The Easter Rising
columnist: Jack Galway

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
The Elitist Complaint

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Obama Clinton McCain -- elitists all. Who will make the claim stick to the others first.

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by Jack Galway
(Libertarian)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Well now, the candidates and the partisan pundits are doing mental gymnastics over every parsable utterance of the gladiators. The most blatant being, for the time, the Obama Bitter Bullet.

McCain says recession caused by "greedy" people. So which candidate is more condescending? Probably HRC, but Moonbeam (Michael Savage's sobriquette for McCain) and BHO are not far behind. When was the last non-elitist president? Truman? nah. Coolidge. Maybe, but who cares?

Calling pols elitist is a redundancy, similar to calling American cuisine unhealthy.

Calling them racist is hilarious, we've had zero women and zero minorities in the white house in two and one third centuries. We've had 1 mainstream catholic. Isn't anyone aware of what a monolithic scam we have going on here?

We are all dying of high-level politico-cultural toxicity!

Some apologists may say, "Well, the housing bubble was caused by greedy people (usually citing the victims). McCain may be right.

As far as that goes -- nevertheless, an elitist point, as with Cheney (deficits don't matter), et al., etc.

McCain has already said he is a novice at domestic / economic policy ... when in doubt blame the victims, let them eat cake. All 3 of our candidates are ignorant, dismissive, and elitist. Do you disagree?

Some will try to limit the definition of "elite," saying the word is serviceable only for economic and/or social distinctions.

I don't disagree with that definition, but there are frequently multiple definitions in a modern language. To me the operational one is placing your attitudes above those of your constituents. A populist is not an elitist until he/she relinquishes his/her populist beliefs. Mike Huckabee was not an elitist, Giuliani was, Biden was . . . If you know the character Willie Stark in All the King's Men (based on Huey P. Long) you can see the precise development of political elitism. If you don't believe the people listed above are elitists then you are begging for more of the same -- no leadership, abused power.

A friend challenges my short list of non-elitist POTUSae.  Let's take a few of his "non-elite" examples:

• Gerald Ford -- pardoned Nixon!
• Bill Clinton -- believed that HIS getting blo*wj*bs, HIS scolding and finger shaking, HIS perjury, HIS wagging the dog, HIS marathon speeches, HIS pardons were royal perqs of POTUS.
• Jimma Carter -- and why is everybody concerned about his unelected, extralegal manipulation of international affairs?
• HRC -- Friend says "Not sure about Hill?" The mind reels!
• We left LBJ and JFK totally off the list. Kidding, right?
• Ronald Reagan -- one of my heroes, but his powers of communication were often misused as a cover for the elitist machinations of his treacherous advisors.
• dubya -- Holy smoke! The most elitist in history ergo the worst POTUS in history. The most manipulated by his elitist advisors. The most egregious cronyist since Andrew Jackson or U. S. Grant. The only thing that could make him better than Carter is if he doesn't become an unguided missile like Carter after he leaves office.

In every case, my definition of elitism is either that the POTUS himself is elitist or that the POTUS did not have the power, savvy, alertness, strength, whatever to stop elitism on his watch.

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2008 Jack Galway, all rights reserved.
Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

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