Model-Obama: Will Americans buy just anything off the assembly line?
Obama and the Hoi Aristoi
It is not hard to see why and how the middle classes, the poor, and the union members would like to see larger government programs and greater taxes on the wealthy, but why are so many in the upper-upper middle classes so vehemently pro-Obama? Are they that confident in the public schools, teachers' unions, swearing off their archaic gasoline engines, wanting restrictions on free trade and globalization, and living in mixed, integrated working-class neighborhoods?
One paradox about the Obama campaign is that in terms of aggregate cash, most of his total donations are of the larger sort, and they tend to come from the informational, investment, and financial class that has done so well by globalization.
Which raises the question, since so many financial supporters are above the $100,000 income bracket and perhaps in terms of joint income, above the benchmark $250,000 level at which Obamonics begins to really hurt, why such lop-sided support from these elites?
One would think that this class especially, in terms other than self-interest, would realize that tax-cuts the last few years that resulted in an approximate 50 percent overall federal and state rate on the wealthy brought in more total federal revenue. Are they simply more public-minded than the hardware store owner or builder contractor who is more likely to vote McCain and who worries about the effect of a veritable 62-5 percent federal/state/local income tax bite on their livelihoods?
After talking to and observing lots of Bay Area affluent and staunch Obama supporters, I think the key to reconciling the apparent paradoxes is done in the following ways.
Many enjoying the good life worry that their own privilege in some sort of way comes at the expense of someone else, or they fret that their present lifestyle in ecological terms is hardly sustainable. That concern does not translate into much concrete action. SUVs (Mercedes rather than Yukons) are no rarer in Palo Alto than in Fresno, while such progressives are just as likely, or more so, to abandon the public schools, to keep their children out of East Palo Alto or away from the Redwood City hoi polloi, and sent off to and on their way at elite prep and public schools. To sum up, Obama offers a reassuring sense of self-image: one can still maintain all the current mechanisms one is accustomed to in ensuring privilege, but visible support for Obama offers a sense of atonement and alleviation of guilt at rather modest cost. (We shall see whether a President Obama really ups the top rates, takes off FICA caps, raises capital gains, and so in fact takes a $50-70,000 greater annual cut from top yuppie joint incomes.)
Somehow an Obama sticker, sign on the lawn, or a lapel button has become the equivalent of a crucifix around the neck of a prosperous 16th-century burgher: easy fides of inner good and a valuable totem in reconciling the apparent irreconcilable.
Megalomania 101
At first I thought the standard Obama warnings about crowd fainting when he started speaking were just peculiar, as was the bit about oceans receding and the planet healing. Then I noticed he has plans to move his speechmaking at the convention to a large outdoor arena, to allow the 'people' the right to hear him en masse. Now he negotiates to address Berliners in Kennedy/Reagan style (but weren't they already presidents?) in front of the Brandenburg Gate? Next? No doubt the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
Monolingual Americans?
I was watching Obama complain that we don't speak European languages while Europeans speak English fluently. Fair enough — though the vast size of the U.S., the presence of two oceans on our borders, the ubiquity of Spanish here, the knowledge of other languages by millions of Americans, both explain a lot, and belie the notion that we are all English-only speakers, while the multitude of nations in close proximity has historically made Europeans by necessity multi-lingual.
But that said, Obama's previous idealization of minority-theme charter schools and the need for more "oppression studies" are precisely the sorts of therapeutic curricula that ensure Americans are not getting classical instruction in languages and literatures. We still await his visit to an inner-city school where he might lecture the student body and faculty that more Latin, French, math, and Shakespeare would do more to make students competitive in an increasingly tough, global job market than thousands of hours of oppression studies and victimization classes.
©2008 Victor Davis Hanson
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