New Blog: stevenwhite.wordpress.com

New York Times: Not, In Fact, a Bastion of Populism

Paul Waldman properly  smacks down the not-so-uniformly-intelligent David Frum  and Davis Brooks' pseudo-populism of the right. First, to Frum's claims about income and voting:

The Republicans do best at the country clubs and corporate board rooms. It may be an old story, but it's still true. The middle is contested, but "the top" is still Republican territory, something that all the phony outrage at "limousine liberals" in the world hasn't changed.

Let's look, for instance, at the 2004 election. According to the exit polls, there was a clear correlation between income and votes: the richer you were, the more likely you were to vote for Bush. The group he performed best with was those making over $200,000 a year, where he beat Kerry 63 to 35 percent. Or look at these charts, from the Pew Research Center. The higher you go up the income ladder, the more Republicans you find. None of this should surprise anyone, but what is so odd is the need people like Frum feel to assert that Democrats are the party of the rich, even as they advocate more capital gains tax cuts and fight against universal health insurance.

Then there's David Brooks, who eschews even poor attempts at statistics and relies entirely on his phony folksy persona:

His column starts this way:

Last Saturday evening, I found myself at the counter of a truck stop diner in Caroline County, Va.

Because that's what David Brooks does on a Saturday night--just hangs out at truck stops, chilling with his peeps. Not for him the company of those snooty elitists who read David Brooks in the New York Times, watch David Brooks on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer," or listen to David Brooks on "All Things Considered"! You can imagine what was running through his mind as he saw the sign, cruising down the highway in his Lexus. "Truck stop, huh? I've got some time before Buffy and Tad are expecting me at the beach house. I'll bet if I stop in there and strike up a conversation with a real live trucker, I could get a column out of it!" And so he did.

Economic populism is necessarily a function of the left. A populist can hate gays, hate blacks, distrust women, distrust foreigners, either oppose  or support wars -- but a populist can't be an economic conservative, at least not in America. Frum is trying hard to prove his wrong-headed point, but Brooks? He just fetishizes the common man but doesn't want to give up his Bobo-ness.

It really says something about the elite news media that David Brooks actually has a job with the New York Times. Definitely check out the ultimate David Brooks take-down by Sasha Issenberg that Waldman links to.

Can a White Man Still Be Elected President?

First of all: Yes. But in defense of Esquire, I want to note that while this faux-provocative question on the front is offensive and stupid, the article inside is actually quite good. Naturally, of course, it has nothing to do with the lame teaser. For those of you with no intention of actually reading it, here are a couple of passages I like:

Edwards' sense of humor

Recently, on a late flight in a private jet through another hellacious storm, Edwards treated himself to the movie Talladega Nights. "I laughed so hard, I couldn't breathe," he will later say, tilting his head back with laughter at the memory, his perfect teeth gleaming. Exactly which part of the movie he's referring to shall remain off the record. Suffice it to say it was near the beginning and that Edwards, a Methodist, has some sense of humor when it comes to baby Jesus.

How his family thinks about their social class

"We had a good life," Bobbie said. "We ate well. Even when I was working the second shift, I always made sure they had dinner in the oven. We had fried chicken and fried pork chops and mashed potatoes and gravy. That's what Johnny liked, the fried stuff. He doesn't eat that anymore. He's not into Southern cooking anymore, but he used to be. But the point I'm makin' is this: They always portray Johnny as being poor when he was growing up. That's just not true."
"Put it this way," Wallace said. "We didn't know we were poor."
"We weren't poor," insisted Bobbie, strident, wagging a crooked finger. "I just had to be very careful with our money."
"There wasn't as much stuff to buy back then, neither," Wallace said, trying to make peace.
"We lived in a nice house, and our children dressed nicely. I made sure that they were always clean. I feel a little resentment when I hear people saying that Johnny was poor. He wasn't. He just came from a background where there was no extra money."
"Modest," clarified Wallace.
"That's right," agreed Bobbie.
"I'll tell you a little story," Wallace said. "One time we were in Georgia. We had a little money by then. I had started my own business with a partner, consulting at the mills. The family went into this restaurant, and we sat down and looked at the menu, and then I told them we had to leave. And Johnny didn't understand that."
"He was a little embarrassed," Bobbie said.
"We looked at the menu, and we couldn't afford the prices. So yes, we struggled a little. John, he struggled, too."
"He hasn't always been the success he is now," Bobbie said earnestly. Later, she would send me on my way with a homemade strawberry icebox pie.

On being accused of hypocrisy

"They're calling you a hypocrite," I said.
Edwards looked at me, kind of annoyed, kind of resigned. "The truth about me is that I come from a very normal background. Early in our marriage, Elizabeth and I had very normal lives. We got financially successful because I won a bunch of cases. So we had money far beyond what we would ever have expected to have. And I think that part of our life, the financial life, is pretty privileged. You know, that house you went to is a really nice house. But I don't think either one of us has believed that anything's changed about us.
"Yes, of course, having money, having people around me, being able to buy a nicer shirt or whatever without having to worry about it, or going to dinner and not having to worry about it, that's all true, that has changed. But I don't think it changes anything about me as a person. The people who are critical, well, they don't know me, they've never been around me. They don't know me personally. That's what I really believe is the truth.

The reluctance to admit to being "poor" reminds me of people in my own hometown. I think part of why I like John Edwards so much is that he personifies my idealized, hypothetical version of the South: small-town boy leaves the country life behind, starts gettin' cultured ("He doesn't eat that anymore"), but never forgets where he came from and the struggles of ordinary folks.

