It Takes a Commoner

to be a good president

If you look at US Presidents over the past century one thing comes out clear. The noble lords from the upper crust were really good at getting us into wars, as in:

• President Wilson, former president of Princeton: WWI

• President Roosevelt, from the “Northeastern establishment;” WWII

• President Bush I, scion of bankers on both sides: Gulf War

• President Bush II, to the manor born; Iraq War

Then we have the Commoner Presidents that didn’t get us into wars.

• President Coolidge, son of a farmer and store owner

• President Hoover, son of a blacksmith

• President Truman, son of a farmer and livestock dealer

• President Eisenhower, son of an engineer

• President Nixon, son of a grocer

• President Reagan, son of the town drunk

I’m writing this in the middle of reading Kissinger’s Diplomacy. He notes that lordly Princeton President Wilson botched the end of World War I with a punitive peace that helped create Hitler and a bunch of weak countries in Eastern Europe. President Wilson believed in collective security and self determination and peace. President Nobody Truman figured Stalin out and set up the Cold War, rebuilt Germany, and allowed the US to win a world war without fighting. How’s that for the son of a farmer? He entered office inheriting President Roosevelt’s “Four Policemen” policy but had the native sense to switch to a balance of power policy. But he was a nobody, and don’t you forget it.

Is there a pattern here? Scholars think… Well, of course scholars are generally from the upper crust and really don’t think that sons of blacksmiths and town drunks are really quite the thing, old chap.

So never mind about the scholars. The question is: what do I think?

I say that the lordly scions of the educated upper crust have internalized the world view of the educated class that has given us all the world wars from the French Revolution onwards. They believe in saving the world with politics — because justice or equality, or whatever the fashionable Thing is this week. But the problem is that “there is no politics without an enemy” and if you believe in saving the world with politics sooner or later you will be cranking up a war, civil or international, against the enemy.

But I say that Commoners, the ordinary middle class, are not that interested in power. The middle class accepts the world as it finds it, and looks to get along in the world as it is, rather than invest in Hope and Change.

And that is certainly the way I experience the Commoner presidents. They weren’t into “fundamental transformation;” they just wanted America to be the best it could be.

Unfortunately our present presidential contenders don’t quite fit my system. President Biden is the son of a failed businessman that later became a successful used-car salesman. President Trump is the son of a successful real-estate developer.

However, it is clear that the Democratic Party is the party of the Elite 1% — with graduate degrees, urban gentry homes, and $150,000 a year — and the Republican Party is the party of the ordinary middle class. And it doesn’t look as if that is going to change any time soon.

And I think that we should note the connection with my Three Worlds notion, of War World, Market World, and Life World.

Democrats live in War World, the political world in which you gotta have an enemy. take your pick: greedy bankers, climate deniers, systemic racists.

Republicans are trying to square the circle of Market World and Life World, trying to smooth the sharp edges of Market World down into Trust World, and trying to help the face-to-face world of family and neighbors interface with the challenge of Market World.

That’s my idea. Your mileage may vary.