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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
Democratic aristocrats and blue collar Republicans
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- In person and in print, New York Times columnist David Brooks is a conservative who regularly confounds non-conservatives. Brooks is unpredictable, literate, thoughtful and capable of genuine, self-deprecating wit.
But Brooks can be spectacularly wrong, which is what he was when he wrote recently: "We pretend to be a middle class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods. ... We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before New England summer homes. How else can you explain the Bush vs. Kerry match-up that confronts us this year?"
In his defense, Brooks is half right. The Democrats, historically the power of the nation's outsiders -- economically, religiously and socially -- have welcomed respectability through association by nominating leaders of inherited wealth and Ivy League degrees: Franklin Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy and now John Kerry.
By contrast, Republicans -- sensitive to the recurring charge that theirs is the party of the Prosperous and the Privileged -- have sought to rebut that negative perception by almost always choosing the humble sons of the country's working and middle class as their nominees. For example, Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and, of course, the rail-splitting Abraham Lincoln.
An anecdote. After the first snowfall of the first Reagan term, Vice President George H.W. Bush and presidential aide Michael Deaver, almost alone of White House males, made it through the paralyzed city to the West Wing, where President Reagan invited both of them into his office for a hot drink.
Reagan asked Deaver how he was able to make it through the drifts and unplowed streets. Deaver gave all the credit to the skill, savvy and resourcefulness of his White House driver -- at which point, Bush observed that he, too, as a young boy had had a driver with identical skills who drove him to and from the Greenwich (Connecticut.) Country Day School.
According to a presidential intimate, that was the moment when the Gipper fully realized how completely different his own hardscrabble Illinois background was from his vice president's.
Since FDR, only four American presidents have been elected to a second White House term: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. None of the four grew up in neighborhoods where "summer" was a verb. If wine and cheese were served, the chances were it was Velveeta and Muscatel.
Presidents have wisely trumpeted their modest roots even when their roots weren't that modest. It was William Henry Harrison, a college graduate and son of a First Family of Virginia, whose father signed the Declaration of Independence, who campaigned and won as "the log cabin" candidate. Democrat Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton, observed during his first successful White House campaign, on Oct. 7, 1912, that, "It is harder for a leader to be born in a palace than in a cabin."
Stephen Douglas was proved wrong in 1860 when he disparaged Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln this way: "We want a statesman, not a rail-splitter." Fortunately, in President Lincoln, the nation got both.
Republicans both value and need presidential nominees who can believably tell middle-class voters, "It is from your ranks that I come; it is on your side that I stand; it is your cause for which I fight."
After all, in the December's Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, when voters were asked, "Do you think the Bush economic plan would benefit all Americans equally, or do you think it would benefit mostly the wealth?" by a two-to-one margin, voters answered, "Mostly the wealthy."
Last November, the CBS News poll asked, "Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Democratic Party or the Republican Party cares more about you?" Half the respondents chose the Democrats and not quite three out of 10 answered Republicans.
Based upon available polling data, nobody can fairly accuse George W. Bush (Andover, Yale, Harvard Business) of what FDR (Groton, Harvard, Columbia Law) was condemned of: being "a traitor to his class." Of John F. Kerry it can be said that, exactly like the nation's first president, George Washington, he made money the old fashioned way, he married it.
But it is the blue blood Bushes who are the exceptions to the Republican strategy of choosing blue-collar nominees. To prove himself a regular guy, the senior Bush emphasized his twin addictions to pork rinds and country music. His son seeks photo ops showing him with sweat on his brow, in cowboy boots and jeans, cutting down brush.
Twelve years ago, in uncertain economic times, voters doubted that the aristocratic Republican Bush understood what they were enduring and voted Democratic. In 2004, will his son be victimized for his own privileged background?
