A working class hero is something to be

Somehow I missed out on this recent period of time when Hillary Clinton became a working class hero and a conservative Democrat. Have I missed something over the past year? I should explain my perspective. I’m a born and raised New Yawker who in June of 2007 came to Wellington New Zealand to work on an assignment for a firm here. I have a 2 year work visa but I will be re-examining my long term plans sometime after the 2^nd week of November 2008.

Since I left, there appears to have been a major disturbance in the space time continuum that has resulted in Hillary Clinton becoming the champion of blue collar, lesser educated Reagan Democrats in opposition to the liberal elitist latte drinking and arugula eating, leftist Harvard Law grad Barack Obama and his supporters. I’m using actual adjectives here that I’ve seen used on blog forums here at Times.com and elsewhere in the blogosphere to describe HRC’s opposition. I’ve already heard about her blue collar grandfather but I thought she was the daughter of an upper middle class family who attended Wellesley and Yale Law School? Please don’t take this the wrong way. My favourite American President was a man who came from a family of such established blue bloodedness that they make the Bushes to appear as if they just got off the boat at Ellis Island. Everything about his comportment and demeanour, from the way he affected an elegant cigarette holder to his unabashed Harvard accent exuded elite Waspishness. Yet the American working class never had such a friend as with this man who defied his upbringing, reached out to this constituency – back then referred to as the forgotten man, and was branded a “traitor to his class” by many of his resentful peers. Personally I wouldn’t mind a little bit of enlightened noblesse oblige right now from an FDR type after almost 8 years of the down home cowboy from Crawford (by way of Phillips Academy and Yale). I have an undergrad degree from one of the SUNY colleges. I feel that I received a good education from this school and that my four years there was not without academic rigor but I would never deride the accomplishment of someone acquiring a degree from one of the prestigious schools. I must admit though that I’ve developed as of late a little bit of scepticism about the value of the education offered by the Harvard Business School since it doesn’t seen to have informed well the decision making of George Bush and Stan O’Neal.

But what’s with all this cultural stereotype derision coming from a U.S. Senator who represents New York, one of the epicentres in the U.S. for expensive coffee and pricey organic lettuce? It used to be de rigueur for American politicians to eat the appropriate ethnic foods while campaigning out on the stump. Now it’s about proving what a regular down to earth guy or gal they can be by eating and drinking only the stuff that real salt of the earth type voters consume. We’ve had eight years of the President you can have a beer with. Now we have Clinton, the Senator with whom you can enjoy downing shots of Crown Royal whiskey. Personally I’m a regular coffee no sugar, doesn’t like lettuce and prefers Becks but will drink Budweiser if that’s all you’ve got kind of guy. I’d like to know as an Obama supporter where I fit in to the cultural landscape? I would normally expect to hear labels like “liberal elitist latte drinker” coming from the mouths of Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter; aimed at Hillary Clinton, not from the Senator herself.

And when did Clinton become a “Scoop” Henry Jackson style Democrat in contrast to leftist Obama? Is that because of the whopping 1 point difference HRC has over him in the American Conservative Union’s ranking of their 2007 Senate votes? That’s 8 and 7 for HRC and BHO respectively. McCain by the way is 80 (of course I mean his ACU rating not his age!).

My fellow Americans, some enlightenment please for this expat on the tectonic shift that must have just occurred in American politics while I wasn’t looking. It would be greatly appreciated.

Be careful what you wish for

It’s a mistake for Bush’s critics to continue to diminish him by highlighting his alleged intellectual deficiencies. GWB’s selection as the Republican nominee in 2000 was the result of a careful vetting by the Right that began almost immediately after the 1996 general election. To their delight he confirmed his endorsement of their entire social, economic and foreign policy agendum. Far from being a fiasco in his 7 years in office he has delivered most of what they wanted with spectacular success. Most notably, he has added a conservative academic and a corporate lawyer to the Supreme Court. Along with being one or two votes away from overturning Roe this Supreme Court is clearly now more hospitable to the wishes of corporate America than any since the 1890’s. There were two decisions on the same day in March this year that prove this point. One of these invalidated New York State’s law to require airlines to provide a certain level of service to passengers because the Court saw that as state interference in interstate commerce. They also ruled against an inmate in Texas who was appealing his death penalty sentence by lethal injection on the grounds that an international court had ordered the U.S. Federal government to review the death penalty cases of some foreign inmates in U.S. prisons. The majority ruled that the Federal government had no right to compel states to do this review. The clear message was that states rights are good when they benefit conservative social causes but are bad when they are a pain for business. Even Bush’s failure to rein in spending and the resultant mega deficit has a silver lining: it puts more fiscal pressure on programs that they hate such as social security and Medicare. Washington will be hard pressed to provide much relief if the economic downturn proves as severe as some including Warren Buffet fear. And in foreign affairs the belligerence of this government on the world stage is not a bad thing for them despite the Iraq debacle.

How different from GWB’s presidency would McCain’s be? McCain has been mindful of the difficulties that his maverick posture in 2000 caused to his political career. His rating from the American Conservative Union has steadily increased since then and as of 2007 it is 80. His enthusiasm for our involvement in Iraq is well known and he will not change the course of this war in any significant way. His “straight talk” approach to social spending is to tell displaced workers in manufacturing that their jobs will not be coming back and that his administration can not offer much in the way of assistance. This echoes Bill Kristol’s words back in 1992 to American’s who were being hurt by that recession. That advice was that they should look to “stoicism and prayer” as a means to get them through their tribulations. There is every indication that McCain will also continue to use Bush’s criteria in selecting Supreme Court nominees should there be more vacancies (there almost certainly will be considering the average age of the Justices).

How differently are Clinton’s and Obama’s platform in response to McCain’s? The answer is significantly if we use their ACU rating as a measure. It’s the opposite of McCain’s and Clinton and Obama are pretty much alike in that opposition. Except for some differences on health care approaches their platforms could not be more similar.

I seriously doubt that the Romney and Huckabee supporters who threatened during the early primary season to vote for a Democrat should McCain become the nominee will really do so if either Clinton or Obama is the nominee. Clinton supporters who promise to vote for McCain or just sit out the election if Obama is the nominee and Obama supporters who threaten to do the same in the face of a Clinton nomination need to seriously consider the real consequences of continuing Republican rule for at least another four years.