One Day at a Time

Apparently Ronald Reagan's son, Ron, has written an essay for Esquire denouncing Bush and his politics.

I can't quite tell what Ron's relationship to his father might have been from this article. He seems put out at comparisons of W. to Reagan, which is to be expected, though he doesn't seem to admit that, at least as far as the economy goes, they are enacting similar fiscal policies.

This paragraph, though, I do find particularly interesting:

"And chances are your America and George W. Bush's America are not the same place. If you are dead center on the earning scale in real-world twenty-first-century America, you make a bit less than $32,000 a year, and $32,000 is not a sum that Mr. Bush has ever associated with getting by in his world. Bush, who has always managed to fail upwards in his various careers, has never had a job the way you have a job—where not showing up one morning gets you fired, costing you your health benefits. He may find it difficult to relate personally to any of the nearly two million citizens who've lost their jobs under his administration, the first administration since Herbert Hoover's to post a net loss of jobs. Mr. Bush has never had to worry that he couldn't afford the best available health care for his children. For him, forty-three million people without health insurance may be no more than a politically inconvenient abstraction. When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush's economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You're the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you'll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet. "

How many of our former presidents have been part of the same America as "normal" citizens? Certainly Reagan's America wasn't my parents' America. And I'm not so sure that Clinton's American was my America.

But can a person realistically become president from "our" America? Has the American perspective that "anyone can become president" become another of our hidden shams (like the "classless" society we believe in; or the separation of church & state, as long as we all agree that the state follow "Christian" rules)? Can you become president if you've had to work your way up and aren't blessed with a family fortune of some variety?