Well, yes, depending on what you mean by "democracy". If by "democracy" you mean that every citizen gets a vote on every issue, then yes. We have to believe that the majority of us will make the right call.

But we don't live in a pure democracy. We live in a democratic republic, which is more accurately founded on the idea that the majority of us can choose the best people to make the right call.

Well said.

Of course, it used to be that the republican nature of our government was used to keep white men in power over everyone else. I think it's partly that change that has shifted feelings about democracy versus republicanism. It's one thing to say other people can't be trusted to make the right decision so we have to take care of them. It's something very different to say, yes, I can't make a good decision, so I'll give up control to someone smarter than -- and very different from -- me.

Bullseye.

This is what I loathe about the sort of republican populism represented by Bush and Palin; it's dreary and stupid by design.

After 8 years of the Bush doldrums, to bemoan it's passing is absurd.

Hyperbole? Maybe but you are really in a zone right now, Coates.

If I may add to your context below:

I think this is a pretty solid argument. But it makes assumption about the American experience that some of us simply don't share. More to the point this "democratic ideal" is really a euphemism for white populism, and from a black perspective, even white tyranny.

The history is helpful, here. For most of this country's history, being black and brilliant was not something that set you a part from other black people--it was something that could get you killed by white people. A study of this country's history reveals to not be hyperbole. This notion that white people of medium talents could rise to rule the world was not simply "the democratic ideal," it was the tyranny of our lives--with depressing, disastrous effects. The idea that mediocre white people could rise to incredible levels of power was not so much an ideal for us--it was the whole point of white supremacy.

I am reminded of David Simon's argument about why Season Two of The Wire was his best rated season for most of the show's existence: he claimed it was because the plot centered on an increasingly marginalized white (ethnic) working class and scaled back the Black drug dealer action.

To defend this, he cited a phenomena whereby a majority white community will tolerate up to about 15% of its population being a Black minority (I cant recall if this extended to ANY minority, or sum total minority). After that point, argued Simon, white flight begins and escalates accordingly as that 15% grows exponentially.

Does that mean every white family feels put off, put out or otherwise repulsed? No. But I think in spite of all our flowery rhetoric about the USA being a melting pot of cosmopolitanism rooted in worldwide interest in the American Ideal, in spite of cities like New York or New Orleans or Miami or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago or Houston being held up as models of cross-cultural immigration, pollination and inclusion...

...there are plenty of people who feel on a gut level, America was born a white Christian nation and when that racial / ethnic / cultural core has to make TOO much room for the Other, room beyond a token 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, that the "Real America" is in jeopardy. Ive heard people (including my own mother) speak passionately about the possibility that one day, all mankind will mate and merge and become a beautiful brown people like something out of Brazil, Cape Verde or Cuba. That same possibility frightens a great many Americans to death. To the extent that Obama symbolized that future, he himself frightened a great many Americans to death.

I dont think Douthat meant to do it, but he sort of played to that fear in trying to contrast Obama's meritocracy vs Palin Democracy.

Palin Democracy is rooted in the reductionist, essentialist, fearful worldview about losing the Real America that fed the angry crowds at her rallies, that fed the Tea Parties, and that feeds the more rabid spawn of hardcore right-wing conservatism.

Black folks on the other hand have had to deal with dislocation, miscegenation (a hateful word I wish we'd update), exoticism and exceptionalism since the day we were brought here in chains. In my own paternal family alone, I have grandparents and relatives who migrated from small Caribbean Islands to Florida, Miccosukee Indians, a very light-skinned "Black" man of mysterious origins (he was hiding out in Florida under an assumed name) who they joked was a White man passing for "Black", Black folks who were closeted lesbians, Black folk who converted to the Iranian Ba'hai faith...just all sorts of unusual diverse people.

Because our folks were under fire for so long, we needed all the allies we could get. Because our folks could be sold down the river for no reason at all tomorrow, our family constructs had to be more flexible than the 19th century standard--family was the folks around you, who embraced you as such and vice versa, by necessity if not by design.

So in short, yes, we may be coming from a different starting perspective than the Douthats of the world. I hope that unlike Kristol, Douthat is willing to engage us with a much greater measure of good faith and learn that which we have to offer.

Democratic ideal - did not make the cut for ivy league at 18 years old, but later became a competent success. Palin does not fit this at the competence level, but there are plenty of examples in the business world and in the arts or sports. Steve Jobs is a good example.

Right on.

JH: Agreed. TNC: I knew you were circling around something really good in the past couple of days with this train of thought, watching you get at the words is always a pleasure. Absolutely nailed it. Mental tastebuds are TINGLING.

At the university I went to for undergrad, we had very few black professors and naturally few tenured ones. When we went through all the ones that existed we realized that all except ONE had gotten their Ph.Ds from Ivy League schools. It wasn't enough that there weren't a lot of us, but if you ever had a chance of teaching there and being black you had to be MORE qualified than the average. I always felt that way about Barack. He is above average but there's no denying he is very common to us, he's lived a life very similar to one many of my friends and I are taking now. My problem has always been that the same people who throw his education and background in our face as saying that he is "uncommon" would have ripped him apart on the national stage had he been, well Sarah Palin.

My reading of Ross Douthat's article seems to suggest that having a Sarah Palin who "didn't go to an Ivy League school" is somehow a boon for American ideals that anyone can make it to the top. I still don't buy that Horatio Alger crap, not not everyone can. She could. As it was repeated many times over the last two day, there's no way a Black or Latino Sarah Palin would have ever made it that far to the national scene. Look at all the flack Sotomayor got from the right about not being "bright enough" and the woman graduated top of her class at Princeton for pete's sake. Even a double Ivy League education doesn't do it. It's never enough. These same people want to convince us that someone who bounced around to six colleges in undergrad and can't put together a coherent thought on her own if her life depended on it is somehow supposed to be revered because she "made it". Ridiculous.

I think that the positioning of Palin as an "average person" is also false. She is not the spokesperson for "real americans." Palin is not average in ways both bad and good. My neighbors and my family may not be political junkies following every issue, but they are nowhere near as ignorant of issues and government as Palin is. My parents didn't go to college, but they know that there isn't a department of law in the executive branch that can magically make law suits disappear. I have a lot more faith in my neighbors to make the right call than I do in Palin.

As someone from the South Side of Chicago, Obama's election felt like a huge democratic and meritocratic victory. I actually half jokingly said at one point "forget the fact that our president is black - he's a south side." The fact that the president is from my part of town blows my mind. Obama was tangible proof that if you are talented and work hard, you can really accomplish amazing things.

Great post, thanks for it.

Along these lines, I've constantly been struck by the way white conservatives complain about talking, or teaching, or debating about slavery and segregation, calling it "focussing on the negative". It's such a blatantly racist perspective that I'm shocked they feel confortable saying it since, after all it's only "focussing on the negative" if you don't imagine black folks (or Japanese Americans who were interned, or Native Americans who lost their land etc. etc.) are fully Americans and part of our history. In other words, these folks feel uncomfortable talking about bad things that Americans did to other people, but if you see minorities as fully American in their own right then it's just a story of "what happened to us", no different than teaching about the American revolution or the Gold Standard.

So the presumption that "real Americans" are white goes very deep - so deep that they usually can't see it when they do it.

And for the record, I am white.

But its definitely Real, whether in America or otherwise.

Not sure tho.

Michelle Obama has said this in many an interview, right after saying that she's nothing special. She knew people smarter than her, people where one break, here or there, meant differing paths for their lives. It appears to me that White people read those interviews or see them, and don't believe her, because Michelle Obama has to be one of those 'exotics', instead of her being as so many, including yourself Coates,an example of an entire aspiring Black Middle Class that has been invisible to most of America, denyint its existance. Black people reading Michelle Obama nod in agreement, because they aren't separated by 6 degrees from those that fell by the wayside.

The entire piece was beautiful Coates, and I said a few ' Amens' while reading it.

The term "elite" still carries that very negative connotation, but now people use it as applied to the ivies in the positive sense of "students who are accepted at Harvard and Yale are a very elite group of extremely brilliant overachievers." I assume there are still some old school 20th generation Yalies being accepted, but the people I know who went to Ivy League schools very definitely earned their places there, and very few of them came from privileged WASP-y backgrounds.

Barack Obama is a member of the "elite" in this latter sense, not in the former, yet conservative pundits use the term "elite" to imply LACK of merit. It strikes me as sophistry abetted by a linguistic/cultural relic.

1895

Just to be clear, I'm not actually arguing for meritocracy; I'm agin' it and democracy both.

I mean these people talk about Obama as if he is the smartest person to ever hold public office and the smartest ever to be president. The problem for many whites, it seems, is that his intelligence is doubly magnified because of his brown body. They weren't expecting it.

Moreover, what counts as "the right call"? The right call for what? Nuclear policy--I will take the experts. Health care policy--I will take the experts. Decisions to go to war--I will take the experts. The democratic ideal as put forth above and by Douthat is not only code for white populism, it is also code for American hubris. That because we are born American we can make important foreign and domestic policy is ridiculous. Thank god we live in a Republic and not a pure democracy where people can vote on everything. (I live in California and the prop-system is killing us out here). No literary critic would tell a mechanic how to fix an engine. The mechanic has earned the right to be an expert on cars, just as the literary critic has earned her to tell us about why Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style was formative in the early 20th century--that is the meritocratic ideal. But they both started as nothing and chose to become experts--that is the democratic ideal. The real democratic ideal is to have to ability to choose what you want to do and to be and to work to achieve it at the highest level.

Obama IS the democratic ideal because democracy made possible his ability to become, with hard work and training, the POTUS. That attainment IS the meritocratic ideal. The ideals go hand-in-hand.

