"A War Against the Elites:
The America That Will Vote for Bush"
Tom Frank, Le Monde Diplomatique, Feb 2004
The US is currently going through the peculiar process of deciding which
Democratic presidential candidate will stand against George Bush in
November. The aversion to Bush, at home and abroad, makes us forget how many
people support this spokesman for another America sure of its superiority
and its values.THERE was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then
front-runner for the Democratic Party¹s presidential nomination, Howard
Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax
hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving,
New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak
show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based
organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with
pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government
economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New
Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years
describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second
coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in
the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather
singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by
publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of
history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the
"elite".
That's the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward
political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer
hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the
conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the
corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that
rightward shift -- still going strong to this day -- sells itself as a war
against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious
upper class.
At the top of it all sits President George Bush, a former Texas oilman, a
Yale graduate, the son of a former president and a grandson of a US senator
-- the beneficiary of every advantage that upper America is capable of
showering on its sons -- and a man who also declares that he has a populist
streak because of all the disdain showered upon him and his Texas cronies by
the high-hats of the East. Bush's populism is for real. His resentment of
the East-coast snobs is objectively ridiculous, but it is honestly felt. The
man undeniably has the common touch; his ability to speak to average people
like one of their own is a matter of public record. And they, in return,
seem genuinely to like the man. Bush shows every sign of being able to carry
a substantial part of the white working-class vote this November, just as he
did four years ago (although 90% of black Americans voted Democrat in 2000).
There was a time, of course, when populism was the native tongue of the
American left (1), when working-class people could be counted on to vote in
favour of stronger labour unions, a regulated economy and various schemes
for universal economic security. Back then the Republicans, who opposed all
these things, were clearly identified as the party of corporate management,
the spokesmen for society¹s elite.
Republicans are still the party of corporate management, but they have also
spent years honing their own populist approach, a melange of anti-
intellectualism, promiscuous God-talk and sentimental evocations of middle
America in all its humble averageness. Richard Nixon was the first
Republican president to understand the power of this combination and every
victorious Republican since his administration has also cast himself in a
populist light. Bush is merely the latest and one of the most accomplished
in a long line of pro-business politicians expressing themselves in the
language of the downtrodden.
This right-wing populism works; it is today triumphant across the scene;
politicians speak its language, as do newspaper columnists, television
pundits and a cast of thousands of corporate spokesmen, Wall Street
brokerages, advertising pitchmen, business journalists, and even the
Hollywood stars that the right loves to hate.
Rightwing populism takes two general forms. What we saw the most of during
the 1990s was the populism of the market, which has its origins in the PR
strategies of Wall Street. Here the basic idea is that the free market is in
essence a democracy. Since we all participate in markets -- buying stock,
choosing between brands of shaving cream, going to movie X instead of movie
Y -- markets are an expression of the vox populi. Markets give us what we
want; markets overthrow the old regime; markets empower the little guy. And
since markets are just the people working things out in their own
inscrutable way, any attempt to regulate or otherwise interfere with markets
is, by definition, nothing but arrogance (2).
When times are good, as they were a few years ago, this idea expresses
itself in all manner of lurid evocations of the common man at one with his
corporations. Television viewers in the 1990s saw constant mini-dramas of
the stock market as a maker of revolution; of little old ladies swapping
investment tips; of bosses becoming one with the ancient rhythms of
acquisitiveness; of little kids realising their true selves through
products; and of ordinary people basking in the glow of all the fine new
millionaires their investments were producing. Even Enron got into the act,
comparing its campaign for electricity deregulation to the Civil Rights
movement of the 1960s (3). During the boom, politicians of both parties
reached consensus on the idea that privatisation and deregulation were the
correct way to let the people have their say over matters economic; and
newspaper columnists of every persuasion came to agree that every time they
busted a labour union, a worker somewhere cried out for joy.
But market populism doesn¹t play too well in hard times. It slowly retreats
to the wings and yields centre-stage to the old, reliable populism of the
backlash, the collection of gripes that faults leftists not because of their
lack of faith in the free market, but because of the cultural monstrosities
they have imposed on the good people of middle America: they have legalised
abortion, stamped out prayer in the public schools and are now threatening
to sanction gay marriage. Again the enemy of the common people is the
liberal elite, and again they are identified as a class of intellectuals
whose trademark sin is hubris, thinking they know better than everyone else.
