Last century, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The rich are different from you and me.” In the first decade of the 21st century, that phrase has evolved into, “The elites are different from you and me.”

No one believes this more now than the media, government, academic, labor and monetary privileged classes now running a country once famous for its populism, self-reliance, federalism and a citizenry suspicious of any concentration of power.

As President Barack Obama surveys the wreckage of his first year in office, capped by Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday, he would do well to remember that he campaigned for “change” for all the American people. Or so millions believed – and not the usurpation of power for the privileged few. Nor does it probably serve his purposes to mock the millions of Americans who drive pickups.

A day and a half after yet another electoral disaster for his party, Obama might finally come to grips with how he and his ilk got to Washington in the first place. Since the time of Andrew Jackson, the working man and woman have long been associated with the Democratic Party. Each party has had its reliable factions over the years; academics on the left, mercantilists on the right, peaceniks on the left, neocons on the right.

Both, however, sought these crucial voters, and often Republicans, such as Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, won them over.

The balance of power, however, rested with the working middle class, mostly blue collar. The candidate and the party making the best case that they could secure a better future for working middle-class voters and their children were awarded their votes. Both parties actively vied for them; none insulted them.

Until now.

Having gained power a year ago, the dominant liberal intelligentsia of the Democratic Party – from Keith Olbermann to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – has engaged in a shooting gallery of taunts at their own countrymen and countrywomen, hurling insult after insult, questioning their class, style, patriotism and intelligence. Just consider MSNBC’s David Shuster, who, on the day of the Bay State bombshell, said the conservative tea party protesters were not “very literate.”

Obama, meanwhile, has behaved as if the government were his personal plaything while engineering policies that have made the Democratic Party into a coalition of “bigness”: Big Government, Big Wall Street, Big Labor, Big Academia, Big Lobbyists, Big Banks.

Even worse was the elites’ and Obama’s gross misreading of health care reform, foolishly comparing it with Social Security and Medicare. What they failed to understand is that taxpayers never saw either program as welfare but, rather, as exactly how their government pitched it to them, in the form of “insurance” plans. Taxpayers agreed because they spent their lives paying into both programs and felt invested in them. Indeed, any taxpayer can check on the status of his or her “account” with the Social Security Administration.

The same followed with Americans’ own private health care plans. They were invested in them and have come to see a government takeover as “hostile” and an unnecessary power grab. They may have complained about their individual health care, as they did about Social Security, but it was theirs and it was not to be taken away from them.

Obama has slowly come to grasp the enormous mistake he has made, as his recent feckless attempt to pitch a fee on big banks demonstrated. But he is trapped. Every program he now offers is seen by the American people as yet another excuse for centralized authority.

Obama has met the superlunary elitist: himself.

The Massachusetts Senate election was a referendum on the elites as much as anything. In good times, they are barely tolerated. In bad times, the tax cheats, frauds, political phonies and fakes, Hollywood scum, K Street cretins and sleazy money-changers who make up America’s “best and brightest” are loathed.

The irony in all this is that the GOP is temporarily benefiting from the arrogance of the liberal elites without having to pay any penance for its own devotion to Big Government and corruption. Still, the GOP can be counted on to do the stupid thing, as its defense of bankers having to pay fees, after diving snout-first into the trough of the Troubled Asset Relief Program recently demonstrates.

But such are the fortunes of class warfare.

Craig Shirley is president of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs and the author of two books about President Ronald Reagan, including the newly released “Rendezvous With Destiny,” the first detailed account of the 1980 campaign.

LOAD-DATE: January 22, 2010

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication