I found (via Marginal Revolution) this Ezra Klein post alleging that anti-Obama people are just experiencing "resentment of the meritocracy."
Coincidentally, I'd already become intensely aware of the envy going the other direction -- Joe Biden's Saturday speech brought this home.
As Ezra concludes:
"This election, in other words, is becoming a contest to decide which type of elite voters hate -- or fear, or mistrust -- more: A social elite or an economic elite?"
The salient difference here is that so much of the Obama appeal rests on the faux-messianic role he plays, while (as far as I can tell) nobody's going around claiming that McCain wealth is itself what makes him extra-qualified[1] to be president.
On the other hand, if somebody excels at leadership because the meme spreads that he's a good leader, maybe it's not a chicken-and-egg problem so much as a virtuous cycle. So hey, Obama: exceptionally gifted leader of the masses. Wonderful! Will he make the right decisions? That's another story, where a lot depends on the initial assumptions and ideological baselines you set for your own opinion of "the right decisions."
[1] But now that I mention it, Joe Biden's own absurdly low net worth (relative to how long he's had a senator's salary) suggests that, regardless of the political decisions he makes, he's really not very good at financial planning! So Biden's qualifications are a good test of how much relative weight you assign to seniority versus actual merit.
(Can you tell how distinctly unimpressed I am by him, totally aside from party affiliation or ideology? But conversely, some people I'm close to have a lot more trepidation about Obama as leader of the free world than I have. No matter what happens over the next few years I fervently believe that Obama was the best option of the three plausible Democratic candidates.)
Posted by Matt Bruce at August 27, 2008 10:41 AM