has succeeded, or because his oratory skills are so refined that people feel he is speaking down to them?
Posted by: Robert Olson at Aug 26, 2008 9:44:21 PM
So to translate into the common vernacular, since there are two a**holes in our area of operations, the chances of a s**tstorm are fairly high. I don't really care which brand of s**t is flying around. How do I get rid of the a**holes?
Posted by: Trevor at Aug 26, 2008 9:52:48 PM
McCain doesn't own a single house, if I recall correctly. They're all in his wife's name.
Does marrying into money make one an "elite"?
Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Aug 26, 2008 10:02:56 PM
Well, that would explain the selection of Joe Biden as his running mate.
Posted by: Kevin at Aug 26, 2008 10:03:17 PM
Was Bill Clinton considered an elite? Bill has a similarly impressive academic resume (perhaps more impressive) as Obama.
I agree with Robert Olson above. Obama's speaking style does cause a lot of people to internally roll their eyes.
Posted by: thehova at Aug 26, 2008 10:26:07 PM
Well, while listening to the Democratic Convention right now, it sounds like every single speaker are so much of serfs that they barely have time be in the Pepsi center, why with the need to repair the roof in their little shelter homes and feed the rats. Makes the Swedish socialist party convention sound like a golf club dinner.
Elitism at its lowest.
Posted by: Micko, Stockholm at Aug 26, 2008 10:29:05 PM
It must have been an uncharacteristically slow reading day if the best thing you came across was another one of Ezra Klein's lukewarm retreads of the "Obama is too good for America" meme.
Posted by: Josh at Aug 26, 2008 10:31:03 PM
McMain has had to work his ass off for the past eight years to get the nomination, and he's been working his ass off in the Senate a lot longer than that.
Obama goes to Harvard as a minority legacy and then goes to Chicago to "organize". Then Obama clears out the primary ballot with petition challenges to get into the Illinois Senate, gets everything handed to him by "Uncle Tom" Emil Jones to get the US Senate nomination, and then waltzes through the election against out-of-stater Alan Keys. Then he gives one speech in 2004 and is suddenly qualified for 2008.
The American people can tell when someone has proven himself, and Obama has proven nothing but the impressionability of the Democratic primary electorate.
Posted by: Jim at Aug 26, 2008 10:57:10 PM
Josh wins the thread
Posted by: AB at Aug 26, 2008 10:57:47 PM
What the hell. I didn't enter my email address in your web form. Take it off your site!
Posted by: Jim at Aug 26, 2008 11:02:55 PM
Ahem. Middle America doesn't consider Obama an economic elite?
Posted by: Dan Q. Public at Aug 26, 2008 11:41:53 PM
"Does marrying into money make one an "elite"?"
Not necessarily, but if your father and grandfather were 4 star admirals, you're an elite.
Posted by: Scott at Aug 26, 2008 11:42:12 PM
american politics make no sense. the majority of people there don't want to elect someone smarter than them to be in charge of the country. can anyone please explain?
Posted by: anon at Aug 26, 2008 11:51:31 PM
Why would you resent a meritocracy? People who have more merit should not be given the most important jobs in the country? That's sheer stupidity. Does Klein really think America is that petty?
Posted by: mravery at Aug 26, 2008 11:57:48 PM
It's a bit inaccurate to describe Obama's success as strictly due to meritocracy. Various articles have pointed out that his wife was crucial in giving him credibility with his original political constituency: the fact that she was born and raised in southside Chicago, went to school with Jesse Jackson's daughter, even the fact that she has darker skin than him.
In many ways, with his exotic outsider background, Barack Obama was as much an adult immigrant into African American society as Arnold Schwarzenneger was into mainstream American society; his wife opened doors for him to join networks of power and influence in the Chicago political machine. For all his intellectual merits, Obama's political career would have been stillborn without this; his "marrying into credibility" was far more significant in this sense than McCain's marrying into money.
Posted by: at Aug 27, 2008 12:05:51 AM
Michele is impressive in her own right.
Posted by: Lord at Aug 27, 2008 12:30:27 AM
Despite his accomplishments, people still see Bill Clinton as smart redneck. He eats at McDonald's, likes fat chicks, and cheats on his wife. That, they can relate to.
Posted by: adam at Aug 27, 2008 12:43:30 AM
Tyler, first you rely on El Mercurio to comment on Chile and the University of Chicago, and now you outsource your view on US politics to E. Klein. Too much. Good bye.
Posted by: E. Barandiaran at Aug 27, 2008 12:49:37 AM
"The American people can tell when someone has proven himself"
Then Bush was elected how? Enjoy the various forms of porno headed to your email address Jim!
Posted by: S. Weynard Miller at Aug 27, 2008 1:03:11 AM
Obama isn't really that bright. Have you watched him try to think on his feet? He's not very good at it. He's good at sounding smart and appearing thoughtful and delivering prepared remarks. I'm not saying he's a dumb guy. He's above average in intelligence.
Obama's combination of above average (but far from genius) intelligence and black skin propelled him to the stratosphere of American society and politics.
Similarly, Obama's black skin has, somehow, allowed him to shrug off radical, anti-American associations that would doom a white Democratic candidate. Most white politicos no better than to associate with racists, traitors, and terrorists. Obama has all those in his past and is still standing. Which is impressive in itself.
Posted by: david at Aug 27, 2008 1:16:11 AM
american politics make no sense. the majority of people there don't want to elect someone smarter than them to be in charge of the country. can anyone please explain?
Traditionally, Americans don't like the concept of *ANYONE* to "be in charge of the country". The idea of a sage father-figure or king ruling everything in a wise and benevolent manner is part of the European mythology, not American mythology. The belief in a benevolent monarch maps over quite nicely to a belief in social democracy - Europeans naturally look for someone smarter and wiser than themselves to control their lives.
Americans had a very long period of liberalism between monarchy and social democracy. Even though years of social engineering and incremental change has brought about a greater support for the welfare state, the traditional American cultural narrative is still one of freedom and individual action. Where as in the European narrative the King is the hero fighting for his people, in the American narrative the king is at best a bumbling fool and at worst a brutal despot.
So, if you see the king as inherently good, then you want him to be better than you. If you see a king as inherently dangerous or humiliating, you want someone who makes you feel like he is no better than you are.
Do you understand now?
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Aug 27, 2008 1:18:16 AM
Ah, I see Marginal Revolution is being attacked by a racist troll. Obama as an affirmative action admit? Might as well go put up an ad talking about how those negroes are stealing all real Americans' jobs!
Shame on you, Jim.
Posted by: Zephyrus at Aug 27, 2008 1:21:03 AM
And make that two, with david.
Posted by: Zephyrus at Aug 27, 2008 1:22:22 AM
I would say this is exactly what Mencius Moldbug is talking about with his BDH/OV split. The social elite are the Brahmins, the economic the Optimates. The difference is the O's have no unifying political ideology, except for rejecting the B's as foolish meddlers.
Posted by: at Aug 27, 2008 1:58:50 AM
"Obama isn't an economic elite."
Cite?
Posted by: GU at Aug 27, 2008 2:11:30 AM
