In yet another link I can no longer find, David Frum responded to Democrats who are frustrated a Republican populism when Republicans are so much the party of the rich. Irrelevant, he said, American populist resentment is not directed at the rich, but at the educated. And the Democrats are the party of the educated.
I have come to conclude, though, that this is only half true. Real populist resentment is directed toward people who think they are better than you. Wealth, Republicans are quick to point out, is not in itself resented because most people aspire to wealth for themselves. But the same goes, to some extent, for education. As Rick Santorum learned the hard way when he dismissed Obama wishing everyone to go to college as snobbery, most people aspire to higher education for themselves or at least their children. Education, after all, is the usual key to wealth.
I believe that overall, if people are more likely to resent the educated than the rich, it is because they are more likely to perceive the educated as seeing themselves as better than other people. And let us admit, there is some truth to that. People with credentials and expertise certainly do regard themselves as having superior specialized knowledge in their field, and the "I know better than you" attitude gets resented (especially when it clashes with people's cherished religious beliefs). But that might be forgivable if the educated limited themselves to claiming superior expertise. What is really most resented, I think, is the unstated suspicion that educated people consider themselves morally superior to less educated people. And let's face it -- many educated people do consider their education a mark of moral superiority. Is it any wonder that such an outlook is resented?
By contrast, rich people do not claim any special superiority because of their wealth -- or do they? Various theologies that see wealth as a reward for merit are nothing new, after all. The prosperity gospel remains with us today. And most significant, the growing frequency of public speeches using phrases like "makers and takers," "job creators," "our most productive citizens," all suggest that wealth is some sort of measure of merit. At the very least, income is taken as a reasonable proxy for social utility. Taken a step further, this view assumes that people are either entrepreneurs or parasites. And furthermore, this simply reflects the views of today's rich and powerful, who firmly believe that their superior wealth is proof of superior merit, if only the ignorant public would just understand that.
And really, taken to its logical conclusion, it is really hard to escape the suspicion that today's Republican Party really does think rich people are better than the rest of us. This is a problem for the Republican party because, while celebrating success and loudly proclaiming that you admire the successful is an electoral winner, proclaiming that net worth is a good measure of moral worth, that being rich makes you better than other people, is a surefire loser. Occupy Wall Street has been an overall failure but its basic message -- that this country is turning into a plutocracy, and that we don't like it -- had a lot of resonance. The Tea Party's primary concerns may be immigration and cutting spending on the poor, but they, too, often express a fear that this country is turning into a plutocracy. The Republican Establishment interprets this to mean that the Tea Party is mad as hell that this country is not plutocratic enough, and they will do their utmost to correct that.
The Romney campaign ran into trouble so long as he campaigned as a plutocrat. At the first debate, he shook the etch-a-sketch, announced those old statements were no longer operative, and saw his campaign take off. How Romney would actually govern is anyone's guess. But it is emblematic of the Republican leadership's basic problem. In their heart of hearts, the Republican leaders believe that wealth makes people better. Their dilemma is how to advance such an agenda and govern in that way without letting the word get out.
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