link
Cut from the same cloth
A lesson in blue-blooded political management
THERE is no sorrier branch of literature than the books that presidential candidates write to boost their campaigns. Who now reads Michael Dukakis's ?Creating the Future?? Or Bill Clinton's ?Putting People First?? And who, in six months' time, will read John Kerry's ?A Call to Service?? Or Dennis Kucinich's ?A Prayer for America?? If literary standards count for anything, these sententious tomes should all be consigned to the flames.
Howard Dean's forthcoming campaign biography, ?Winning Back America?, is a slight exception. This is partly because Dr Dean is an unusually interesting candidate: a no-hoper who turned himself into a front-runner by tapping into a rich vein of anger in the body politic. But the book also tells us about Dr Dean's similarity to George Bush.
The most obvious likenesses are draft-dodging and drink. Both men avoided the Vietnam war: Dr Dean failed his army medical with a bad back, but then spent ten months skiing. Both were drinkers: Mr Bush woke up with such a hangover on his 40th birthday that he decided to give up alcohol forever. It turns out that the same is true of Dr Dean. ?When I drank, I would drink a lot and do outrageous things, and then I wouldn't drink again for a while. I realised that what was very funny when you're 18 is not very funny when you're 30.? He woke up with such a hangover after his bachelor party that he too decided just to stop drinking.
The deeper similarity has to do with social background. Both Howard Brush Dean III and George Walker Bush hail from the same White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) establishment: a world of blue blood and old money, of private schools and deb balls, of family connections and inherited first names. Their fathers and grandfathers were educated at the same Ivy League university, Yale. One of Mr Bush's grandmothers was a bridesmaid for one of Dr Dean's (they had been at finishing school together). Dr Dean's father worked as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds, and the young Howard grew up on Hook Pond in East Hampton and on Park Avenue. He was educated at St George's in Newport, a posh boarding school, and then at Yale, where he overlapped for a year with Mr Bush, who had been to Andover.
So why do people with such similar backgrounds have such different political views? Fifty years ago America's Wasps saw eye-to-eye on politics just as much as they did on trust funds and Ivy League universities. Most of them were relatively relaxed Republicans: high-minded and fiscally responsible at home, Atlanticist and Anglophile abroad. The Bushes and Deans were both rooted in this tradition. Mr Bush's grandfather, Prescott (who, incidentally, also went to St George's), was a senator for Connecticut who believed in progressive taxation, internationalism and birth control. Dr Dean's father, ?Big Howard?, managed the campaigns of a Republican congressman, Stuyvesant Wainwright II. His mother wore a dress emblazoned with the word ?Ike? during Eisenhower's re-election bid in 1956.
These moderate Republicans began to lose their grip on the party in the mid-1960s. Dr Dean's first political experience was at the 1964 Republican convention which chose the upstart Barry Goldwater as its candidate. Big Howard had a soft spot for the Arizonan, but the convention in San Francisco, where hundreds of decidedly unWaspish delegates from the South and the west booed Nelson Rockefeller off the stage, was a turning-point. Goldwater's subsequent obliteration by the Democrats gave the Wasps some comfort, but the debates that followed over the Vietnam war and civil rights polarised the country, pushing the Republican Party to the right. Every elected Republican president since then has come from the Sunbelt, and the religious right has pushed all sorts of issues into politics?from abortion to prayer in public schools?that the Wasps thought had no business there.
A handful of blue-bloods continue to uphold the great tradition of progressive Republicanism, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island being the most conspicuous example. But most of them have had to jump either to the left or the right. George Bush senior was the first Wasp to throw in his lot with Sunbelt Republicanism. The current President Bush's ideology, especially on social issues, is by many measures to the right of Goldwater's. Until recently, Dr Dean might have been cited as a Rockefeller Republican himself, masquerading as a moderate Democratic governor of Vermont. But he has become a national figure only by jumping to the left, espousing campus liberalism, denouncing NAFTA and calling for a wholesale re-regulation of business.
An old order, remade
Have the Wasps been marginalised? The Preppies certainly no longer rule on their own terms. Look at the way Jim Jeffords sank into obscurity when the moderate Vermont senator abandoned Mr Bush's party to become an independent. For a Wasp to get anywhere in politics, he has to put on cowboy boots or Birkenstock sandals. On the other hand, Messrs Bush and Dean also demonstrate the extraordinary adaptability of America's old ruling elite. As David Brooks of the New York Times has pointed out, fancy boarding schools did quite well at turning ?the sons of privilege? into ?paragons of manly virtue?. Eton, which has not turned out a British prime minister for 40 years and may never do so again, should be jealous.
Indeed, the amazing thing about the survival of America's Wasps is why their prominence arouses so little comment. Britain would be on the point of revolution if its election could be caricatured as Eton v Harrow. The 2000 contest between Al Gore and Mr Bush was also a struggle between St Alban's and Andover. Next year, it looks like being Andover v St George's. There is nothing wrong with America's old elite. Whether there is anything wrong with America's commitment to upward mobility is a much more open question.
