THE COSMOPOLITANS. So many things are amazing about the emerging field of presidential candidates, but here's one that hasn't gotten much attention -- just how many of the candidates are from no fixed address. Most presidents, like most Americans, are clearly the products of a single particular place, and understanding that place -- Bill Clinton's Arkansas, Nixon's Southern California, LBJ's Texas -- is a big part of understanding them.
But this year we have:
Obviously, Barack Obama of Hawaii, Indonesia, and Chicago, with roots in Kansas and Kenya and stops in California and Cambridge.
But also, Hillary Clinton, of suburban Illinois, Arkansas, and New York.
And also, Mitt Romney, of Michigan, Utah, Massachusetts, plus several years of missionary work in France.
And also, John McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone, who moved to Arizona at the age of 44 and put off criticism that he was an outsider by saying, "the place I lived the longest was Hanoi."
On the other hand, John Edwards was born in South Carolina and moved to North Carolina -- not quite in the Obama league. The great exception among the top six is Giuliani, certainly an only-in-New-York character.
I don't think we've ever had a president nearly as ungrounded in place as any of those first four. Reagan and George Bush 41 both made a single move as a young man -- Bush from Connecticut to Texas, Reagan from Illinois to Hollywood. (Presumably because his real home was in that ethereal world of movies and TV, Reagan seems the least place-bound president in the modern era.) Eisenhower, like McCain, was never anywhere for long, but he's always seemed very Midwestern to me.
--Mark Schmitt
