CLIQUES & PUNDITS

A long time ago, I became puzzled by a column by Meg Greenfield in Newsweek. I don't recall the topic but I do recall wondering how she could claim to express what "America" was thinking or feeling about some current-events issue. I was in my teens and I was beginning to grasp that the World and America were complicated things, too complicated to be summarized in 500-word columns.

One explanation was that she was part of the Washington elite that Sally Quinn wrote about so clearly:

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Beside her friend and employee Kathryn Graham, she was the most powerful woman in Washington, yet she never flaunted her power or made a big deal about her womanhood. All Washington gathered to her, not for her influence as an opinion-maker, but for her wit, her common sense and heart. Liberals and conservatives, Senators, cabinet members, high government officials were true friends. And she had an eye for younger, once-obscure journalists, who she thought might do good in the world: Charles Krauthammer, Michael Kinsley, George Will, David Remnick, even, with some governing, the guy who wrote about the goose.

The people in her world were, to a remarkable degree, America's Ruling Class and in this she was similar to the Alsop brothers, Joseph and Stewart. (One wonders what she could've possibly seen in Krauthammer.) Stewart I also knew from reading Newsweek; Joseph I knew only by name. The brothers Alsop were part of a charmed circle in Washington:

After the Second World War [Joseph] Alsop became an important political journalist. Alsop lived in Washington where he associated with a group of journalists, politicians and government officials that became known as the Georgetown Set. This included Frank Wisner, George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, Stewart Alsop, Tracy Barnes, Thomas Braden, Philip Graham, David Bruce, Clark Clifford, Walt Rostow, Eugene Rostow, Chip Bohlen, Cord Meyer, James Angleton, William Averill Harriman, John McCloy, Felix Frankfurter, John Sherman Cooper, James Reston, Allen W. Dulles and Paul Nitze.

Even though they live at the center of power, the Washington Elite are in many ways isolated from the real world, including the rest of America, while at the same time intensely connected to each other. (Did you know that Alger Hiss clerked for Oliver Wendell Holmes?) These strong connections can blind one to reality and I think this passage from Quinn's article shows us the same kind of insider poor judgment that Meg Greenfield had about Krauthammer:

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. "This is a demoralized little village," she says. "People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They're so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn't quite as sordid as this."

No rational person could believe that lying about a consensual sexual relationship in the context of a witch hunt was worse than Watergate. Even when they realize that they are in a bubble, they can't seem to find their way back to America. Digby offers this analysis:

"...[Dave] Broder and others also venture out into the American landscape with a sort of pre-conceived notion of what defines "the people" that appears to have been formed by TV sit-coms in 1955. They seem to see extraordinary value in sitting in some diner with middle aged and older white men (sometimes a few women are included) to "ask them what they think." And invariably these middle-aged white men say the country is going to hell in a handbasket and they want the government to do more and they hate paying taxes.

[SNIP]

Meanwhile, someone like me, who lives in a big city on the west coast and who doesn't hang out in diners with middle aged white men are used as an example of the "fringe" even though I too am one of "the people" as are many others --- like hispanic youths or single urban mothers or dot-com millionaires or elderly southern black granddads or Korean entrepreneurs (or even Sheryl Crow.) We are not Real Americans.

These middle-aged white men in diners that the Elite Pundits are so enamored of were also key players in the rise of Rush Limbaugh and the vast Republican Noise Machine.