Perhaps this is correct. It is certainly worthy of a far more in-depth exploration than I can give it here. The problem here, is that holding Palin as a "paragon" of the "democratic ideal" -- that anyone can help lead a state or nation -- is that she is still an elite in ways Douthat and other peddlers totally fail to acknowledge: She's white. In this country, that is a significant advantage. Thousands of municipal, state, and national leaders come from less-than-Ivy League backgrounds and go on to immense success. But implicit in that "democratic ideal" argument is what makes Palin an "everyman" to many people: her whiteness. Like me, as a white person, there are expectations and barriers she simply never had to face. I'll freely admit that, as a man, I've had less to struggle against than she -- no woman gets a free ride in this country. But Ta-Nehisi is right.

That being said, I have a question about two concepts that I think you conflate: "democratic ideal" and "habits of the people we know". It seems like you (and, as temporary spokesperson for black people, black people) are saying that Barack is the democratic ideal because he did things growing up that are recognized as normal habit by you. You, Ivy League educated friends, non-Ivy friends, and Barack all say "Damn" when you see young people on the corner. You all got fresh haircuts. You all know the same history. That this guy who did these things became president therefore means that the "democratic ideal" has been reached seems to me an incorrect statement. Instead, in my opinion, it shows that exceptionnally smart people can do normal things. You have it backwards.

I don't agree with Ross at all. But I do think that Obama getting elected is not the democratic ideal, but proof that the majority of the people in this country have sufficiently tempered their racial lenses to a point where he being black does not mean that he can't be smarter and more able to be president than John McCain. If he ran against Reagan, would he win? Maybe. But would he have beaten Bill Clinton in a primary this year? I don't think so. No, I think that the "democratic ideal" in this country is more mythic lie, created by our founders. They were the smartest, hardest working people in the country (not counting slaves, who obviously worked harder). They went out of their way to not let everyone vote. When Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828, John Quincy Adams threw a hissy fit, and all of Washington society was aghast at this uncivilized mongrel. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is celebrating him as an Everyman Just Like Them.

“Democratic Ideal” is what get evoked by middle-life Americans (average intelligence, average accomplishments, average jobs, average children) when someone who is *better* than them managed to break through the monotony, red tape, and obstacles to reach their potential. But in reality, the democratic ideal is the system that lets the best people win, not the winners themselves. We want to recognize the people as the ideal because, when they share our habits, we get to succeed vicariously through them. But Barack Obama isn’t the democratic ideal just as much as Sarah Palin isn’t the democratic ideal – the 14th and 19th amendments are.

That comment does nothing to counter the Mr. Smith goes to Washington argument. Just because he acts in a manner familiar and similiar to you, and may live in the same neighborhood doesn't make him average.

Sarah Palin did not attend multiple colleges to earn one college degree because she lack the finances or the intellect to accomplish this task. She just flat-out lacked the discipline and the interest. This false staging of her as average individual achieving against the grain is absurd and an insult to those that had to slap together every spare nickel to pay community college tuition or spent extra hours with a tutor to get through a college math or science course. That's what average folks do, even some of the ones that end up at the Ivy leagues.

And this exception to the rule discussion about the Obamas and the Sotomayors of the darker world I just find insulting and narrow-minded. I am a child of the forced busing era of the late 1970s, all of my childhood friends and classmates when to college, some of the best colleges in the country, Ivy, HBCU, state, small liberal arts, etc.... There was no discussion about whether we were going to college, it was a question of WHERE we were going to college and this was a group of first time college kids. It was the simple American dream that one generation will improve from the one before.

Why isn't the story that Sarah Palin has had every opportunity to be exceptional, but has chosen repeatedly to do the bare minimum instead? Choosing to be mediocre because nothing else was required to move up to the next ladder on the rung.

I only see a woman that when things got tough and I mean tough in the sense that she had to APPLY herself intellectually - she QUIT instead. Whenever TNC has referred to Palin as "deeply ignorant" I have always thought, Yes, he's right, but Palin is okay with being that way.

As was well-reported when she was running for governor, Palin has no interest in learning policy or government structure. She thinks these things are unimportant and until she stepped on the national stage for the Presidential race, no one had made her pay for that line of thinking.

And as she has done all her life when she was required to really think, to do the heavy intellectual work, she turned on her heel and began looking for an exit. Not an exit from the job she was not qualified for, but looking for another way to get around the system so she can attain another position or reward she has not EARNED.

(Also, sidenote: Michelle Obama IS something special.)

I've been bothered by something along these lines. There is a tendency in a lot of Western dialogue to wax on about the nature of genius, from every possible angle. The obsession with it for one is betrayed by all the attention/money/research paid to it: the need to investigate it, test it, rip it apart, isolate it and idealize it. The whole dialectic revolves around removing genius/intelligence far from the normal range of human experience. It ignores the fact that these are in fact very common gifts, and that often what distinguishes those who "make it" and those who don't, is actually common sense: the ability to make the right decisions, and to capitalize on those breaks when they are afforded.

I guess it's taken for granted by a lot of white people (but certainly not limited to them alone), that being of a certain race or class, that past success or familial status, is an indicator of a higher intelligence, and when there are "exceptions" to these assumptions, it's due to an unnatural degree of giftedness. Which is simply not true. Like you point out, often times they overlook the aspirations that drive people to better their lives, or reach their goals. It's not always due to, or just because, of extraordinary gifts that they reach those levels.

This need to exoticize intelligence, combined with the general need to exoticize non-white populations, continues to cause the non-stop spewage of bullshit about every non-white candidate for anything. It characterizes these people as further removed from humanity, and it is fundamentally insulting.

The fantasy is not that an intelectually deficient or underachieving person can do as good a job as one who is intelectaully engaged and accomplished. (Is it any wonder that I found the Douthat column incoherent.)

Ross's fallacy is in mixing up the source of the legitimacy of the democratic ideal. Democracy doesn't work simply because the average American(read: white) individual possesses an innate wisdom but rather because the Whole generated by a democratic process is greater than the sum of its Parts. The democratic ideal has an emergent rather than atomistic value that ONLY exists on the level of the nation.

If what Ross is suggesting were true then all we would need to do to elect our leaders is a simple lottery system whereby we simply pull one of our all-equally-capable-of-governing American atoms out of a hat and give them dictatorial powers.

This may be a hard pill for some people to swallow but there is nothing all that special about individual Americans, or any individual whatsoever whether they be Obama or King George. Our entire system of government is founded on the principle that individuals qua individuals are inherently inferior to systems (systems of law, of governance etc.) even if those systems consist of nothing more than mere human beings because systems, and systems alone, can have emergent properties.

Two points.

Uncommon common men are more common than we think they are. Secondly, I think that the majority of people, given the right information, are perfectly capable of making the right call. If anything the democratic vs. meritocratic argument is a false ditchotomy. Both are elitist and deeply problematic. The problem with believing Sarah Palin is representative of the democratic ideal is that it believes that orinary people are far more stupid than they actually are. Also it perpetuates the stereotypical image of a virtuous ignorance. There is no virtue in ignorance, and believing that uninformed people are capable of making good decisions is an insult to the intelligence of the common person. I think most of us try very hard to do the right thing, but more often than not we fail because of our ignorance, willfull-stupidity, bigotry, whatever you want to call it, usually a lack-of-knowledge is at the root of our failings.

At the other side of the coin believing that President Obama is representative of a meritocratic ideal is also insulting to ordinary people. It assumes that the President is somehow better than us, that he posseses talents which are somehow beyond the reach of ordinary people. The man has talents, but like all people there are things he's good at, and things he sucks at. The difference betweeen the President and the rest of us, if any such divide actually exists, is that his talents have been given room and direction to grow. The man is smart, our President is a deeply smart man, but there's nothing supernatural about his intelligence. Obama has no god-like ability, and believing that his natural talents are what allowed him to rise does a deep disservice to ordinary people. Most of us, I think, are capable of contributing to society in such a way that we can be extremely productive. Some of us, not this guy, are even capable of being president, but many of us are not given the room and the chance to develop our abilities in such a way that we can be the best that we are able.

Talent requires oportunity to grow. No amount of undeveloped talent will ever make a person successfull. Meritocratic ideals are as much of a mythology as democratic ideals, and both often degenerate into the rule of many by few. If representative goverment has any hope of surviving then it's hope lies in a responsible, informed, citizenry where most of us are given the opporunity to develop our talents to the fullest degree possible. Our hope, I think, lies in the middle between the two extremes, not all of us are capable of being an Obama no matter how hard we work. However, given the right information, most of us can avoid being Sarah Palin.

That being said I wouldn't downplay the role of "luck" in explaining why some folks succeed at high levels and others don't. I'm not suggesting TNC downplayed the role of luck just commenting. Look at all the "legacies" we have in politics who got elected largely because of their family connections. Look at the two generation ball playing families who may not only have the innate talent, but all the opportunity and training to succeed at a high level.

While President Obama may display many experiences or traits in common with the American black community or the American community in general he also had the "luck" to have a mother who pushed him hard to succeed. Not many moms get up as early in the morning as his did to make sure her kids read.

He also had the "luck" to grow up in a community, Hawaii, where everyone is essentially a "minority" and race plays less of a factor in society. Not that being the fat half black kid was common.

For many years he was an "only" child and having a mom and grandparents who clearly loved him had to help. He is clearly a "singular" political talent. That doesn't mean that there aren't other nearly or equally talented folks out there, but the "stars aligning" perfectly to see them reach high office is uncommon.

In reality the young Barack Obama moved to Chicago after Columbia/NYC to learn about the broader black American experience. I don't think there is a better place in America than the south side of Chicago for that. You have everything from the thugs, to the working class, to the middle income, to the academic types, to the mega-rich business types. Plus he moved here early in the Mayoralty of Harold Washington. It was a great time in the history of black Chicago.

I wouldn't quite say that Obama "hails from the black side of town".

Hyde Park/Kenwood where he lived is atypical for Chicago and America. It's an island of racial and economic diversity surrounded by overwhelmingly black neighborhoods and to a lesser extent great poverty. The best description I ever heard for Hyde Park was "blacks and whites united together against the lower classes."

