The Upper Middle: Gore's class problem

National Review, Nov 6, 2000 by Rob Long

Americans are at their most dishonest when they talk about class. "I'm middle class," pollsters are told, over and over, by Americans of all social and economic backgrounds. "What about the middle class?" voters ask the candidates, who usually reply with a happy list of goodies from the federal feed bag to be passed out, the morning after Inauguration Day, to every self-proclaimed member of that all-encompassing group.

The middle class, in current American parlance, is such an elastic concept that it actually includes all classes. Poor folks, when asked, usually promote themselves into its ranks, and rich folks, when pressed, will dismiss their maxi-mansions and luxury cars with an airy wave of the hand and a "but really I'm just a middle-class guy who's done very well." Nobody bothers to correct them because nobody really knows what, exactly, makes a person "middle class."

In fact, the only socioeconomic group that won't happily join the ranks of the middle class is the upper middle class, which defines itself, roughly, by its quasi-liberal Joe Liebermanish temperament and its adherence to the religion of good taste. Upper middlers are the Restoration Hardware shoppers and the grilled-salmon-with-mango-salsa eaters. They are Merlot people.

They are also the educated class of America. The right degree from the right school-oh, let's just go out on a limb here and mention two, Harvard and Yale-automatically grants membership in the UMC, which is why so many of them are journalists and lawyers, and so few of them politicians and celebrities. Bill Clinton is a middle-class guy (actually, he's a lot lower, but that's kind of my point). Hillary Clinton is upper middle class. Get the difference?

Al Gore, obviously, is such a deeply entrenched member of the upper middle class that he can't connect to voters as anything but their savior ("I'll fight for you!"), and that's why his populism was so easy to puncture: It's not based on a scrappy Harry Truman little guyism, but on a desire to minister to the fatter, slower orders.

Which is why, though he went to better schools than Al Gore (Andover and Yale trump St. Alban's and Harvard any day), and though his blood is much bluer, George Bush just seems more middle class than the Prince of the Naval Observatory. Bush is a regular guy, whose background and education seem strangely at odds with his LBJ Jr. persona. But it is precisely this class confidence that allows him to connect so easily with the ordinary guy. Both candidates come from what is vaguely called the American aristocracy, but you can spot the real aristocrat a mile away. He's the middle-class one, the shot-and-a-beer guy, the sportsman frat-boy word-mangling firecracker. You might forget, for a moment, that this guy had a grandfather named "Prescott," and that one of his distant relations is the Queen of England. Oddly, Bush seems more Clintonian-more a sloppy-Joe-and-an-RC-Cola and did-you-see-that-game-last-night? dude-than his rival. The irony is that for eight years, when he should have been studying Clinton, Al Gore was . . . studying.

And it's Gore, for some reason, who seems like the prissy princeling. But that, ultimately, is the downfall of the upper middle class-in the great swirling block party of American politics, the upper middlers live in a gated community, hemmed in by their Volvos and All Things Considered. Those below and above them on the pay scale have more in common with each other than either has with the UMC's, which is why Al Gore's constant screed about the "richest 1 percent" and Dick Cheney's $20 million love bump from his former employer haven't stirred the anger of the great and groaning middle.

Gore, though, is only a second-generation aristocrat, still proving himself, still trying to figure out why he's not beloved. Part of the problem is the fact that he went to a fancy day school. It's hard to convince people of this, but at places like Andover, it doesn't much matter who your parents are. They are, after all, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles away. You, however, are stuck there, in a Massachusetts hamlet, surrounded by kids as smart or smarter than you are, on your own. At places like St. Alban's in Washington, D.C., and Collegiate in Manhattan, the school social system is an extension of the town's-so, naturally, Al Gore is more comfortable among the Washington elite set that he grew up with. Bush continually pounds him for being a creature of Washington, and the criticism is more apt than Bush knows. Gore's whole problem-his multiple personalities, his creepy ambition, his uncomfortable self-awareness-stems from his puddin'-'n'-pie upbringing.

Which was itself a lie. Neither Pauline nor Al Sr. came from aristocratic stock. They could call themselves middle class and mean it. Al Gore didn't grow up rich and secure, he grew up privileged and ambitious. Bush grew up in a family in which his father was the ideal, something to live up to (or fail to live up to), something to rebel against, something-in a deeply Freudian way-to top. Gore, though, isn't competing with his dad or even living up to his expectations; he's fulfilling a career plan that they both shared. In the Gore house, politics was a career, not an elevated hobby. So instead of inculcating a gracious charm and a class security, his parents raised a careerist robot, a UMC schizophrenic, a Gorenstein monster, the kind of politician who owns a farm but can't convince anyone he's a farmer, who changes personality with every debate, who wins on points but loses on personality-which is exactly what you'd expect from an upper-middle-class candidate running in a plain-middle-class country.