no oceans of white hands in the photograph on the front page of the times today.

i see more black hands and brown hands, there's an asian hand in the lower right, than white hands. oh, and those hands are saluting.

no, even without the guy in the center of the picture you'd know right away this isn't a howard dean rally.

"if you were to pick a presidential candidate on the basis of social
standing--and really, darling, who doesn't--you'd have to pick howard
brush dean III over george walker bush."

the quote is from david brooks' op ed piece in the same issue of the paper.

bush and the republicans are economic elitists, always have been. bush was born a cultural elitist but grew up and made his mark, such as it was, in texas and so acquired a bit of a texas accent and a few other common folk characteristics. unfortunately, the democrats are about to nominate a man who is even more cultural elitist than bush and whose neo-smoot-hawley economics will hurt the middle class even more than bush's tax cuts for the rich.

this is not to say that dean is sui generis. the democrats have their aristocrats, fdr, jfk, jay rockefeller. but dean's elitism is the democrats problem today. it's a noxious, and obnoxious, combination of middle class contempt cloaked in a faux liberalism.

part of the cause of that elitism is symbolized in today's front page photograph. the brown and black and yellow, those with blue collars and red necks, did not, could not and did not attempt to, escape service during vietnam. they went and they fought and died.

howard brush dean III, george walker bush, bill clinton, and j. danforth quayle on the other hand did not serve. they were "bright," or socially and politically connected and so loopholes were fashioned for them or they fashioned them themselves.

dean was particularly creative, he must really have "done well" on his sat's. he somehow got himself declared 4-f but then fought through his disability and, according to brooks, "spent his time skiing in aspen." it's that kind of creativity, of thinking outside the box, that we need in a leader today.

brooks says bush and dean are the products of a culture that believed in the aristocratic notion of greatness achieved through "virility, courage, self-discipline and toughness." quite. one can see h.b.d.III's courage in tackling his first black run, perhaps during tet?, his toughness and self-discipline in overcoming physical adversity. we await accounts of the virility he displayed apres ski.

this is the difference between their generation and their fathers. george herbert walker bush was a bona fide war hero as was jfk. they each could have avoided the war if they had wished, bush's dad was a connecticut senator, jfk's of course was ambassador to the court of st. james. but they didn't. they served.

bush, quayle, clinton and dean ran. but crimminy, at least the other three did SOMETHING: national guard, oxford, SOMETHING. dean became a ski-bum and so has become the hero of all ski bums and "aging flower children and the tongue-studded next generation," whose idea of service is a maid and whose idea of real america is 92% white vermont.

-benjamin harris