I also wouldn't say Obama hails from the white part of town. He hails from Hyde Park/Kenwood and that is the academic/diverse/almost wholly unique part of town. Now the social life he and Michelle created partially revolved around "the black part of town", but was clearly not exclusive to it.

Now Michelle clearly grew up in black working class/middle class striving Chicago. Her family moved into then racially changing South Shore neighborhood............... and my family moved out.

I've been wanting to use that line for awhile.

I also find it amusing that "Rainbow Beach" in that neighborhood no longer reflects the "rainbow". Perhaps one day it will.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?address=3111%20E.%2077th%20St.&city=Chicago&state=IL&county=Cook&country=US

nooo that comma after "mean" ruined everything

Anyways, part of the reason why it is so easy to claim Obama as ours despite his upbringing is BECAUSE of Michelle. Here we have a biracial black man who married dark-skinned Michelle Lavaughn Robinson from the South Side of Chicago. Can one get any blacker than that?

I know that I am going to be disappointed with Obama at times but to be able to claim him and relate to his struggles just brings me tears of joy.

/end of rambling.

I suppose Palin could be represented as a triumph of the 'populist' as that word has been corrupted to mean the uneducated plebian, but I don't put Mr. Smith in that category. He certainly had talents and earned his way to Washington, didn't he? He didn't bask in ignorance as the basis for electing him. If anything he represents the pragmatist fighting against the substanceless materialist gliding around and living off the perks of the position without regard to the real problems to be tackled.

See also: the popular and well-run welfare states in nations with a noted lack of diversity.

But here's my stab:

The democratic ideal privileges citizenship (not "common"-ness) as a criterion. That is to say: Every member of a society is an equally legitimate member of the governing body, because he/she is also a member of the governed body. It's a circular definition, because one's citizenship is predicated on their ability to participate as a member in the governing body. This is my understanding of ancient Athenian democracy (and there are obviously things to say about the facts of Athenian society that made this political situation possible)

The meritocratic ideal privileges talent and ability over citizenship, and draws a sharper distinction between those in power and those without. Only under meritocratic logic would one use the phrase "better equipped to lead" (or something like that).

These are really two different political philosophies. One might be called "democratic", and one might be called "republican". The U.S. is not democratic in this sense - nor should it be. Our political problems are not possibly mastered by civilians.

Moreover - nobody who supported Palin supported her merely because she was "common" (I wouldn't describe her this way) but because they thought that her "common" experience and background were a better CRITERION than whatever was offered elsewhere. As long as one insists that someone is a better candidate than someone else, the "democratic ideal" simply doesn't exist. We would need an entirely different society and government for it to exist.

All this to say that the "democratic ideal" is not necessarily equivalent to white populism. But it is hard to see how Douthat is NOT conflating the two.

If we reversed the colors of their skins, the black populist figure would also not rise to national prominence, but might still have a lifetime career in local politics. (And to be fair, deathbypapers, would be considered an example of the evils of populism, I think - not of affirmative action. Complaints about affirmative action arise in school admissions, appointments, promotions and hiring, not in elections.)

On the other hand, most of my friends in high school didn't come from the same kind of background, and almost all of them wanted to go to Ivies -- and most of them did (I went to a high-powered high school magnet program, blah blah blah. Really the only people who didn't go to them were Asian men who did actually seem to run into the semi-quota problem.)

The other thing was that the Ivies offered a lot more financial aid, so if you got in, they would make sure you could go, whatever it took -- another bonus for the families that didn't have a lot of money to spare.

Of course, lots of Ivy legacy families want their kids to go to Ivies, because "Ivy" does open doors that non-Ivies might not. I guess maybe I had the luxury of having most doors open to me already, and not caring so much about the others?

White and black working classes and lower middle classes really do have a lot in common and would benefit from working together more. No question about that.

But we still have to ask whether our elite (including, but not limited to Obama) is taking us in the right direction at any given time. I'm not overly happy with where the upper-middle-class-on-up class has been going over the past generation. I think they've been feathering their nests at everyone else's expense, to put it bluntly, and that the credentials obsession in our educational system is part of the problem. (Lots of people go to state universities because they are CHEAP, not because they couldn't get in elsewhere. Same applies for learning on the job or in the army.) I also worry about a ruling elite unmoored from any decision rules beyond expediency, which does seem to be what you get fairly often when you chuck out traditional religion and "the neighbors are watching."

None of this has anything to do with Obama's color... indeed, it applies equally to Bush. It's a question we have to ask about both parties and all institutions (including large businesses, universities, and organized churches) these days. What's the basis for any of them to have authority? None of them are convincing me they know what they're about. It's all got a "deck chairs on the Titanic" feel some days. And the Titanic in the comparison is the country's productive capability and social glue.

The science fiction nerd in me is thinking more and more about Asimov's Foundation trilogy these days.

Are you questioning Obama's blackness? I strongly disagree that he could change what he is. Did you not read his books?

I hope I am not reading too much into your comment but this is one thing that ticks me off with some white follks--this idea that we can change if we wanted to. You are only black because you want to be black!

Barack Obama is a black man with a black family. I do not think that he could or would ever want to be a "polygot Hawaiian politician." Being black is not about waking up one day and deciding you are going to be black it is much more than that. I honestly can't imagine Obama any other way.

I'm shooting blind here, tbh; I actually don't know very much about Palin's background. But I bet dollars to donuts that while there may be a lot of red necks in her pedigree, there is little if any poverty or adversity.

I hope this comes out right, because it's a tricky sentiment to parse, but while I'm right there with you all on the broader thrust of this thread, some of the "Whites don't get it" strands make me a little uncomfortable. Of course, there's disproportionate imprisonment along racial lines and other aspects of white privilege/institutionalized discrimination to take into account, but that doesn't mean white folks are unfamiliar with the idea of bright kids going off the rails - and hence, of the ones that "make it" being as much lucky as smart. It's not like we all live in some Pleasantville suburb where no one gets knocked up or hooked on smack - sure, a white junkie might be less likely to do time, but no matter how bright he was before he started using, he's not likely to become President later in life, either. Right?

I know you all probably don't mean it entirely literally or to be completely sweeping, but I thought it was still worth checking some of the generalizations here. (By the same token - aren't there plenty of middle class black kids that don't know anyone who's been shot, or otherwise fallen by the wayside in a race-stereotypical way? Or is that my hopelessly naive Canadian-ness coming out?)

On a related note:

I mean these people talk about Obama as if he is the smartest person to ever hold public office and the smartest ever to be president. The problem for many whites, it seems, is that his intelligence is doubly magnified because of his brown body. They weren't expecting it.

This one really stung. I'm more impressed with Obama daily - for his intelligence, his humor, the remarkable way he has of speaking TO people without ever dumbing himself down. I was 18 when G.W.B. was elected, so I haven't paid very close attention to a lot of past US presidents, but of the two I've seen the most of, I know damn well which one I find more impressive - and it sure as hell isn't because I'm amazed that a black man can string a sentence together. I also admire him more than any Canadian politician I've observed in my lifetime (Trudeau might be the exception) and again, I think that's on his own merits, not the color of his skin.

He's not the second coming, but he's not par for the course, either. He has talents that plenty of other politicians don't. Please, please don't take my admiration of those talents away from me by suggesting that I'm only impressed because he's black, and my expectations have been reduced accordingly.

But there is something to the Ivy/Non-Ivy argument. Look at the post-war Presidents:

Truman (non-Ivy)
Eisenhower (non-Ivy)
Kennedy (Ivy)
LBJ (non-Ivy)
Nixon (non-Ivy)
Ford (non-Ivy)
Carter (non-Ivy)
Reagan (non-Ivy)
Bush (Ivy)
Clinton (Ivy)
Bush (Ivy)
Obama (Ivy)

Ivy's are having a good run but the results are, lets be kind, sub-optimal. Throw in the fact that Wall Street is dominated by Ivy and that national media is dominated by Ivy and their performance has been also, yes I am in a kind mood today, sub-optimal and you can see why people are getting tired of all this. Credentials are not matching performance.

Obama has certain natural gifts of intellect and personality which, with hard work on his part, and perhaps with opportunities provided by circumstance, allowed him to reach the pinnacle of potential. As you say, you probably knew dozens of people with the natural gifts, growing up, but a confluence of circumstances kept them from reaching their potential.

Sarah Palin, to whom the comparison was made in Douthat's column, has certain natural gifts of personality. She does not appear--she has given no EVIDENCE--of natural gifts of intellect. She has not worked particularly hard intellectually, although she does seem to have been filled with ambition, which is a powerful motivator. Those qualities, combined with opportunities provided by circumstance, allowed her to reach far past the pinnacle of her potential, and landed her in a Peter's Principle plateau of ineptitude.

How Palin's story is more impressive than Obama's I will never understand. That Obama is considered an elitist for rising above his given circumstances to the heights, through hard work and determination, while Palin is considered a "real American" and an example of American democratic ideals...well, I will never understand that. I think that there is a segment of this nation's citizenry that believes if you have an aw-shucks Jimmy-Stewart demeanor it makes you more genuine than someone who has worked to improve him- or herself.

But I think I agree with you that the democratic and meritocratic ideal are basically the same thing. It is one thing to say "Any one can grow up to be president," but that doesn't actually mean you can sit on your ass all your life and then run for office and win. There's a tacit understanding that this is actually "Any one can grow up to be president, if they work hard enough."

I work in academia, where grade inflation is a huge problem, because there is an assumption that, if you were smart enough to get into the Ivies, you're not a C student. But you know what? There's a reason that grades run the gamut from A to F. Not everyone in the world is an A student. When I grade (I'm a librarian, but I teach the occasional graduate course), I almost never award an A, because an A paper is something that does so much more than what I'm expecting. I actually don't think I've ever given a paper anything higher than an A-. And I've given out my share of Cs and even Ds. Because while society may think that we're all equal, and we should be in society's eyes, we are not all equal intellectually. And if you believe--and, given the past decade, this is a big "if"--that our country's leaders (presidents, senators, congressmen, governors) should be reasonably intelligent and intellectually supple, then you can't believe in a purely democratic ideal, but can only believe in a meritocratic one.