Again it is the little guy against a sneering, disdainful, cartoon version
of the upper class; and again the main beneficiary is the Republican party.
This populism, ever present on the radio and on Fox News (4), is obsessed
with the symbolism of the consumer culture. Instead of rebuking the powerful
directly, it vituperates against the snobbish and delicate things that the
powerful are believed to enjoy: special kinds of coffee, high-end
restaurants, Ivy League educations, vacations in Europe, and always, always,
imported cars.
Against these maddeningly sissified tastes, backlash populism posits a
true-blue heartland where real Americans eat red meat in big slabs, know all
about farming, drink Budweiser, work hard with their hands and drive
domestic cars. (In November 2000 the Democrats lost in the heartland but won
in cosmopolitan California, New York and Massachusetts.) Why the focus on
consumer goods? It switches the political polarity of class resentment: the
items identified with the elite are also identified with people who have
advanced degrees, a reliably liberal constituency. Liberals become the
snobs, and Republicans become the plain people in their majestic millions.
That rightwing oil millionaires in Houston or Wichita might also vacation in
Europe, drink fancy coffee and drive Jaguars is simply not considered, as if
contrary to nature.
The all-Americans despise the affected elites, with their highfalutin ways
and that¹s why they vote for plainspoken men like George Bush, or his dad,
or Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon, that ultimate victim of East Coast
disdain. Each of whom, once elected, did his level best to shower the
nation¹s elite with policy gifts of every description.
The massive distortions and contradictions between these two rightwing
populisms should be plain to anyone with eyes. (The founding conceit is the
preposterous assertion that the upper class is a collection of leftists.)
One populism rails against liberals for eating sushi and getting pierced;
the other celebrates those who eat sushi and get pierced as edgy
entrepreneurs or as consumers just trying to be themselves. One despises
Hollywood for pushing bad values; the other celebrates Hollywood for its
creativity and declares that Hollywood merely gives the people what they
want. And yet the same organisations, often the same individuals, are
advocates of both.
Why aren¹t these contradictions crippling for the right? Partly because
liberals refuse to take backlash populism seriously. They simply don¹t
bother to answer the stereotype of themselves as a tasteful elite, seeing it
as a treacherous and obvious deceit mounted by the puppetmasters of the
right. A smaller coterie of liberals don¹t bother with it because they
believe that conservative populism is merely camouflage for racism, which
they believe to be epidemic in the US. The problem, they think, is neo-Nazis
or right-wing militia types like Timothy McVeigh. That¹s the real expression
of middle America, the thing we ought to be investigating.
I encountered a spectacular version of this pathology at a leftist gathering
in Chicago. After listening to a devastatingly accurate critique of the
media business, I stood up and pointed out that dozens of regular,
church-going people across the Midwest shared the premises of the critique
without knowing it -- they simply mistook "liberalism" for the economic and
corporate forces that actually do control things. I encouraged the speaker
to make an effort to connect with those regular people and to try to turn
their class resentment right-side up. I was corrected almost immediately by
another audience member, who angrily said that she wanted no part of any
effort to make an outreach to the Ku Klux Klan.
There is a grain of truth in the backlash stereotype of liberalism. Certain
kinds of leftists really do vacation in Europe and drive Volvos and drink
lattes. (Hell, almost everyone drinks lattes now.) And there is a small but
very vocal part of the left that has nothing but contempt for the working
class. Should you ever attend a meeting of a local animal rights
organisation, or wander through the campus of an elite university, you will
notice that certain kinds of left politics are indeed activities reserved
for members of the educated upper-middle-class, for people who regard
politics more as a personal therapeutic exercise than an effort to build a
movement. For them, the left is a form of mildly soothing spirituality, a
way of getting in touch with the deep authenticity of the downtrodden and of
showing you care. Buttons and stickers desperately announce the liberal¹s
goodness to the world, as do his or her choice in consumer products. Leftist
magazines treat protesting as a glamour activity, running photos of last
month¹s demo the way society magazines print pictures from the charity ball.
There is even a brand of cologne called Activist.
