Earlier in this election cycle someone asked when has Obama ever mowed the lawn or done a hard day of work in his life, in other words it depicted him as an elitist. So here is my question how many presidents have we had that have had to do hard physical labor for extended periods of time before they earned the executive office? Most of the presidents we’ve had were of three categories
1) Born into royalty, that is to say families with money, power, and influence
2) War Hero
3) Born poor or of average means who met very influential people in their late their twenties or thirties who found them to be useful.
1) Washington (category one and category two)
2) Adams (category one)
3) Jefferson (category one)
4) Madison (category one)
5) Monroe (category one)
6) JQ Adams (category one)
7) Jackson (category two)
Van Buren (category one)
9) WH Harrison (category one and two)
10) Tyler (category one)
11) Polk (category one)
12) Taylor (category two)
13) Fillmore (category one)
14) Pierce (category one)
15) Buchanan (category one)
16) Lincoln (hard working country lawyer before he was a politico)
17) Johnson (hard working man of the people)
18) Grant (Category two)
19) Hayes (category two and three)
20) Garfield (category three)
21) Arthur (category three)
22) Cleveland (category three)
23) Harrison (category one)
24) Cleveland (category three)
25) McKinley (category one)
26) T. Roosevelt (category one and two)
27) Taft (category one)
28) Wilson (category three)
29) Harding (category three)
30) Coolidge (category one)
31) Hoover (category three)
32) Roosevelt (category one)
33) Truman (to be fair he was a haberdasher and failed business man, but without the boss of Kansas City, Tom Pendergast, Harry does not get into the senate so hate to say it about a guy I have in my top ten but he was a useful idiot for a crime boss although he used this legacy to bust corruption)
34) Dwight Eisenhower (category two)
35) Kennedy (category one and two)
36) Johnson (category three)
37) Nixon (category three)
38) Ford (category one)
39) Carter (like Truman, but even more so he was a useful idiot who did come up from peanut farmer to governor to president)
40) Reagan (category three)
41) Bush (category one)
42) Clinton (category three)
43) Shrub (category one)
Obama (category three)
McCain (category one and two)
So lets see we have Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, Abe Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson who came from the people so this means that today as is always the case you will never be able to look at the thirty something year old Wal-Mart employee, the garbage man, the brick layer, the welder, or what have you and say that guy has a good shot at being president. One could argue that this was intended by the framers, especially Hamilton (and to an extent Madison), who feared having demogogery in the executive mansion. I think the closest we have ever gotten to a truly populist president was Andrew Jackson who let the people party with him at his first inuagarational celebration. So when Bubba Dump asks Obama and McCain “did you ever mow the lawn and McCain says I worked like the people you will know to call bullshit, as with four noticeable surprises and exceptions the framer’s vision of an elitist presidency rings true. Its the compromise that they settled for that gave us the house of representatives representing us, the senate representing the state’s elites, and the president representing the national elite and the supreme court playing the part of wise philosopher kings who would not interfere all that much, but would come in from time to time to check the power of the branch that exceeded its bounds. Yes thats right your founders, elitists all except Franklin who was wealthy but not elitist, wanted a representative republic but so terrified were they of Hellenistic democracy that that they did not want the legislature to overstep its bounds and so they had the senate to check the house (your vote originally) as well as the other two branches and as Madison said let ambition check ambition. That is what we have gotten and if you look at it the higher you move in power the more distant you get from the people and this is oddly what the founders wanted. House is your representative and accountable to you and this is why all legislation involving budgets, taxes, etc has to start in the house, but because they don’t want a fast talking salesman to have too much sway they have the senate which is full of more prosperous types who are not as much in contact with you as the representative. They are to represent your state and the elites in your state, but not you. They are to counteract your representative but along with your representative they are to check the ambition of the other two branches.
Your president is to have popular vote to represent you, but an electoral college to represent the national elite, and the court is to be unattached. All told when someone says this guy is an elitist and I am not when he is running for president please call him on it.