And it doesn't make you a fake American.

That has to be one of the top 10 most misused words in the language.

LOL.

While some of them do go to the Howards, Morehouse and Spelman, many of them are sending their children off to the Ivy League.

I'm sorry, but this is just wishful thinking. Everyone wants to believe in the level-playing field where everyone can be everything -- but it just ain't so. I teach at UCLA where the student body if very diverse. I teach kids of all races and levels of intelligences, and there are kids that could NEVER in a million years do things that I can do in my sleep -- and Obama is much smarter and more gifted than I am -- yes -- he is better when it comes to the job of being president.

Yes, people have their strengths and weaknesses, but some people are likely to have a huge set of strentghs and a small set of weaknesses which does make them "better" in every real sense than "ordinary people".

You're absolutely right when you say that many "ordinary" folks don't get the opportunity they should, and that is something everyone should work for, but you're delusional if you don't accept the limitations that stem from genetics.

Consider Obama -- his success is the intersection of natural talent, a crap load of hard-work and the incredible good fortune of having Bush for 8 years followed by grandpa Simpson picking moron Palin. Without all of these 3, he's not president.

"If representative goverment has any hope of surviving then it's hope lies in a responsible, informed, citizenry where most of us are given the opporunity to develop our talents to the fullest degree possible."

But an informed citizenry and realization of potential are often in opposition -- people fulfilling their potential in most cases are not wasting their time learning about politics, they are sharpening their skills to make a life for themselves and their family.

NO, Obama couldn't be anything he wanted, just because he doesn't fit into neatly into someone else's boxes. NO, just because he doesn't fit nominal racial categories, doesn't mean he can wield his supposedly fluid identities like a weapon, mold WHO HE IS to his theoretical desires.

This is just another exercise in essentialism: fanciful, fictional, and completely freed of the need of humans to be stable in themselves. Please read what he has to say about himself. You will find a human. Not a sprite or changeling masquerading as a man behind a layer of masks.

As an aside, I imagine you could find someone who would complain about BHO as an affirmative-action candidate, but I think that someone is probably so far to the right of my political-spectrometer that I don't consider them serious. I mean, if we have to account for truthsters and nut-jobs of all stripes, then we can find someone who has said almost anything about almost anyone.

Dont think he meant you? Just sayin

Corollary: When some of that luck/expectation/privilege gets taken away, you feel that you must be being treated unfairly.

Maybe it's "With a few less bad breaks, I would be her?"

If you're against both democracy and meritocracy, who DO you think should lead governments? How is the choice made? Lottery?

That sounds snide, but I'm genuinely curious.

people fulfilling their potential in most cases are not wasting their time learning about politics, they are sharpening their skills to make a life for themselves and their family.

This isn't true. There's no divide between providing a life for your family and reading books. Truck drivers read history too.

That is why forums like this are important. If you spend all of your time talking to people who think and talk just like you do, you will miss the bigger picture that the world is changing at a rapid pace and it is totally plausible that a black man can be elected president.

You're right about his flexibility in deciding who he would be. I myself have had some of that flexibility in my own life. But most of my story takes place with me being a young Black man in America, and when I had the opportunity to distance myself from that identity, I firmly decided to dance with them who brung me, as Greg Easterbrook delightfully says often.

That doesnt mean however that I decided to distance myself from my other roots and connections, I dont think that sort of thing is a zero-sum-game anymore than a child of divorced parents managing affections from among mom, dad, stepmom and/or stepdad is, either. Its a postmodern thing, some of yall wouldnt understand! lol

I wrote a little more on this theme in my blog a while back if you're interested:

http://obamalondon.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-heroes-are.html

That Obama is considered an elitist for rising above his given circumstances to the heights, through hard work and determination...

I feel like there's an analogy to Tiger and Venus and Serena in all this. Weren't people lamenting the "changing nature" of golf and tennis when they came on to the scene? It seems to me to be the same type of thing.

Individuals get to be good at things by trying to be good at them. That's how it works. The problem with Sarah Palin is that she isn't trying to be a good governor. She wouldn't have been trying to be a good Vice President. Barack Obama spent his youth trying to become a really good lawyer. Sarah Palin spent her youth trying to become a really good TV personality. And probably, she's quite good at it. The job of a politician is kind of like the TV personality, but the job of governor isn't.

The Mr. Smith ideal is not so much that you don't have skills, but that you keep your focus on what matters. That background and parentage don't matter so much as dedication and sincerity. Sarah Palin has no dedication to governance, and precious little sincerity, either.

By the way, intelligence plays a part in "talent", but only a small part. There are plenty of chess masters with average IQs. They got to be good by trying to get better, sometimes obsessively.

This is so true. It was actually discussed at length in the comments section of a post earlier this week about public education. The idea being that white privilege and class privilege do not exist -- if you have good test scores,a good education and a white collar job, it's because you and your ancestors are smarter than everyone else. Very deeply ingrained in the white middle class.

The degree of class stratification readily seen among Boston Brahmins or Southern Bluebloods just wasnt possible for us, and unlike now, when African-American anti-intellectualism appears to be the norm, for a long long time it wasnt the norm, no matter what mainstream character assasination held.

So what makes Obama exceptional is his accomplishments, but (maybe up to the point where he became a US Senator fast-tracked by that 2004 speech,) he actually wasnt THAT exceptional from a Black community perspective.

Plenty of well-educated state senators and professors in Harlem, the Southside, MD/VA/DC area, Oakland, Miami, Atlanta, etc.

See what I mean?

I would say that republicanism basically rests on the idea, not that only certain people are capable of making good decisions, but rather that we have to delegate people to make decisions.

Firstly, I think that a pure democracy is pretty much impossible in a practical sense -- we just can't each vote on everything. Secondly, it's a division of labor argument: if some people specialize in understanding laws and issues, they are in a better position to make good decisions.

To me, it's like delegating a doctor to deal with medical issues. It doesn't mean I'm not intelligent or don't have good judgment -- or even that I couldn't have become a doctor if I had chosen to. I just don't have the same information, skillset and experience. I choose a doctor that is qualified and whom I trust to have my interests at heart.

The problem then becomes making sure the person has our best interests at heart. But I'm not sure that's a necessary flaw of republicanism, per se.

...there are plenty of people who feel on a gut level, America was born a white Christian nation and when that racial / ethnic / cultural core has to make TOO much room for the Other, room beyond a token 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, that the "Real America" is in jeopardy.

The difference between the melting pot ideal espoused by some whites, and what they actually do when faced with the reality of a rainbow, is perfectly expressed here in ultra-liberal San Francisco where the public schools are 13% white. And remember that here the flight is not from blacks and Latinos, so that whites could point to lower test scores as an excuse for removing their kids from public schools. Here the public schools are filled predominantly by Asians, whose educational statistics are often superior to whites.

Growing up white in SF public schools is a great education for white kids in understanding what it is like not to be the majority. I had one Chinese-American teacher point out my daughter (the only (blonde, blue-eyed kid in the room) in class as an example of what the followers of Hitler looked like!

You say here:

"The use of the word neighbor is instructive--Barack Obama hails from the black side of town. And not just any black side of town, but the South Side of Chicago, a place that was the cultural and economic capital of black America for decades. Moreover he isn't simply from our side of town, he actually behaves like the people we know....For black men, that is the democratic ideal.

...That he's Ivy League doesn't mean much to us. I live in Harlem, and some of my black friends here are Ivy League grads, and some aren't. But all of us get off the subway in the evening, look at the kids standing on the corner, sigh to ourselves, and mutter "Damn," under our breath."

For working-class whites, especially rural whites, what you just described is not the case at all. For example, I'm white and come from a small, farming town. I got good grades in school, went to college, then law school, and now live in NYC. In other words, I left, and everyone knows it. When I go home and hang out with my friends there - people I grew up with and have known my whole life - there's a palpable discomfort on their part when I talk about my job, what I did for fun last weekend, or whatever. I asked one of my best friends about it once, and he told me my "success" makes him feel like a failure, makes him embarrassed about his "mediocre" life. This is a guy who's raising two kids, built his own damn house, and served in Iraq, for crying out loud. And he's the one who feels inadequate by comparison?!

The point is, if you recognize that this kind of class-based and urban/rural resentment exists even among friends, it becomes easier to also recognize that the anti-elitism of Palin's supporters, and their perception of her as representing the democratic ideal, really is about class, lifestyle, and personal validation for them, and not about race.

Lemmy Caution, it's good to see you, and read you, too.

You, sir, are no iconoclast. There are millions of well-read, well-educated African-Americans who take their respective place amongst the intelligentsia. For you to continue to note in here that only white people are so turned on as to 'get' your blog is, quite frankly, insulting.

You also made mention of this a few weeks back when you noted that it was your belief that most of those who had purchased your book were white. I assure you, had I any intention of purchasing the book, I would not have done so after that direct slight to me as an African-American.

So, what is it? Were you beat up by other black children in the playground at school? Were you shunned in University by popular blacks? Honestly, what is it? Why do you feel the need to constantly qualify your cross-over appeal? We get it, you feel a kindred spirit with whites and jews, where does that leave blacks? Aside from rolling out your blackness to bolster your arguments, qualify your 'hipness' and prove to us blacks that you are gully?

For the most part, I enjoy reading your blog when it is topical, I tend to shy away from the 'in yo face' black posts as they come off a tad contrived. The manner in which you approach your race and how your race plays a part in the life that you lead really reminds me of how glad I am that I did not attend an HBCU. It's almost as if you stare at the other side with such a longing to be part of that dynamic that you have come to idealize their thought-process, their deeds, their world because you have clearly not had that much exposure to what is main-stream society.

