Tom Frank: A War against Elites: The America that will Vote for Bush
There was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for
the Democratic Party’s 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 society’s 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 doesn’t 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 that’s
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 nation’s 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 aren’t these contradictions crippling for the right? Partly because liberals
refuse to take backlash populism seriously. They simply don’t 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 don’t
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. That’s 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 liberal’s
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 month’s 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: you’re
either born to it or you aren’t. 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 aren’t 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 isn’t a problem that might one day affect
their material well-being, cost them their healthcare or their power in the workplace.
Those things aren’t 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: it’s 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 couldn’t 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 Villepin’s 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, they’re 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, he’ll
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.
(subscription only)
http://mondediplo.com/2004/02/04usa
Reprinted from Axis of Logic:
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/
publish/article_5456.shtml
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