My Sunday column – metastasized to 3,000 words this week – riffs off the different ways of being American that Obama and McCain represent. A reader adds:
There’s a simple way to sum up your list of contrasts between the two candidates – McCain hails from the old south, while Obama embodies the northern experience.
McCain blends two proud southern traditions. His strong sense of honor and cheerful belligerence do indeed mark him as Scotch-Irish. But he also bears the unmistakable marks of the Anglo-Southern gentry, with its commitment to independence and liberty. These are proud traditions that can lay claim to innumerable great Americans. They have also produced a distinctive vision of America – a celebration of individual liberty, a hostility to government, an emphasis on the force of arms, and (perhaps above all) an abiding faith that the American system rewards the virtuous and punishes the unworthy.
Obama, on the other hand, combines the two principal strands of the Northern experience. He is, as you note, the son of an immigrant who came to this country in search of a better future. A self-made man, Obama rose from humble roots through education, hard-work, sacrifice, and luck. His is also an urban tale – a product of the melting-pot, he was schooled in New York and Boston, rising to power in Chicago. But the other half of his heritage is that of the American farmer, of grit and determination, and of small town life.
These traditions have produced their own notion of America – of a land that draws its strength from diversity and rewards ambition, but also one that can be capricious and even cruel, that can grind down the individual, unless the people band together to lift each other up. In urban Progressivism and in rural Populism, this strain of American thought insists that liberty depends on government keeping the playing field level. It’s a debate as old as the country itself.
Ultimately, of course, America draws its strength from all of these traditions, and the differences between McCain and Obama are of emphasis and degree. But when I listen to Obama, I hear in his words an appreciation for liberty and a skepticism of government intervention that signal his willingness to incorporate the strengths of the southern tradition. When I listen to McCain, I hear no similar acknowledgment of the need to level the playing field, or of the necessity of creating opportunities for those who do not inherit them. Obama comes closer to a synthesis of these strands, and that, I suspect, is one reason why he appeals to such a broad spectrum of Americans. McCain emphasizes one set of traditions at the expense of the others, and that, more than anything else, seems to account for the distinctly regional nature of his appeal.
The Dish 