Working class heroes in their own minds
by digby
If you’re tired of reading about the election (and who isn’t?) here’s a little story I wrote for Salon today about the two greatest working class heroes of our time:
Is there anything more fascinating that listening in on a conversation between a couple of middle aged white millionaires (is there any other kind?) telling each other how wonderful they are? I didn’t think so, which is why I wanted to draw your attention to this scintillating back and forth in Philadelphia Magazine between a couple of men who like to think of themselves as just two regular guys, ex-Governor Ed Rendell and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
They first knew each other when Matthews was working for Jimmy Carter and Rendell was backing Teddy Kennedy back in 1980:
CHRIS: Teddy came to town, and he was eating Philly pretzels and meeting with the Cardinal. You could do that in those days. And Carter was in his Rose Garden because of the [Iranian] hostages. And I’m handling Philly. These guys rolled us over.
ED: But we only won by 7,000 votes statewide. It was almost a Pyrrhic victory. Because by the time [the nomination battle] reached New York and Pennsylvania, it was over.
Good times. These two guys adore one another. Which is nice. Except for their politics.
ED: I think you’re gonna have a divided government no matter who wins in ’16. But I would say there are two people in the field who have the ability to maybe bring the Congress together: Hillary on the Democratic side, and Jeb Bush on the Republican side. Part of it, Chris, is just the interpersonal skills. I had a Republican legislature for six of the eight years [I was governor], and yet everything I talked about in the 2002 campaign, we made significant progress on. Because I knew how to sit down and horse-trade.
Villagers and cynics love to mock liberals for “Green lantern-ism” — the notion that the president has more power than he actually does — but the truth is that this centrist twaddle qualifies just as easily. Oddly, Rendell and company rarely get criticized for insisting that the president could have just gotten everyone in a room and knocked some heads together to solve everything once and for all. It’s fair to say that this myth is just as pervasive as the so-called silly liberals’ and it’s believed in much more powerful circles than the comment section of Daily Kos.
Read on for bonus kvelling over Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. One’s a great conciliator (I don’t know why) and the other is a fine gentleman from old money.