It is all a bit sad and I don't think it's readily evident to people like you, who chose to attend an HBCU for the same reason that has now come to hold you hostage, to exclude the other side. Funny that this self-imposed exclusion (perhaps more exactly 'seclusion') has found its way into your writings in such a pejorative manner. You may argue that you chose to attend an HBCU in order to have your needs met as a black man or to become more involved in your community or to be closer to your fellow blacks, but all of these reasons can also be carted out as reasons NOT to attend an HBCU. Indeed, were you not raised in a black household, by a black father and a black mother, surrounded by your black siblings, in a black community? At some point in making the decision to go to University, you decided that you did not want to have the experience that a more diverse university would have provided and yet you gaze upon the other side with such longing. Why?

In truth, you do not seem to know how to feel at ease within society without wearing the cloak of your blackness as some sort of albatross about your neck. Because you never escaped being constantly reminded that you are black, it now seems that you focus so much on interpreting society through this very limited, very quaint black filter. Of course, it is not all detrimental and yes, it does offer an interesting slant to your writings which I can appreciate whilst also deriding it.

Perhaps the bottom line is trying to understand whether or not blacks are welcome to your blog world as you constantly remind us that you don't feel you are supported by your community. It is all such a puzzle to me as unlike you, I never felt the need to qualify or have my blackness confirmed, having come from a family that put more emphasis on my need to be part of the larger world than the black world, which is why I have traveled to over 14 countries and lived abroad for a large portion of my life. Perhaps the difference between us is that my upbringing and education has lead me to wear my blackness as a silent badge of honour, always there, always reminding, but never gaudy, never gauche and never in question. Whilst you feel the need to form every thought, write every word, turn every phrase as a black man trying desperately to be accepted by your white counterparts.

Are you struggling with your identity and is this blog a way of working through this? Do you really think that blacks are not competent enough to understand your perspective (which is not at all unique, and interesting moreso for the calibre of readers and replies that you get to your posts than for the content provided by you alone)? I am sorry that your book sales were not what you desired them to be, but trying to place the blame on the black community for the low numbers smacks of petulance and marginalizing the black readers of your blog is ever discourteous.

...Oh my goodness. I'm not sure how that is an example of a great education at all. Not that we need to hide kids from history - the historical record obviously documents what kind of people Hitler considered superior/inferior - but pointing out examples like that in a classroom of kids is not just unnecessary, it's really wrong. It's as insulting as pointing out a disabled kid and being like, In Nazi Germany, you'd be marked for extermination. It's not good for anybody.

The idea that Obama could only have succeeded because of some grand mixture of affirmative action and white guilt is a corollary of the same - Douthat's "average Americans" have a hard time processing the concept of being outworked or outclassed. They simply haven't had to compete this hard with "others". They haven't directly experienced, or have conveniently ignored, the rest of the world pushing past them. When people from different countries, neighborhoods, ethnic groups or races get ahead in school or in the workplace it's not because they offer a unique intellect, set of skills or qualities, or that they worked twice as hard, it's affirmative action. When jobs get outsourced, it's not because someone elsewhere is doing it better, more efficiently, for less money; it's because of the CEOs, the bankers, the brokers, Washington DC, New York City... all of them on the take. The Man is conspiring against The Little Guy. This is reinforced by politicians, pundits, and those with an interest in keeping the charade up. Including Douthat, here.

There are millions of well-read, well-educated African-Americans who take their respective place amongst the intelligentsia. For you to continue to note in here that only white people are so turned on as to 'get' your blog is, quite frankly, insulting.

Um, I'm black and love and "get" this blog. I think TNC was being a bit facetious.

You also made mention of this a few weeks back when you noted that it was your belief that most of those who had purchased your book were white. I assure you, had I any intention of purchasing the book, I would not have done so after that direct slight to me as an African-American.

He was joking!

I am tired already and will not answer any more of your foolishness. If you were a regular you would know that the blacks that read this blog have no problem with TNC and what he has written.

Shoo.

There are millions of well-read, well-educated African-Americans who take their respective place amongst the intelligentsia. For you to continue to note in here that only white people are so turned on as to 'get' your blog is, quite frankly, insulting.

Um, I'm black and love and "get" this blog. I think TNC was being a bit facetious.

You also made mention of this a few weeks back when you noted that it was your belief that most of those who had purchased your book were white. I assure you, had I any intention of purchasing the book, I would not have done so after that direct slight to me as an African-American.

He was joking!

I am tired already and will not answer any more of your foolishness. If you were a regular you would know that the blacks that read this blog have no problem with TNC and what he has written.

Shoo.

Amen. I brought my 6 month old son in the booth to vote with me and I choked up thinking exactly that.

(Think fanoftheradiodept got beat up by some dudes from Howard once?)

This is powerful stuff. Great post, and the comments here, as always, are amazing.

2 non-Ivys then an Ivy then (as if in repulsion following his assassination) FIVE non-Ivys then (as if a corrective) FOUR Ivys.

To give an example from my own experience, I grew up with a kid who was half black (a black mother, in his case, and a white father). Both parents were highly educated (as were Obama's), but there's no way this kid could have moved to the South Side of Chicago and won any local election. Never would have happened. He was a smart kid -- ended up going to an Ivy League school -- but he was basically a nerd. No chameleon skills whatever.

Incidentally, another chameleon -- and many may not think of him this way -- is George W. Bush. The great actor Daniel Day Lewis even expressed admiration for his talent on this score, in an NY Times Magazine article last year, noting how the Connecticut-born, Ivy-educated Bush, scion of one of the most prominent WASP families, held his hands like he carried an axe for a living. Bush has this in common with Obama: both men moved to places far from where they were born, and both failed, initially, in running for Congress there because they were beaten by locals who positioned themselves as more authentic. And both men adapted to their new homes, married locals, and adopted some local mannerisms.

Even talented chameleons are, of course, constricted by certain realities. Bush would always be white, so there was no way he could have decided to become a Chicago Southsider. And Obama would always be black, according to America's one-drop rule, so there's no way he could have become a white Texan. But he could have taken a polyglot path as I mentioned above.

It's interesting though how Obama seems to have filled a need for many African Americans, a need that many of us outsiders probably never recognized. I'm trying to think of a politically correct way to put this, but Obama seems to fill a need in being a black politician who appeals to whites. He's not the only one with this sort of ability -- Corey Booker has it, as does Deval Patrick, and that guy from Tennessee, whose name escapes me at the moment -- but Obama was the first of this kind of black politician to run for national office.

I guess its a luxury I had growing up that I always knew that although you might not end up president you'd definitely end up alright if you worked hard

Unfortunately to a certain degree you can't be both the everyman and the great man - Lincoln came from a log cabin - still though Lincoln would not be the democratic ideal by these standards - Truman is the closest thing to the democratic ideal - really can only happen to a Vice President - Carter is to talented a campaigner and to saintly a demeanor for true everyman street cred

I would assume that most of the people who read this blog are white too, because it's the Atlantic and most of the people who read the Atlantic are white, like most of the people who read Essence are black. Also, I've seen a great number of people in different comments say something to the effect of "I'm white."

TNC - you are very widely read - just today I was reading mrs-o.org and your blog was mentioned in the chatroom as a model blog, especially because of your interaction with the commenters.

And for the record, I'm black and I bought your book.

To give an example from my own experience, I grew up with a kid who was half black (a black mother, in his case, and a white father). Both parents were highly educated (as were Obama's), but there's no way this kid could have moved to the South Side of Chicago and won any local election. Never would have happened. He was a smart kid -- ended up going to an Ivy League school -- but he was basically a nerd. No chameleon skills whatever.

Incidentally, another chameleon -- and many may not think of him this way -- is George W. Bush. The great actor Daniel Day Lewis even expressed admiration for his talent on this score, in an NY Times Magazine article last year, noting how the Connecticut-born, Ivy-educated Bush, scion of one of the most prominent WASP families, held his hands like he carried an axe for a living. Bush has this in common with Obama: both men moved to places far from where they were born, and both failed, initially, in running for Congress there because they were beaten by locals who positioned themselves as more authentic. And both men adapted to their new homes, married locals, and adopted some local mannerisms.

Even talented chameleons are, of course, constricted by certain realities. Bush would always be white, so there was no way he could have decided to become a Chicago Southsider. And Obama would always be black, according to America's one-drop rule, so there's no way he could have become a white Texan. But he could have taken a polyglot path as I mentioned above.

It's interesting though how Obama seems to have filled a need for many African Americans, a need that many of us outsiders probably never recognized. I'm trying to think of a politically correct way to put this, but Obama seems to fill a need in being a black politician who appeals to whites. He's not the only one with this sort of ability -- Corey Booker has it, as does Deval Patrick, and that guy from Tennessee, whose name escapes me at the moment -- but Obama was the first of this kind of black politician to run for national office.

I guess its a luxury I had growing up that I always knew that although you might not end up president you'd definitely end up alright if you worked hard

Unfortunately to a certain degree you can't be both the everyman and the great man - Lincoln came from a log cabin - still though Lincoln would not be the democratic ideal by these standards - Truman is the closest thing to the democratic ideal - really can only happen to a Vice President - Carter is to talented a campaigner and to saintly a demeanor for true everyman street cred

Regarding the book sales, again with the joking qualifier. Really? And is there anything substantive to support your suggestion other than women's (or men's)intuition on this one?

Also, psssst...I'm not sure you got the memo but blacks are not a monolith. I am a black reader of his blog and I do have a problem with the suggestion that the black community doesn't support him and that blacks are not clever enough to get his posts.

As for the Democratic Ideal, if it means someone as unprepared as Palin could be president, I don't want any part of it.

TNC, Can I address you like this from now on? Please? It's so classic.

