March 3, 2004
POLITICS: Pitchfork John
Take the quiz! NRO's Jim Geraghty has a hilarious compilation of quotes - see if you can guess (without peeking at the bottom) which ones are John Kerry and which are Pat Buchanan. I thought I could guess, and I only got 5 out of 10 correct.
Which brings up an interesting point: Buchanan may be a convincing populist, but Kerry as a peasant with a pitchfork conjures an image of a down-at-the-heels nobleman trying to rile a crowd to get his castle back . . . Kerry and Bush may both be from elite old-money WASP backgrounds, but Kerry has tried to paint himself as an economic populist, and it's a transparent fraud coming from such a wealthy man. Bush has never played that card - if anything, he's gone in the opposite direction by presenting himself as a CEO with an MBA - but he's far more authentic as a cultural populist, a former beer-drinking frat boy who likes baseball, Austin Powers movies, cowboy boots, and clearing brush on his ranch.