Bill Kauffman: The Candidates from Nowhere
Apri1 16, 2008
Politicians Without Roots
The Candidates from Nowhere
By BILL KAUFFMAN
The last three major-party presidential candidates standing have this
in common: the state abbreviations after their names–John McCain (AZ),
Hillary Clinton (NY), and Barack Obama (IL)–are no more meaningful
than the random pairings of letters in a spoonful of alphabet soup.
These are the candidates from nowhere. Or in Obama’s case, from
everywhere. And this rootlessness has policy consequences.
Senator John McCain is a poster boy for the pathologies of the military
brat. Born in the Panama Canal Zone, he attended twenty schools in his
nomadic childhood.
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The Democrats are no more connected to particular places than is
McCain. Hillary Clinton’s rootlessness became a national joke in her
2000 U.S. Senate campaign to represent New York, a state in which she
had never lived. Wearing a Yankees cap was about as far as she went to
assert her ersatz New Yorkness.
Barack Obama, lauded as the “world candidate,” was born in Hawaii, a
state that is only in the union because of its military significance.
Raised also in Indonesia and at various times resident in Los Angeles,
New York City, and finally Chicago, Obama is a “cosmopolitan,” which by
some lights means a sophisticate but which a character in Henry James’s
Portrait of Lady defined as “a little of everything and not much of
any. I must say I think patriotism is like charity-it begins at home.”
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read the full article here, at Counterpunch.