Fair point, but isnt it also easy to recognize that "if you recognize that this kind of class-based and urban/rural resentment exists even among friends" they would be even more irrationally resentful of an outsider who feeds into resentments that have been stoked in their communities for decades?

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_mail_he_carried_with_him.php

Lies! Damn lies!!!!!!11111

I think if you take out Nixon, Bush II and maybe Carter, I'd say they're all fairly competent. I'd argue Kennedy was exceptional and Obama looks like he at least could be; others would argue that Reagan was exceptional. Not sure that I see a pattern with Ivies versus non-Ivies being better. I mean, if this were 1979, wouldn't you be saying the same thing about non-Ivies?

There's an element of truth to that.

And also I think someone is a wee bit jealous, just sayin...

One need not wonder why race relations have not enjoyed as much progress as one would expect in this country when you have blacks who subscribe (no pun intended) to such ridiculous sentiment.

Please, do regale me with other 'whites only' magazines out there, perhaps I need to cancel my subscription to Architectural Digest, Conde Nast's Traveller, Vanity Fair and The Nation amongst others...

Thanks for this post. It is so great. I hope this reply doesn't get posted twice. I wrote it once and got some kind of mysterious server issue.

I am sorry to say that the idea that Barack Obama is somehow "uncommon" is very common amongst some of the white folks I know. The only way they can reconcile his success is that he is:

1. 1/2 white
2. A product of Affirmative Action
3. Magical
4. A Smooth Talkin' Fake

I am enough of a starry-eyed optimist so that I like to think this kind of attitude will change over the next few decades. When Barack Obama was elected, what it said to me was that now my black neighbor could theoretically get elected president just like my white neighbor could, as long as he had natural political talents, worked hard, studied hard, and dedicated his life to the task, just like Obama. I still wonder if my female neighbor could be elected, but that is another story.

At least twice.

I am just going to go ahead and file fanoftheradiodept under, "nigga please."

Also more personally, I just liked his calm steady, dignified temperment, so rare these days in national politics...

I have been reading his blog for a long time as well.

Just the sheer fact that you stop reading after the first sentence, tells me that you didn't read the whole post and took one line out of context. So surely the rant you just went on might not hold any water.

I respect the differing opinions to any blogs that are posted out there. The things that you are calling TNC out for is what you are guilty of doing yourself. You are precluding and identifying yourself with qualifiers. That sir, does not make you an iconoclast.

Oh and by the way, I am black, didn't attend a HBCU and completely get TNC's blog.

The semiotics of lambskin are a worthwhile discussion on its own merits, but if BHO had gone to the University of Chicago for his undergrad and Berkeley for his graduate degree, this conversation wouldn't be all that different.

(*I'm leaving Stanford out of this, because, while it's hard to get in, I've found it is relatively undemanding on its students - and many of the people who have impressed me the most intellectually went to the Univ. of Chicago, too, yet it often gets left off these lists. Still, I think most people would let Stanford connote the same things.)

However, before we accept him as an honorary white man he has to do ten things.

First, change his name to "Bob".

Second, more comic book posts.

Third, he must acknowledge the genius that is all things "Sarah".

Fourth, he must remember to say this to himself every night before he watches Conan O'Brien: "President Obama is NOT black......he is 1/2 white......and dat's allright.

Fifth, see the second requirement.

Sixth, shop at J Crew or the GAP.

Seventh, become a Civil War Reenactor. Preferably wearing grey.

Eighth, purchase and ride a recumbent bicycle.

Ninth, acknowledge than Johnny Cash and Elvis are the two greatest artists the world has ever known with the possible exception of Frank Sinatra.

Tenth, in his Civil War posts only use the phrase "war of northern aggression" when referring to the conflict.

If we go A - F, I letter grade scale, I'd say

Truman A -
Eisenhower B +
Kennedy B -
LBJ B +
Nixon D-
Ford C
Carter B
Reagan B+
Bush C+
Clinton B-
Bush F
Obama I

Ivies = B-, C+, B-, F, I
Non-I's = A-, B+, B+, D-, C, B, B+

Just eyeballing it quicky...

Do you get this angry when people assume most Americans are white?

Does this somehow mean "There are no blacks in America?"

TNC (who can defend himself) pushes his readers to embrace a certain measure of intellectual discipline that is an egalitarian influence on everyone, no matter their background.

And here you are making mad threats because he stated something "in all likelihood" that bears out everywhere.

There are likely mostly Whites buying tix to Public Enemy shows.

There are likely mostly Whites in Carmelo Anthony jerseys.

There are likely mostly Whites bumping beats by Dr. Dre.

There are likely more white Wire fans in the US than Black ones.

Can you guess why that might be?

I heart you.

It is curious to me that so many of you written back with 'I'm black and I feel....' I am sorry, I do not mean to be rude but you don't honestly believe you speak for everyone? As I stated before, the black community is not a monolith. We are entitled to have feelings independent of each other, the world is not going to end because we do not stand as one, so calm down.

As you can see above, TNC posted a link to his previous statement about blacks not buying his book, where is the funny in that post? Please do point it out to me, I am afraid that my British education has somehow distorted my ability to discern American humour.

Perhaps it was this statement:

'That said, I do have one request--I'ma need for ya'll to not call Frederick Douglass, Franklin Douglass. The man was too bad-ass for that. Give em his 'spect.'

I suspect used to qualify and perhaps soften the impact of this statement:

'White people: I appreciate your patronage. In fact, you comprise most of my audience. My black readers are cool, but I deeply suspect that none of them bought my book. Plus Negroes don't click through ads.'

The aforementioned quote being a foil laden with funny shucking and jiving ebonics to soften the sting of being discounted in the statement that preceded it?

And please, do not insult me nor yourselves by suggesting that I have paid TNC undue attention 'earned' by his supposed fame by taking time out of my life, which a large portion is admittedly spent on the computer as is the nature of my career, by writing a detailed response to the perceived slight. As with anything, I wish to present my argument in its entirety. To do anything less would be well, uncivilized.

I seem to remember hearing this before....

Billie Dee Williams Says you need to read the archives

Right on. And also:

Obama IS the democratic ideal because democracy made possible his ability to become, with hard work and training, the POTUS. That attainment IS the meritocratic ideal. The ideals go hand-in-hand.

Great stuff. I have a hard time with even distinguishing the "democratic" v. "meritocratic" ideal, and you show why: they really need to coexist.

I'm glad you didnt attend one too. We used to love going on road trips for various extracurricular organizations, meeting brothers like you and shutting your lame hatin' on HBCUs on a regular basis.

The phrase "backhanded compliment" comes to mind.

Hold up, Kenyatta is from Covington??!! We might be folks.

Ask her if she has any Moore(s), McDaniel(s), Teamer(s), or Hill(s) in her family.

Shout out to Frazier High School, my grandparents' alma mater.

(I'll have a deeper comment on the thread subject later.)

Is that allowed? As being black and disagreeing with TNC is ostensibly not.

Also, was this statement supposed to make sense metaphorically? I'm going to need you to take it out of rap jargon and speak plain English as rap really isn't my cup of tea.

I do hope that TNC has an answer to my grievance as a blogger who is obligated to take ownership of his words and not simply close the comments section, summarily ending the discussion.

I see what you mean, but I think the word Chameleon has too much of a negative connotation. There is a fine line, but I think a legitimate one between someone who uses this skill to pull off a fraud and someone who legitimately is able to fit into multiple cultural settings and chooses the one they want and is comfortable moving between them. For example their was the incident during the campaign where Obama told the guy at a diner to keep the change as a tip by saying "we square" it isn't a put on for him to use working class vernacular, he came by it naturally by spending years working as a community organizer in working class Chicago. Likewise he can sit at a dinner party with a bunch of College professors and fit right in. Neither situation is a pose.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the comical sight of Mitt Romney trying to talk slang.

Being white is accompanied by privilege. But possessing privilege is not the same thing as being elite, particularly when those privileges derive from membership to a majority: whiteness, Christianity, heterosexuality, nativism, etc. (Gender is, in my view, the more complicated factor here.) We need to distinguish the privileges of the few from the privileges of the many.

Again, too, there are those of us for whom "elite" is not automatically a bad word.

Unfortunately the post of white spokesperson has already been filled by John Rich. We had a vote and everything.....:)

To me the point is that Mr. Smith symbolizes the way democracy is supposed to allow real meritocracy. He most certainly doesn't symbolize know-nothingism.

Douthat's column presumes that Palin is actually a person of sense and ability who didn't succeed because of her "common" background, when that so obviously is not the case. She didn't succeed because she clearly lacked any qualities that made her fit for the job.

If Palin had competed against Bush and lost, then Douthat's column would have been right on, because neither has any sense or ability, but Bush is the scion of privilege and has connections.

I wish Eva. I was born & raised in the bright & shiny suburbs in a 2-parent middle class home. There are few, if any, middle class blacks that could throw a dart at the family tree and not hit a name that fell by the wayside regardless of class. Many of us would count ourselves fortunate to get out of the immediate family without hitting that name. That doesn't account for the friends & neighbors who also fell. I'm hopeful that this is changing with each new generation.

As a previous comment stated, education and success have historically been very dangerous pursuits for blacks in America. It was the "uppity" ones that were hung from the highest trees.

When the conservative right call Obama elitist I hear a euphemism for uppity. The McCain Palin "Real America" Rallies -the GOP Convention itself looked like an angry lynch mob to me. The Field Negro says FOXNews is Radio Rwanda. So true, except Fox will not succeed in destroying what our nation is building.

We had kids like you where I grew up. You got beat up even more than I did. I'm so sorry.

There is plenty of evidence that more diverse systems are less efficient but more robust. Here I am talking about diversity of world views, diversity of the conceptual models people use to construct arguments. I am assuming that it is at least in part these models are determined by where you go to school. And I am assuming that Ivys tend to share the same conceptual models and that those models are different than the ones people have who are educated elsewhere have.