Cut from the same cloth
A lesson in blue-blooded political management
THERE is no sorrier branch of literature than the books that presidential candidates write to boost their campaigns. Who now reads Michael Dukakis's ?Creating the Future?? Or Bill Clinton's ?Putting People First?? And who, in six months' time, will read John Kerry's ?A Call to Service?? Or Dennis Kucinich's ?A Prayer for America?? If literary standards count for anything, these sententious tomes should all be consigned to the flames.
Howard Dean's forthcoming campaign biography, ?Winning Back America?, is a slight exception. This is partly because Dr Dean is an unusually interesting candidate: a no-hoper who turned himself into a front-runner by tapping into a rich vein of anger in the body politic. But the book also tells us about Dr Dean's similarity to George Bush.
The most obvious likenesses are draft-dodging and drink. Both men avoided the Vietnam war: Dr Dean failed his army medical with a bad back, but then spent ten months skiing. Both were drinkers: Mr Bush woke up with such a hangover on his 40th birthday that he decided to give up alcohol forever. It turns out that the same is true of Dr Dean. ?When I drank, I would drink a lot and do outrageous things, and then I wouldn't drink again for a while. I realised that what was very funny when you're 18 is not very funny when you're 30.? He woke up with such a hangover after his bachelor party that he too decided just to stop drinking.
The deeper similarity has to do with social background. Both Howard Brush Dean III and George Walker Bush hail from the same White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) establishment: a world of blue blood and old money, of private schools and deb balls, of family connections and inherited first names. Their fathers and grandfathers were educated at the same Ivy League university, Yale. One of Mr Bush's grandmothers was a bridesmaid for one of Dr Dean's (they had been at finishing school together). Dr Dean's father worked as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds, and the young Howard grew up on Hook Pond in East Hampton and on Park Avenue. He was educated at St George's in Newport, a posh boarding school, and then at Yale, where he overlapped for a year with Mr Bush, who had been to Andover.
So why do people with such similar backgrounds have such different political views? Fifty years ago America's Wasps saw eye-to-eye on politics just as much as they did on trust funds and Ivy League universities. Most of them were relatively relaxed Republicans: high-minded and fiscally responsible at home, Atlanticist and Anglophile abroad. The Bushes and Deans were both rooted in this tradition. Mr Bush's grandfather, Prescott (who, incidentally, also went to St George's), was a senator for Connecticut who believed in progressive taxation, internationalism and birth control. Dr Dean's father, ?Big Howard?, managed the campaigns of a Republican congressman, Stuyvesant Wainwright II. His mother wore a dress emblazoned with the word ?Ike? during Eisenhower's re-election bid in 1956.
These moderate Republicans began to lose their grip on the party in the mid-1960s. Dr Dean's first political experience was at the 1964 Republican convention which chose the upstart Barry Goldwater as its candidate. Big Howard had a soft spot for the Arizonan, but the convention in San Francisco, where hundreds of decidedly unWaspish delegates from the South and the west booed Nelson Rockefeller off the stage, was a turning-point. Goldwater's subsequent obliteration by the Democrats gave the Wasps some comfort, but the debates that followed over the Vietnam war and civil rights polarised the country, pushing the Republican Party to the right. Every elected Republican president since then has come from the Sunbelt, and the religious right has pushed all sorts of issues into politics?from abortion to prayer in public schools?that the Wasps thought had no business there.
A handful of blue-bloods continue to uphold the great tradition of progressive Republicanism, Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island being the most conspicuous example. But most of them have had to jump either to the left or the right. George Bush senior was the first Wasp to throw in his lot with Sunbelt Republicanism. The current President Bush's ideology, especially on social issues, is by many measures to the right of Goldwater's. Until recently, Dr Dean might have been cited as a Rockefeller Republican himself, masquerading as a moderate Democratic governor of Vermont. But he has become a national figure only by jumping to the left, espousing campus liberalism, denouncing NAFTA and calling for a wholesale re-regulation of business.
An old order, remade
Have the Wasps been marginalised? The Preppies certainly no longer rule on their own terms. Look at the way Jim Jeffords sank into obscurity when the moderate Vermont senator abandoned Mr Bush's party to become an independent. For a Wasp to get anywhere in politics, he has to put on cowboy boots or Birkenstock sandals. On the other hand, Messrs Bush and Dean also demonstrate the extraordinary adaptability of America's old ruling elite. As David Brooks of the New York Times has pointed out, fancy boarding schools did quite well at turning ?the sons of privilege? into ?paragons of manly virtue?. Eton, which has not turned out a British prime minister for 40 years and may never do so again, should be jealous.
Indeed, the amazing thing about the survival of America's Wasps is why their prominence arouses so little comment. Britain would be on the point of revolution if its election could be caricatured as Eton v Harrow. The 2000 contest between Al Gore and Mr Bush was also a struggle between St Alban's and Andover. Next year, it looks like being Andover v St George's. There is nothing wrong with America's old elite. Whether there is anything wrong with America's commitment to upward mobility is a much more open question.
Facebook
Twitter