My friend Mark passed along Steve Sailer’s item today noting that Obama hasn’t learned a foreign language. Mark says:
It is telling that Obama had sooooo many opportunities to learn a
foreign language under superior tutelage at elite institutions, has
always felt strongly about learning foreign languages, yet somehow
didn’t bother. My suspicion is that his mother had a copy of The Ugly
American laying around the house and that he read it as a boy and
believed it all. Don’t get me wrong–I’m all in favor of foreign
language learning, including Spanish (wealthy liberals whom I know
prefer to have their kids study French or other “high kless” languages,
rather than the language of the people who cut their lawns or clean
their houses). The reality is that any kid on a college track at a
public school or at a private school will likely be taking a foreign
language.
I think Mark is right as to fact. And his view is the same one embraced by Margaret Carlson and Mike Barnicle last night on Hardball, when they said that a president must be able to feel the common people’s pain. Barnicle said it meant a lot when Clinton cried.
This is a false value in a leader. Clinton’s genuine ability to feel people’s pain did not keep him from pursuing globalist economic policies that helped demolish the middle class. Bush’s genuine ability to feel people’s pain (say the firefighters at Ground Zero) did not keep him from making disastrous foreign-policy decisions. A lot of presidents didn’t have this quality, including some greats. Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, JFK, Reagan. Give me a break.
I have an idea when this false (and telegenic) value entered the political arena: when George H.W. Bush failed to recognize, on television, the computer scanning cash registers that all us common people were familiar with, at supermarkets. He lost the ’92 election in part because of that economic detachment (and yes, too, his opposition to Israeli settlements).
Presidents are going to come out of the elite, and what can anyone do about that? Myself, I love a genuinely populist leader. It’s why I was for John Edwards, and why I like Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee, in spite of everything, and why my heart still warms for Truman and even Ross Perot. But the critical thing I seek in a leader is intelligence and good values. Obama has both. I bet Americans have come to value intelligence in a leader in ’08 a lot more than they did in ’00. Mark is surely right when he says Obama grew up with a copy of The Ugly American, or his mother did. The Ugly American is a great book. It gave rise to the Peace Corps because it was a bestseller in Eisenhower America, showing how arrogant the American presence was in Southeast Asia. A similar arrogance pervades American foreign policy now. I think Obama, for all his elitism, completely lacks arrogance about the place of the U.S. in the world. A Harvard Law classmate told me a few weeks back that Obama is hard to know–but that he possesses “an existential humility.” I sense that in Obama. He has a great and lofty understanding of human suffering. I don’t expect that he’s going to bro’ down with people. That’s not his character. Individuals seem to mean very little to him.
And as for not learning a foreign language, yes it is revealing: it reveals ambition. As anyone who struggles to speak foreign languages can tell you (I murder two of them), it’s not easy. It takes years to master a foreign language. Obama has always had places to go, people to see. He’s been too busy to learn one, too ambitious. Didn’t see what he could get from learning one. I understand all that, it’s the meritocracy at work.
If you want a president who’s going to relate to the common man, this is not the election for you. Both establishment candidates are from the elite (much as I love Ron Paul and Nader, I’m not going there this year). Obama’s base is surely in the upper-middle-class. There can be little question about that. As Reagan’s was in the middle class (and Reagan is the model here: movement, landslide, mandate). But there is not much of a middle class now. And there are probably as many upper middle class voters as working class ones. Just guessing. Both Obama and McCain will be pandering to the poor, as Hillary did all spring, dripping with hypocrisy. It’s going to get ugly. But elitism is hardly disqualifying.
