Courtney Martin asks if Americans’ expectations are too high when it comes to health-care reform:
Barack Obama spent much of last year’s presidential campaign trying to shake off the “elitist” label. He took pains to play down his Ivy League education and play up the more working-class elements of his background: “I wasn’t born into a lot of money. I didn’t have a trust fund. I was raised by a single mother with the help of my grandparents.” Michelle Obama told the public that her husband snored and forgot to pick up his socks. At a photo-op in a blue-collar bar in Pennsylvania, the candidate ordered a Yuengling and asked, “Is it expensive, though? … Wanna make sure it’s not some designer beer or something.”
During campaign season, it seems American voters want politicians — presidential hopefuls in particular — who are “just like us,” people who don’t dwell in an elite, Ivy League realm or possess other-worldly arrogance. Folksy connections are the medicine of those days. But as soon as we’ve elected someone, we expect that person to transform into a super-human. No longer are we interested in relating to them, we want to be saved by them. We want them to have all the solutions to our nation’s biggest, most complex problems.