Big assumptions so this probably way off base. Way more than can be talked about in a comment thread but there is a very tight relationship between government, wall street, and the national media. The utter failure for all three to see this financial crisis coming and stop it, is this because they all work from a shared, flawed model? If so, then maybe it is time to kick the Ivys to the curb.

FWIW, I am a big Obama fan and despise Palin and I cant imagine that changing. I am just saying....

Have you never heard read sarcasm or self deprecating humor? Never seen comedians turn stereotypes on their ears to exaggerate and make a point?

I'm not closing the comments section. But you're banned.

Had no idea the first rapper was a medieval Spaniard.

Agreed and consider my comment amended.

I had to look up who "John Rich" is.

My store of knowledge of "pop" culture is as bleak and barren as the mind of Sarah Palin.

I thought you meant Frank Rich.

I figure right now John Rich is penning a ballad to the genius of Sarah Palin.

Call it the "Sister Sarah Rocks" America song.

I really enjoyed TNC's distillation of the issues on this topic in his most recent post and I will simply say this: For what Govenor Palin has shown thus far, she is a person of very modest talents. She is inarticulate, uninformed and downright lazy. I don't think her treatment by the media and/or her current decision to resign as Govenor should discourage anyone from a modest background from pursing a career in politics, unless they plan to model her behavior. In general, (and I say this as a life long cynic) the pucli is receptive to people who work hard and take the opportunity to understand the complicated issues involved in making public policy. Govenor Palin has shown no such inclination on either the national or state level, and that is why she has been lambasted by the media, deservedly so.

I am both shocked and disgusted by all of these commentators who argue that she wasn't given a fair shake. In fact, I think that she was handled with kid gloves because of the fact that she is very mediocre and no one wanted to be accused of sexism or elitism (see Eugene Robinson's op-ed in The Washington Post from yesterday. He does a much better job than I could on explaining this point). The bottomline is that Govenor Palin has acheived more than she rightfully deserves, which in fact makes one question our notions of merit in this society (the same should be said and has been said for former President Bush).

I am sure I am a little off topic, but I can't believe the amount of time that has been devoted to discussing this woman.

So, I want to challenge a couple of the elements of this post at the outset. To me, you have already entered a contradiction. You bemoan that a black man cannot fulfill the "democratic ideal," yet you note this:

I was thinking about this "meritocratic vs. democratic" notion this morning, and I think I hit upon a significant divide in how I'm processing things, and how many of my readers are processing things. The fact of the matter is simple---I am black. Most of the people who read this blog, in all likelihood, are white. Our history differs, and most importantly in this case, the make-up of our communities differ.

This is exactly why you cannot fulfill the populist mandate.

When you write that the "democratic ideal" is the same as "white populism," I finally got the sense that we were almost - *almost* - in violent agreement with each other. Yet the democratic ideal also works locally: it definitely works in the city politics in Oakland, and I suspect it works that way in Detroit and elsewhere. If the demographics of California keep going the way they are now, we could have a Latina Sarah Palin at some point, too (and, more unnervingly, quite possibly also a Republican, Christian-values populist Latina Sarah Palin.)

So, I see a bit of a contradictory desire. On the one hand, to be an everyman. On the other hand, to claim your perspective as indelibly determined by a history that is not the history of the rest of us. (I think it is the same history, in some sense - I think whiteness has been produced by the history of the past 500 years in the same processes that created blackness, but what is different are, of course, the historical experiences and of consequent lived experience. I will accept that this is quibbling.)

(BTW, I'm not black, but depending on how you define "community," as someone who grew up in Oakland in very mixed neighborhoods, I might suggest you not assume too much about what constitutes your readership's communities. I think there may be an interesting east coast/west coast divide in how we see things, too - from a west-coast perspective, Palin's demographics are unmistakeable, and they aren't the same as poor Southern whites. Interestingly enough, now that I am no longer in West Oakland, I feel it more likely that I have a future Obama living next door to me now than I did then, but I admit that I am in a rarified, cosmopolitan - dare I say, "postracial?" - demimonde at the moment, in which I am probably the least intelligent or accomplished person on my block.)

And with Bush, I hold him responsible for Iran-Contra and the blind eye to cocaine trafficking in South Central (and thus the rise of crack) from his VP days, so probably not so objective a ranking.

Im not raising Bush I's grade, but I get your point.

Ive been saying for a while that Obama is quietly a fan of Bush I.

Not that I know this to be a fact, but its an educated guess based on his foreign policy leanings.

Funny Stuff. I still think Galacticus would have been a good choice.

If Douthat really believes that Palin is a person of sense and ability, then... well, I'm speechless. Has he been living in a cave? She's a moose-shooting Chance the Gardener, for crissakes.

Your "shucking and jiving" comment is pretty mean-spirited, too. Judging from the comments here, Mr. Coates has shocked more white readers out of their complacency than he has entertained with shucking and jiving.

You really can't discuss the phenomena of Palin without bringing up evangelical Christianity. And also when you talk about evangelical Christianity you really need to clarify that it is the Southern/western variety. The James Dobson style religious right dominates out here and in the South in ways that it doesn't in NE or the upper midwest, one thing is the mainline protestant churches simply don't have the established footholds, we don't have 150 year old Episcopalian or Methodist churches and I think there are less Catholics as well. Joan Didion has written some great stuff on how much Southern style protestantism, especially Pentecostalism (which is Palin's particular branch as well) shaped California in the mid 20th century, and the rest of the west really follows California's lead, just lags a little.

Also he should get credit for integrating the military. ANd he tried for universal health care.

I agree with you about the atomic bombs and I'd also put the Korean war in his negative column so he should be lower.

I don't see how this is possible, at this time, with the less-than-welcoming attitude that the GOP has been displaying towards Latinos as of late - unless something cataclysmic changes and they start getting their act together and stop being so negative and pessimistic about Latin American immigration. I think the the possiblity of the California GOP welcoming a well-educated Latina a la Sotomayor, into their ranks, is even smaller.

Additionally, the possiblity of a Latina Sarah Palin coming out of Calfifornia is even more slight. This isn't Texas.

Apologies if this is thread-jacking? Just had to comment on the above.

First is that you seem to have stopped at Truman, but if you go backwards there are quite a few more.

The second is context... again from that Wikipedia list: "College degrees have set presidents apart from the general population, and presidents have held such a degree even when this was extremely rare and, indeed, unnecessary for practicing most occupations, including law." Maybe in the past, having a college degree was roughly as impressive/prestigious/elite/whatever as an Ivy is now... Whether that means a similar narrowness of view or not I don't know.

(Also a nitpick: Ford went to Michigan/Yale Law; Clinton went to Georgetown/Yale Law. Ford you called non, Clinton Ivy. Am I missing something?)

This, is why so many of us find the "Mrs. Smith goes to Washington" deification of Sarah Palin to be so deeply offensive. From where we stand, Ms. Palin appears to be a deliberately incurious person who has relied upon "mean girl" cunning, christianist rhetoric, and supposedly "hot for teacher" sex appeal to push her way into national prominence. Having bullied her way to the front of the line, Ms. Palin adds further insult to injury, by attempting to convince folks in "real America" that a white woman like her (with sub-par intelligence and medium political talents) is far more qualified to be POTUS than an uppity Negro like Obama with his piddling little honors degrees from two Ivy League Universities.

Dunno, blame it on the grade infla-a-a-ation...

The changing demographics is huge; the Obama owned the Latino vote, and I think that does have a lot to do being seen as a minority every man.

For whom do you write TNC? Is it a white or black audience? Do you think it matters? I imagine you must face some level of anxiety about the lack of shared backgrounds and knowledge among your diverse audience. Audience matters: superficially, Obama spoke differently to a black audience in South Carolina church than to a mostly white townhall in Iowa. Race is a clear dividing line in society.

Writers like TNC, with a wide, diverse audience, probably have to wrestle with multiple roles imposed by such a readership: a specific, unique individual with identity beyond race; an ambassador bridging the two worlds; an "authentic black man"; a defender of his race; etc. And if not properly navigated, a post or two might trigger a sense in one community of his audience that TNC is being presumptuous -- as FanRadio thinks.

FanRadio also critiques TNC based on HER assumption that TNC thinks that he is superior to other black people because he has this blog which he fills with his ideas and observations in engaging prose. That seems preposterous to a frequent reader like me, but it's not uncommon for a racial minority to feel some envy and spite at "one of his kind" mingling happily and sociably in a group of white people at a bar while she herself is in a group of other minority peers. That guy with the white people thinks he's better than me, she might think. To be accepted by the majority culture (e.g., writing for TIME, The Atlantic, moderating conferences in Aspen etc.) and have lots of white friends (gasp, a white spouse), can be an uncomfortable "success," I suspect.

FanRadio is interesting.

And I also think you reverse cause-and-effect: if the Republicans could harness that social conservatism to move the Hispanic immigrant vote to their party, they would be the most pro-immigrant party you could imagine, at least on a statewide level. (So far, GWB is actually better on immigration than BHO has been so far - it's the one issue in which I had hoped he could go to China, but it didn't happen.)

But this is thread-jacking - I apologize and stop here.

"For a deep dive into racist craziness go to the comments section any right wing or centrist political blog"

i also see this in the comments at major metropolitan newspapers

ps go kenyatta!

A great many people have commented on various news sites and blogs that it's time Jews abandon criticism and "harrassment" of Ecclestone for his admiration of Hitler. It's about denial, or the fear of denial. Even Jews were in denial while watching neighbors being loaded into trains headed for concentration camps and the ovens.If we give Ecclestone much benefit of doubt, then people might forget or be unable to recognize the dangers and hatred evidenced in front of their own eyes.

Ethic Soup blog's article "German Coffee Shop Chain Uses Nazi Slogan Ads," details how German-based Tschibo coffee shop chain, jointly with Esso petrol stations in Germany (ExxonMobil), used the phrase "Jedem den Seinen" in ads. This was the phrase which hung over the main gate at Buchenwald concentration camp.

