In every election campaign, candidates assure voters that despite their fancy suits and smooth talk, they come from the humblest of origins. We were poor, they say. No running water! My mother made our clothes from old rice sacks! Dinner was one slice of bread to share between my siblings and me! And if that wasn't actually their experience, they'll tell you about the deprivations their parents or grandparents endured.
Why, exactly, are we supposed to believe that, all else being equal, it's better to elect someone who spent his youth as a street urchin? I'll get to that in a moment, but first, as Jonathan Martin reports in The New York Times, the Republican presidential contenders are particularly interested in waxing poetic about their humble roots, because of one particular candidate who doesn't have any:
As Jeb Bush stockpiles money and attracts early support, largely because of his family name, his potential adversaries are seeking to differentiate themselves by all but stating explicitly that they are no senator's grandson.
"Unlike some out there, I didn't inherit fame or fortune from my family," Gov. Scott Walker, Republican of Wisconsin, told a group of religious broadcasters last month.
Mr. Walker, whose father was a Baptist minister, may be the least subtle about it. But nearly all the candidates are introducing, or reintroducing, themselves to voters in ways that shine a light on Mr. Bush's privileged origins.
Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, was reared on a cotton farm in a house without running water. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had the father who arrived in the United States with cash in his underwear, and Mr. Walker spent some of his teenage years laboring under the golden arches.
"Listen, my dad put himself through college at night. He worked at an ice cream plant in Newark, New Jersey, to put himself through college at night after he came back from the Army, and the next generation his son is the governor of the state of New Jersey," Gov. Chris Christie said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month.
Not to be outdone, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, told CPAC about his parents' emigration from Cuba and the sacrifices they made for their children.
It's particularly odd to see this kind of one-downsmanship in a Republican primary. This is, after all, the party that not only holds that lavishing more riches on the already rich is the surest path to widely shared prosperity, but also rains contempt down on the poor. This is the party that wants to force people to pee in a cup before they can get welfare, that is horrified by the prospect of people with low incomes getting free health insurance, that thinks that what those who are struggling really need is a stern lecture about personal responsibility and a kick in the pants. Yet they all want to tell you about how poor they or their relatives were.
I suppose you could see it as analogous to the redemption stories so popular among the evangelicals who make up the GOP's base: I was a low-down dirty sinner, but then I was saved and now I stand before you glowing with the light of righteousness. But what it's really supposed to say is: I get it. I know what your life is like, because I've seen both sides.
The problem is that it stops there, instead of extending to the logical final step, which is that the things I advocate will reflect that experience of having been poor (or having been told by my grandfather what it was like to be poor, if that's the best you've got). Some of these candidates may have genuine hard-luck stories to tell, but somehow, through the grace of Milton Friedman, they all ended up thinking exactly the same things about economic policy. Rick Perry didn't have running water, while Jeb Bush's dad was a president and his grandfather was a senator. But the policies they advocate are basically the same: cut taxes, especially for the wealthy; cut regulations on corporations; rinse, repeat. So why should it matter which one gets elected?
If this keeps up, the first Republican debate could look like this:
