Dangers of the nosh trail
Ethnic campaigning used to be so simple. You ate a knish with Jewish voters, you wore a green necktie on St. Patrick’s Day, you tried your hand at spinning pizza dough in an Italian restaurant, and begorrah bada boom -- you won.
In the 1959 musical “Fiorello,” future New York Mayor LaGuardia campaigns in English, Italian and Yiddish. Five years later, Bob Dylan mocked the ethnic-pandering pol in song, savaging the man who “wants my vote ... He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple/Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people/ (He’s eatin’ bagels/He’s eatin’ pizza/He’s eatin’ chitlins).”
In 2008, “ethnic” has broadened into the global multitudes, from Assyrian to Zimbabwean, who now make their homes here, and that requires a refresher in some old campaign rules.
So now more than ever, the first rule in the politician’s handbook has to be “watch out for funny hats.” Calvin Coolidge surely went to his grave cursing the man who bamboozled him into posing in a full-feathered American Indian war bonnet. After his inauguration, John F. Kennedy put away his silk top hat for good. On the last day of his life, some Texans presented him with a cowboy hat, which he kept firmly ... in his hand. Barack Obama actually managed to pull off wearing a cowboy hat -- which makes me suspect that he’d been practicing for just that eventuality.
Last Sunday, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman were feted at a Sikh event in Los Angeles, Sherman wound up wearing a white headdress and Villaraigosa a blue turban. Like the Howard Dean “scream,” it played great in the hall -- but beyond the walls ... well, write your own caption. https://www.siliconeer.com/past_issues/2006/may2006_files/may06_baisak hiLA.jpg
Maybe lame-duck presidents can risk ethnic costumes. George W. Bush looked sheepish in a sky-blue satin ao gam at a 2006 economic summit in Hanoi, and Vladimir Putin looked like he was imagining the razzing he’d get at his KGB class reunion. But candidates in costume find the bar is set much higher. A photo of Obama in a turban during a 2006 trip to Kenya has set the political blogosphere on its over-large ear: How would this play in Middle America?
Like an army, politicians travel on their stomachs -- eating ethnic is barely more forgiving than playing dress up. In the nosh campaign, candidates can’t ask what they’re eating -- living or dead, cooked or raw, animal, vegetable or mineral -- and they don’t tell what they really think of it. Obama recently ate a morsel of $99.99-a-pound Spanish ham at a Philadelphia market, which sent some conservative bloggers into a populist tizzy, and should quash dopey Web buzz that he’s Muslim, or Jewish, or vegan. “Oh God,” mourned one poster, “[is] this what American politics have become?”
Ethnic crowds usually love a candidate who can utter a few phrases in their home tongue, even -- or maybe especially -- when it’s comically terrible. Bush made points with Spanish that Mexican President Vicente Fox rated as “grade school.” And Teddy Kennedy stumped for Obama in East L.A. in mangled Spanish. His “mucha mass grassas” reminded me that the cheating episode that got him suspended from Harvard was for his Spanish class. The crowd at least gave him a passing grade.
Villaraigosa wowed the hosts of last year’s Chabad telethon by wearing a yarmulke, talking about “mitzvahs” and dancing the hora.
So candidates may get away with faking a few words in any language, pretending to relish a bite of some nationality’s road-kill specialty and kicking up their heels. But ethnic campaigning has a dangerous cousin -- claiming class solidarity.
Running in Philly in 2004, John Kerry looked hoity-toity ordering his cheese steak with Swiss cheese, when every working stiff knows Cheez Whiz is essential. In 1972, George McGovern’s running mate, Sargent Shriver, stopped in at a blue-collar bar in Youngstown, Ohio -- and asked for a Courvoisier. But a pork rind-eatin’, big-rig drivin’ George H.W. Bush managed to gag the silver-spoon-born, country-club-belonging George H.W. Bush long enough to get elected.
These issues have nothing to do with policy and everything to do with personality -- the voters’ beer-buddy standard. Voters may not remember how politicians would fix healthcare or change the investment banking system, but if a candidate bowls a gutter ball or turns up his nose at Iowa’s hot beef sundae, that’s the memory they’ll take into the voting booth.
What I want to know is, if we’re using the beer-buddy standard to pick a president, how come we never see them drinking one? What could be more telling about candidates than their brewskis? Bottle or draft? Lite or dark? Microbrew or off-the-shelf? Samuel Adams (founding father) or St. Pauli Girl (a businesswoman of Hamburg’s old red-light district)?
On second thought, beer’s too complicated. Run those international monetary fund policies by me again.