Although the literal translation is "to each their own," figuratively it means "Everyone gets what he deserves." The numerous businessmen involved have denied that they knew it was a Nazi slogan. But this wasn't the first, not even fourth time, that various advetisers in Germany have used the slogan in recent years. Perhaps the worst was the German food-retailer Rewe who used the phrase: "Barbecuing: To Each His Own." What, a reference to Jews being burned in ovens? Golly, they just had no idea. Read more about the Nazi Slogan Ads in recent use at:

http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/01/german-coffee-shop-chain-uses-nazi-slogan-ads.html

TNC:
Your blog is the best dinner party I've ever been to. Thank you, thank you for being such an incredible host. Pass the potatoes, please.

You might want to try valuing substance over form. It might be less painful for you.

"Clarence Thomas, is that you?" FTW!

I shudder to think that you wouldn't have a writing career if this were 20 years ago - a black man with no college degree, with grammar and punctuation challenges (hey, just keeping it real!).

Palin being considered as a serious candidate for the presidency of the US, a dim watt who couldn't touch your talent with a 10 mile fishing pole, is proof that being white in America has its priviledges.

Mad props are due The Atlantic for providing you with the opportunity!

FanRadio simply has no sense of humor and took a bunch of saracasm literally.

Add me to the people who don't want Shelby...er, I mean Fan, banned. If only for the sake of "it takes all kinds..." and that's what I appreciate about here. ALL kinds come to the party. I'm sincerely interested in her sincerely engaging with everyone here. Without, you know, the snotty asides. Frankly, I think she's pulling everyone's leg. And TNC - she can't do any worse than the comments of reformed supremacists you called for the other day.

Of course, as a graduate of an HBCU who clearly has risen as high as I can to be a legal secretary (to white lawyers, as was my dream to be "whilst" at my HBCU), I would never, nay, could never, engage the delightfully arch Fan in any serious discourse. But I've always been an underachiever.

Really, TNC and everyone. Wonderful stuff.

I love the first bit about being human. That says it all. Also, I find the second bit about 'acting white' hilarious! I last heard that as a boy in South Africa, during the seventies. My elder brother telling me, 'don't get white.'

That is, a white telling a white not to get white. You know? There were 'whites only' signs all over the place...

Funny guy, my brother. Like you, I'm also still not clear on what it means...

Except maybe if it is what a black brother once told me about being black. He said black is not a colour.

What do you say to that? If it's not a colour, what is it? A feeling?

If so, how different is it to feeling white? Is that what he meant?

First, a response to the post: I'm an African-American who grew up in a small, working class town in the South, but I'm starting work on my second Ivy League degree in the fall. I've lived in a working class world, surrounded by white farmers who love Sarah Palin and around liberal millionaires who are disgusted by her. And from my own experiences, I would say that the idea that any one person can represent "real America" is patently false. America, at its core is diverse, and the moment we highlight one racial or ethnic as being representative of whatever real America is, that description by default comes up short. The idea that the salt-of-the-earth white working class is real America doesn't align well with the past, and certainly doesn't mean much now. I think there was always a racial component left out in these descriptions, which brings me to TNC's point.

I see what you're saying about how Barack Obama and how he could be your/our neighbor, but I guess I just see it a different way. Why do we want our president to be like our neighbors? Our presidents should be exceptional; they should be the best of what we have to offer. They often have been. They may have started off struggling and under-educated, but they rarely ended up there And exceptional doesn't mean they need to have Ivy League degrees. Many with Ivy degrees aren't capable of running a pet store, not to mention the country. I also know some very talented amazing African-American folk, but most don't compare to Barack either. These exceptional people can come from anywhere, as long as they're well-educated (not determined by where you went to school) and well-connected. Those qualifications don't limit you to Manhattan or the Beltway. They could come from Nebraska or Harlem, but odds are, the person qualified to be president is not your neighbor.

Second, a what's up: I'm a big fan of your blog; probably my favorite actually. I think your writing is very expressive, and your opinions very sharp. From one brother to another, I appreciate the diversity of your opinion. And I'm in East Harlem quite often, so if I ever see you in the streets, I'll be sure to say what's up.

Third: Your partner is from Covington! I grew up in an even smaller town, called Mason, right down the road. It's rare to even hear about other Tipton Co. folk outside of the South. I'm assuming she's older than me (I'm 25), but I'd be willing to bet we know some of the same folk.

As an aside, a lottery would be quite democratic; the platinum-iridium standard of democratic officer selection is by lot. Election by vote is widely considered to be much more aristocratic than election by sortition, as the elite are much better able to win votes (through having more money, leisure time, rhetorical skill, good looks, merit, etc.) than the common man, who would have an equal chance of drawing the winning lot.

The democratic ideal was never that anyone can be chief executive, just that no one be barred (by law or custom) for arbitrary reasons.

I read your post as explaining how a person might get confused on this pretty simple point. But I think there's more going on, something that leads people to think that politics is (or better: should be) something anyone can do just by rolling out of bed.

So while a history of rule by mediocre white people might explain some of that, I doubt it's the whole story. It has something to do specifically with politics. No one thinks the "capitalist ideal" is that anyone can be CEO of Walmart Inc.

Then TNC agrees to play the same game, but when he plays it, the democratic ideal looks in good shape because of Obama, with whom he identifies.

And both Ross and TNC seem to be going by similar criteria of identification, culture mainly, and maybe race insofar as it is connected to culture (which is pretty far).

Ok, all well and good. But doesn't this show that identity politics confuses everyone who plays it? What we're really talking about here is not the ideal that *anyone* should be able to be president, but that *those I identify with* should be able to be president. Which really means that *I* should be able to be president.

This is affirming my hunch that the beginning of wisdom is the realization not merely that you're not going to be president, but that you shouldn't be.

I had a daughter 18 months ago and taking care of her has sucked a huge amount of my time -- in the precious little free time that i have, I still comment occasionally and try to stay a part of the debate and learn things, but that's only because I'm a junkie for this stuff.

If I were a truck driver with 3 kids, the information about the political process I can realistically digest is incredibly small and that creates a huge opportunity for people who can appeal to voters on a very quick emotional basis (read:Palin) with no real substance or knowledge. Throw in a bad economy and the truck driver's yearning to learn will get closer to 0 as he/she struggles to make sure they can feed their family.

There are many more of these truck drivers than there are of us who read blogs and think as deeply as the people on this board-- it's a very real problem with how voting will affect policy.

I still contend that OBAMA and RICE are not ordinary -- I could never accomplish what either one has done and I honestly have a lot more talents than the average joe in the street -- not to brag -- but it's a fact based upon observing a fairly large segment of my student population at UCLA.

Sarah Palin asserts the moral superiority of people from small towns, and people without a kind of formal education that she sees as suspicious or elitist. That is a form of identity politics. If someone were to respond by asserting the moral superiority of cities and degrees from the Ivy League, that would be "playing the game". I could play the game by saying I work two jobs, and couldn't choose to quit either one in this economy, and am therefore more authentic than the elitist Sarah Palin. That is playing the game. As far as I can tell, neither Douthat nor TNC is playing the game.

As I read Douthat's column, I see no evidence that he personally identifies with Sarah Palin, or agrees with her on the culture war. (Given his resume, I bet he is smart enough not to write it if he does.) He laments the treatment of Palin, like many with similar political views do. He chooses to regard it demonstration that our media enjoys stomping on a version of the "democratic ideal." In my opinion, he has framed this ideal so that any one of Sarah Palin's faults is implicitly somebody else's fault. My guess is that he has done this because "poor Sarah" is about the only thing a person of his political stripe can say in honest agreement with Palin 2012 die-hards--- not because he sees anything resembling himself in Palin's background.

First, TNC on Ross: "the dem ideal here is a euphemism for white populism". Not cultural or religious populism. So Ross's sympathy with white pop blinds him to the fact that O actually does speak to the dem ideal. Don't know whether you agree with TNC's take, but that's what I'm going by.

Second: Ross doesn't say that in P's case, the media stomped on "a version of" the dem ideal, but the dem ideal, period. If he'd meant "version" he would have said that in O's case, the media lived up to a different version of the dem ideal, rather than saying it doesn't apply to O.

Third: TNC's take on O: he sees O as sharing his own culture and background, tacitly sees this as a non-elite culture/background, says that from his p.o.v. going to an Ivy doesn't change O from non-elite to elite, so concludes that O is an example of a non-elite making good.

You know, I guess I'm hung up on the terms of the debate, with TNC going along with the notion that the dem ideal is that anyone, particularly non-elites, can *make good* rather than *get a fair hearing*. He thinks P got a fair hearing, but everyone saw that she was unprepared. He thinks O got a fair hearing and won on the merits. For TNC, it's clearly the merit ideal that sorted them out, so why go along with Ross? That led me to my "playing the game" interpretation.

Maybe, though, when TNC speaks to O and the dem ideal, he sets aside the diagnosis that for Ross (dem ideal = white pop), doesn't concern himself with Ross's take on P and the dem ideal, stipulates to the definition that (dem ideal = non-elites can make good, too), and then explains why, speaking from his vantage, Obama is a non-elite, not an elite.

Hmm, yes, that seems like what happened. Stipulating to that definition rolls up the dem ideal and merit ideal into one, labels it the dem ideal, and that's bugging the crap out of me. I assumed that in using the dem ideal as Ross did, TNC was sharing in the confusion, but maybe he was only stipulating it for the sake of argument.

Where is written in the heavens that journalists are excused from the rules of good grammar so long as they have "something important" to say?

But an "ordinary American" will likely never be president, nor should they be.

That is not to say they cannot come from an ordinary background. That I welcome wholeheartedly. The last thing we need is another silver-spoon, out-of-touch, above-the-law politician.