For over eight years now, we’ve been hearing that Democrats have been losing presidential elections because people don’t want to have a beer with the party’s nominees. This always struck me as an odd formulation, not the least of which is because George W. Bush is a recovering alcoholic who wouldn’t share a beer with voters anyway.
But the NYT’s David Brooks takes this one step further today, arguing that voters may not find Barack Obama comfortable at Applebee’s salad bar. Seriously.
“Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there.”
First of all, I’m not sure why Obama would be out of place at an Applebee’s salad bar. Because he can’t bowl well? Because he’s well educated? What kind of assumptions is Brooks making about people who eat at Applebee’s?
Second, Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar. As Hoffmania noted, “If you’re going to use this as a vehicle to test someone’s folksiness, at least know what the hell you’re talking about.”
The WaPo’s Eugene Robinson reportedly added, “I tend to take this sociology a little more seriously when it’s delivered by people who actually eat at Applebee’s more than once in a decade.”
All of this, of course, served as an addendum to Brooks’ column today, which attempted to highlight the problems facing both major-party presidential candidates.
We haven’t had two presidential candidates as far removed from the mainstream suburban lifestyle. McCain’s family has been military for generations. But Obama’s path through the university towns is particularly elusive.
Peter Hart did a focus group for the Annenberg Public Policy Center with independent voters in Virginia that captured reactions you hear all the time. These independent voters were intrigued by Obama’s “change” message, but they knew almost nothing about him except that he used to go to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church. It’s as if they can’t hang Obama’s life onto anything from their own immediate experiences and, as a result, he is an abstraction. As Hart points out, people’s inability to come up with a clear narrative about Obama could make it easy to label him in the fall.
Finally, the Obama people are too convinced that they can define McCain as Bush III. The case is just factually inaccurate. McCain will be able to pull out dozens of instances, from torture to global warming to spending, in which he broke with his party, as Rush Limbaugh will tell you.
Obama has spent a lot of time, Brooks says, in “university towns” — meaning that he’s one of those guys interested in book learnin’. Can’t have someone like that in the Oval Office. No siree.
As for the focus group that apparently hadn’t heard much from the media other than news about Jeremiah Wright, this might be a clue to Brooks and his colleagues that the coverage of the campaign is not serving the voters especially well.
Brooks concludes that arguing that McCain offers voters another term of Bush is “factually inaccurate.” Fair enough. McCain agrees with Bush on economic policy, tax policy, foreign policy, national security policy, judicial policy, healthcare policy, immigration policy, and housing policy. Other than that, though, it’s completely irresponsible to argue that McCain offers the nation more of the same. What we were thinking?
Thank goodness we have someone as insightful as Brooks to explain these matters to us in the nation’s most prestigious news outlet.