If you want a buddy in the White House

Today in class I had a discussion with my students (professor code for I ranted for awhile) about the election. Now, I try to stay pretty opaque about my political commitments in the classroom, and what follows is a similarly non-partisan reproduction of my rant today. Question: why do people care so damn much about whether or not presidential candidates "get" them? Frankly I found the answers of my students a bit disturbing. Most of them agreed that it was important for a candidate to understand them, taking that as evidence of the candidate's ability to govern.

But this inclination is not entirely their fault--after all there is a billion dollar plus political machine composed of Republican and Democratic political consultants, pollsters, spin-meisters and an obliging media establishment that actively promotes the idea that the candidates' ability to empathize with the common person is a crucial litmus test of the ability to govern. It seems like both sides have put a ton of energy into proving that they are "just like us" or that if they are not, they at least have their ear to the pavement of "main street." Really it is pretty amazing how far both sides have gone to frame their candidate in a comforting populist light: Palin is a small town workaday mom who struggles with demands of career and family and who has seen her fair share of very middle class family problems; Obama is a hard working midwesterner who has a soft spot for the problems all of our communities face; "working Joe" Biden takes the train to the office and hangs out at Home Depot; McCain "gets it" and is a good old fashioned patriot who grills a mean steak and knows what it means to sacrifice.

Seriously, when did people stop giving a shit about what these people would actually do if elected? I really don't care if a candidate "gets" me or can sympathize with my struggles. After all, no one (hopefully) chooses a doctor because they really really know what it feels like to be sick or an accountant because they know what it is like to struggle to pay the bills. We choose the professionals we do (or should) for one reason, and one reason only--because they are competent. Truthfully, I don't want someone just like me to run the country: I want a ticket that is way smarter and way more experienced than me at, oh, I dunno, fixing a faltering global economy, figuring out how to deal with health care, and dealing with an expanding list of global security and environmental threats. Does anyone really care more if Barack Obama or John McCain "gets" us than if they can devise and implement policies that can deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis?

As for me, if it was a choice between the former and the latter, I'd take the candidate that could fix the problem even if they didn't really know jack about me and my struggles every time. I think that it was LBJ who said "if you want a buddy in the White House, buy a dog." Seriously America, as Bob Barker has so eloquently pointed out, there's a big time pet overpopulation problem. So get a furry friend... then do a little research on the interwebs, decide what policies you think are in the best interests of your family, community and nation, determine the relative importance of each of these three (if there are conflicting interests), pick your candidate, and then start mercilessly mocking all the goofs who make their political picks on the basis of anything other than good old fashioned prudential political judgment.

Update: okay, the quote really is "if you want a friend in the White House get a dog." And it was Truman, not LBJ. But you get my point...