Sunday, December 07, 2003
Birds of a feather?
I have often had arguments with my American friends about their being blind to the elitism prevalent in their country, an elitism that is far less tangible than in the rest of the world, but elitism nevertheless. Of course, the American version of elitism also allows for great upward mobility. So, yes, Bill Clinton can be born dirt poor, but can become president of the United States. What people miss while making that argument is that even Bill Clinton went through the Ivy League system (one that networks yyou into the corridors of power) before he got to be president. Fact is that in the past 100 years, only 4 presidents have emerged from outside of the elite school system (ed: I include West Point and Annapolis in here). Lexington makes a couple of similar points while examining the similairity (yes, similarity) between Bush and Howard Dean.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
