August 14, 2006
Class Acts and U.S. Politics III Posted by Fredric Smoler at 01:10 PM EST I am interested by John Steele Gordon’s addendum about class and the importance of authenticity (“genuineness”) in American electoral politics. Much of what he says seems right, but I have some minor caveats: First of all, I am not sure if money gentles your condition all that much faster in the U.S. than in the U.K. I have the impression that over the last generation similar trends have existed in Germany and a number of other European societies, but what follows is restricted to the U.S. and U.K.
In some ways money does age quicker in the U.S., or at least did, since without hereditary titles you can scale the heights in at most two generations, without having to win a fleet action and thus become a viscount. On the other hand, you could become a beer baron with pure cash, and I have the impression that for the last century and more a public school education and accent accompanied by drive and talent has done pretty well for second-generation moneyed Brits. For that matter, in my salad days I had the impression that some nonelective parts of the American government—the CIA and State Department—were still much likelier to be staffed by people from Yale and Brown than by people with less socially prestigious B.A.’s, and this did not seem to be the result of a broad perception of perfectly meritocratic admissions policies at Yale and Brown. Similarly, the white-shoe law firms and more genteel investment banks were also disproportionately staffed by the American equivalent of posh or semi-posh. So one can overstate the picture of social mobility in a snob-free environment for most of the twentieth-century U.S., and understate it in the U.K. But even if money has not aged so much more quickly in the U.S., the broad sense of John Steele Gordon’s view seems right: Traditional inegalitarian views of class and status have always been weaker in the U.S. than in European societies.
What seems very striking is that in both countries cultural democratization has recently been advancing on a very broad front, and faster in Britain, since there was more ground to make up. In the U.K., TV announcers (“presenters”) now proudly display regional accents; an unaffected posh accent can easily make you unemployable in that trade; and the young affect a synthetic pseudo-plebeian accent sometimes called Estuarine. The first time I heard it, out of the mouth of an Oxford undergraduate, I was interested to discover that her father was the head of the Royal Ballet. This is pretty recent. Margaret Thatcher overthrew the Tory grandees in what her enemies revealingly called “the Peasants’ Revolt,” and her cabinet was noted for having more Estonians than Etonians, but it is interesting to reflect on the then-Mrs. Thatcher’s decision to take elocution lessons, and the fact that her accent moved up-market with her rise to power. Maybe Lady Thatcher will prove to be the last British politician to imitate what were once taken to be her betters. The current prime minister wants to be called Tony, just as a recent American President was called Bill. No Democrat, be he ever so democratic, called FDR Frank.
What seems very much worth noting is that in both countries rising cultural egalitarianism has been accompanied by rising economic inequality. If the expanding economic inequality proves lasting, and wealth becomes more heritable (i.e., the estate tax is sharply diminished), I wonder whether the increased cultural egalitarianism will survive, let alone go from strength to strength. Status differences and distinct subcultures do not immediately equate with persistent income inequality, but on past evidence there does seem to be a relationship. Status is almost never the same thing as wealth, but for hundreds of years of Western history, the two do seem to seek equilibrium.
What about John Steele Gordon’s sense that a perception of genuineness nowadays makes Americans forgive upper-class manners in politicians? Maybe, but in terms of faithfulness to social origins, the reasonably inauthentic Bush Sr. beat the reasonably authentic Dukakis. However, I humbly concede the broccoli. John Steele Gordon’s provision of the full context, which I had forgotten, seems decisive.
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