Then there is that species of leftist who believes that being on the left is
an inherited honour, a nobility of the blood. There is little point in
trying to convert others to the cause, they will tell you, especially in
benighted places like the deep midwest: you¹re either born to it or you
aren¹t. This species of leftist will boast about the historical deeds of
red-diaper babies or the excellent radical pedigree of so-and-so, son of
such-and-such, utterly deaf to the repugnant similarities between what they
are celebrating and simple aristocracy.
Leftists of these tendencies aren¹t really interested in the catastrophic
decline of the American left as a social force, in the drying up and blowing
away of leftist social movements. If anything, this decline makes sense to
them: the left is people in sympathy with the downtrodden, not the
downtrodden themselves. It is a charity operation.
For them, having fewer people on the left isn¹t a problem that might one day
affect their material well-being, cost them their healthcare or their power
in the workplace. Those things aren¹t on the line for this species of
liberal. Quite the contrary: having fewer people on the left makes the left
more alluring to them. Superficial nonconformity is what the creative
white-collar class values above all else, and the lonelier you are in
political righteousness the more nonconformist, the more rebellious you are.
Standing up against the flag-waving masses is the goal for this variety of
liberal. Being on the left is not about building common cause with others:
it¹s about correcting others, about pointing out their shortcomings.
Like the American left, many Europeans also misunderstand American
conservatism, and by assuming that politics in the US works the same way as
it does elsewhere -- that material issues are important, that reason matters
-- they step blithely into the minefield of political symbolism and are
promptly blown up. The most spectacular recent instance of this came during
the UN debate prior to the war against Iraq. You will recall that the French
foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, clearly believed he was making
progress every time he slapped down some US misrepresentation or pointed out
some US error.
Here he was, a well-dressed and accomplished man, soundly refuting the
arguments of the Americans, speaking several different languages, even
receiving open applause from the UN representatives of much of the world as
he berated the US Secretary of State, who stoically endured the abuse of his
social superior, for this obvious error or that.
What the brilliant De Villepin missed utterly was that American
conservatives don't care when their arguments are refuted. The US is the
land of militant symbolism, the nation of images, and in the battle of
imagery Bush played De Villepin for a sucker. For Bush the task at hand was
obviously not winning over the UN, but rallying domestic support for the
war, and in doing so Bush couldn¹t have asked for a more convincing populist
drama. Saddam Hussein was a monster right out of central casting, and for
opposing him the poor unassuming Americans were being castigated by this
foppish, over-educated, hair-splitting, tendentious writer of poetry (De
Villepin¹s dabbling in verse was much reported in the American media). And a
Frenchman to boot! The French are always characterised in American popular
culture as a nation of snobs: they drink wine, they eat cheese, they¹re
polite. This man was the hated liberal elite in the flesh: all that was
missing was the revelation that he wore perfume or carried a handbag.
In his erudite, principled opposition, De Villepin thus sold the war to
Americans far more effectively than did Bush himself. Indeed, had the
foreign secretary of any other nation led the fight against the US, the war
might not have happened. If Bush is really smart, he¹ll engineer a repeat
confrontation with De Villepin just before the elections.
Meanwhile the genuine cultural power of the backlash goes unplumbed and
undiscussed by political commentators. It returns promptly every four years,
to deliver landslides out of nowhere and rightwingers where there should be
leftwingers and grassroots anger where there ought to be contentment. Until
the American left decides to take a long, unprejudiced look at deepest
America, at the kind of people who think voting for George Bush constitutes
a blow against the elite, they are fated to continue their slide to
oblivion. For Europe and the world the failure is costlier still, dooming
them to the wars and the policy impositions of an America they refuse to
understand.
[* Tom Frank is the author of One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism,
Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy (Doubleday, New York,
2000).]
(1) See Serge Halimi and Loïc Wacquant, " United States: politics without
the policies ", Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, November
2003.
(2) See Tom Frank, One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism
and the End of Economic Democracy, Doubleday, New York, 2000.
(3) See Tom Frank, " Enron: Elvis lives ", Le Monde diplomatique , English
language edition, February 2002.
(4) See Eric Alterman, " United States: making up news ", Le Monde
diplomatique , English language edition, March 2003.