There's a very complicated struggle for identity and authenticity at play here. Being "Southern" endows a politician with a lot of leeway in a certain sense, but this regional identification is caught up in complicated battles over what is and isn't authentic. Obviously someone like John Kerry can't just put on a hunting cap and fake being a good ol' boy, but what about someone like Edwards who quite legitimately grew up as a country boy, but left that behind and "did good for himself"? Is he less "real" because he can afford a nice shirt and a basketball court?

Hell, am I less "real" because I don't really speak with much of an accent anymore, or because I don't like the slowness of country life? Some of my attachment to Edwards is strangely personal, I have to admit.

A People's History of Wealthy Presidents

"Despite the rags-to-riches mythology," Jonathan Zimmerman writes in the Christian Science Monitor, "American presidents have almost always come from the wealthiest sector of society." George Washington's biographers tried to make him look like a yeoman farmer, but Forbes determined he would have made its 400 richest Americans list had said list existed in that era. Uber-common-man Andrew Jackson grew up in a South Carolina estate with slaves and a gristmill, where he attended a private academy for his schooling. Even "born in a log cabin" Abraham Lincoln was relatively well off: At Lincoln's birth, his father owned 600 acres, and five years later, he was among the richest 15% of property owners in his community.

"And despite their riches," Zimmerman continues, "some of these leaders have spoken valiantly and effectively for the poor." As president, Franklin Roosevelt received charge of class treason and communism for his New Deal policies from fellow wealthy members of society.

Jonah Goldberg's Cigars

Stop the presses! Jonah Goldberg cares about the poor! Wait, no, he just cares about cigars. On the topic of a congressional measure to skyrocket cigar taxes, Goldber writes:

I think this provides a perfect example of how liberal policies  exacerbate the  rich-poor divide...If this absurd tax goes through,  poor people  won't be able to afford cigars  while rich people will have no problem carrying this additional freight.

Yes, the impoverished cigar smoking masses, puffing away in dark rooms planning out how to screw the common man afford their groceries. Perhaps Goldberg's real honesty came at the beginning of his comment, when he acknowledged, "I admit that I am particularly sensitive to this because I've recently taken up the cigar habit."

Jonah Goldberg's cigars/poverty...eh, same thing.

Wherein I Give Fuel to Tom Schaller's Fire

I like Sasha Abramsky's review of Joe Bageant's new book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, except for one off-handed comment in the last paragraph. While praising Bageant's work, Abramsky writes, "No single book will ever be able to fully explain why so much of impoverished America so consistently votes against its own economic self-interest." This assumption is a powerful one in liberal circles. Call it the Thomas Frank Theory of Why People Don't Vote For Us.

Why would any working-class Southern white guy ever vote Republican? Well, maybe he really thinks an aggressive military is necessary. Perhaps "freedom isn't free" is more than an ironic statement for him. He might really believe criminals deserve punishments that only a Republican could dish out. Ditto on guns, abortion, affirmative action, etc. The point is, this has to be understood as being about more than the economic part of social class. Class is also cultural.

And different cultural values exist depending on one's privilege and cultural location. My old peers from east Tennessee are way more conservative on social and foreign policy questions than I am. They also still live there. While they may be distinctly working-class, many of them would laugh if you told them the Democratic Party represents their self-interest. Class in economic terms alone doesn't determine voting. To a large degree, culture does. And when you consider the array of issues cultural preferences affect, this isn't as superficial as it sounds.

Cross-posted at TAPPED.

Arthur Brooks' "Inequality" Problem

How is it "bad news for liberals" that Arthur Brooks -- a visiting scholar at the ever-so-fair-minded American Enterprise Institute -- writes in the Wall Street Journal, "There is a fundamental reason to doubt the link between economic inequality and unhappiness. If the egalitarians are right, then average happiness levels should be falling. They aren't." Inequality isn't a problem, apparently, because people are happy to be unequal!

The problem with Brooks -- one of the problems, at least -- is that he is being remarkably misleading by titling his op-ed "The Left's 'Inequality' Obsession." As someone on the left, I don't think inequality per se is at all a bad thing. If you really ask most leftists, I think they will agree. Unless one is literally a communist, we all accept certain levels of inequality. The issue liberals tend to have is with the degree of inequality, whereas Brooks obscures this obvious fact by substituting inequality itself in to make lefties sound out of touch.

Leslie Wayne's John Edwards Problem

An article in today's New York Times offers a critical assessment of John Edwards' new poverty tour, as well as his relatively low standing in the polls among low income voters. The author of the piece, of course, is Leslie Wayne, who has a history of writing major NYT pieces criticizing Edwards under the guide of objectivity. Her June 22nd hit job on Edwards' Center for Promise and Opportunity was about as shabby as campaign journalism gets.

In the NYT's Caucus blog, she considered it important to single out Edwards and remind readers that even though he "is now criticizing the low tax rate that hedge fund managers pay," he is also "the only Democratic presidential candidate to have worked for a hedge fund." Remarkably, she was even able to relate the third Pirates of the Carribean movie to Edwards' financial resources by putting in an obscure hedge-funds-related story that had something to do with sunken treasure. 

To make a comparison, Rudy Giuliani is actually wealthier than John Edwards, by a little less than $10 million. Mitt Romney? Despite the obsession with Edwards, Romney's personal wealth is a stunning four times as much. This hardly gets mentioned. But of course, neither of these candidates is talking about poverty and the reality of social class.

Update: Cross-posted at TAPPED.