Playing the I-Card? It's No Sure Way to Victory

By MARY McNAMARA

Nov. 2, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Intentionally or not, in this last week of the campaign, the presidential candidates have been reduced in many quarters to stock characters: the Frat Boy and the Know-It-All. The Cowboy and the Nerd. And the method by which many voters make their choice has been boiled down to the now-ubiquitous phrase “comfort level.” With whom are American voters more comfortable? The folksy governor of Texas with the unfortunate tendency to smirk? Or the brainy vice president with the lamentable inability to relax?

The eternal battle between the “intellectual” and the “common man” is one of the most enduring story lines in American mythology. Although neither candidate fits the prototype exactly--Gore is more professional politician than scholar, and Bush’s Connecticut elite pedigree contradicts his down-home persona--not since the Dwight Eisenhower-Adlai Stevenson race in 1952 have two candidates embodied the tradition so well.

By claiming Stendahl’s “The Red and the Black” as his favorite book, for example, Gore cast himself with the intelligentsia; by making fun of tax breaks for people who use solar energy in their homes, Bush took his place with regular folks.

The subject of intelligence in this presidential campaign has been burbling under the surface for months and has reached a boil with Gore supporters calling Bush’s intellect into question and Bush supporters responding that instinct trumps book learning.

For fervent partisans, the choice on Tuesday will be easy. But for many voters, including the small but significant number who, according to polls, are still vacillating, the very real differences in the candidates’s proposals seem less important than the candidates’ personalities and intellects. And while this attitude may seem at odds with the process of selecting the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, it is certainly not new, though it has taken on different shadings through the years.

“There is a home-grown Yankee do-it-yourself attitude that is suspicious of someone who seems to know too much,” says Russell Jacoby, author of “The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in the Age of Apathy.” “We love education but we don’t love educated people. There is a basic democratic resentment of the elite, often symbolized by the educated--that they are not like us, and so, not to be trusted. Like Adlai Stevenson, who was characterized as an egghead.”

Americans, he says, have a contradictory demand that a president be presidential and folksy. “It’s schizophrenic,” he says. “Because you can’t be presidential and be just like the guy down the block. If you look at the early great presidents--Jefferson, Adams--they could not get elected today. The founding fathers were too intellectual.”

According Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” the founding fathers themselves struggled against a populist backlash. In 1796, Federalists fearing that Thomas Jefferson would succeed George Washington, campaigned against the author of the Declaration of Independence by dubbing him “a philosopher” and so inclined to “timidity, whimsicalness and a disposition to reason from certain principles, and not from the true nature of man.”

In 1828, the defeat of the very intellectual President John Quincy Adams by Andrew Jackson, whom supporters described as “the unlettered man of the West, the nursling of the wilds . . . little versed in books, unconnected by science with the tradition of the past . . . .” made it clear that the American public did not necessarily equate knowledge with wisdom. Writing in 1835, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville lamented that in America “there is no class . . . by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor.”

For the next hundred years, Hofstadter argues, the tension between the learned and the instinctual did much to define American politics. Under Franklin Roosevelt--he of the “Brain Trust”--intellectuals and academics enjoyed a rare moment of public acclaim. But at the dawn of the Cold War, McCarthyism created an atmosphere in which the educated and the artistic were subjected to criticism and ridicule at a national level. Against that backdrop, the Stevenson-Eisenhower race of 1952, writes Hofstadter, “dramatized the contrast between intellect and philistinism.” Eisenhower’s victory, averred Time magazine, “discloses an alarming fact long suspected: There is a wide and unhealthy gap between the American intellectuals and the people.”

Almost 30 years later, the defeat of President Jimmy Carter, a former governor and nuclear engineer, by Ronald Reagan, a former governor and actor, was considered by many to be the ultimate symbol of the triumph of personal charisma over intellectual credentials. In their first presidential debate, Carter seemed to have a superior grasp of the facts, but with one well-timed gibe--”There you go again,”--Reagan turned Carter’s intellectual advantage into a fatal flaw.

“The triumph of Reagan was the belief that we needed a caretaker, a father figure who was impervious to scrutiny,” says Todd Gitlin, professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. “And TV makes it easier to get away with slovenly thinking, as long as it’s packaged prettily.”

Gitlin, who supports Gore and has written scathingly about what he considers Bush’s limited intelligence and experience, sees a connection between Bush’s success and that of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Where once game show contestants were asked to name the four operas in Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in the order of their premieres, now they are asked to list the colors found in an Oreo cookie. “Knowledge,” says Gitlin, “is no longer honored in America.”

Real education, the quest for truth and enlightenment, he says, cannot compete with the allure of popular culture. And as society relies more and more on peer validation, he adds, it doubts the value of tradition and the hallmarks of a good education--such as familiarity with history and a wide variety of literature--are no longer important.

Bush’s success, he says, is one of marketability--his reliance on general issues over specifics fits in with the simplistic messages of popular culture. “He’s a guy who feels good about himself as an ignoramus,” Gitlin says, “and that’s reassuring for people who have given up the idea that some values matter more than others.”

According to Newsday columnist James Pinkerton, Gitlin and other members of the left are playing a dangerous game by questioning Bush’s intelligence. “Some of the smartest presidents we’ve had--Carter, John Quincy Adams--have been failures,” says Pinkerton, who worked in the White House under Bush pere and supports Bush fils. “I don’t remember in high school the smartest guy winning student body president; it was the most popular guy. The smartest people were sort of hated.”

Bush is not as smart as Gore, Pinkerton says, but he’s got better judgment and better character. “Bush is uncurious, but he’s not dumb. What you see is what you get. He’s a Sunbelt businessman with conservative economic views.”

As for the idea that Americans are turned off by intelligence, Pinkerton scoffs. “It’s not intelligence that bothers them, it’s the snobbery. The best thing is to be really smart and keep quiet about it.”

Former Democratic advisor Patrick Caddell, a Nader supporter, says personalities are the only choices voters have in this election. “People are choosing by ‘comfort level’ because, well, why not?” says Caddell, a consultant for NBC’s “The West Wing.” “The American people are not stupid. They know that this is not a life-or-death decision for them because the two guys are so much the same--two wings of the Washington party who will do anything to get power.”

Caddell blames the media for the apathy and ambivalence he claims many voters feel. “This election was rigged by the two major parties,” he says. “All the issues have been made up--the most important issue of our time, trade, wasn’t even discussed in any of the debates.”

According to Christopher Hitchens, longtime columnist for the Nation, Americans have always tended to vote on instinct, which is not necessarily a bad way to go. “I’ve never thought the distinction between issue and personalities was a good one,” says Hitchens, who supports Nader. “I think voters looking to make a decision based on ‘who this guy is’ are making a smart decision, because they can change their minds about Star Wars or prescription drugs for the elderly, but once he’s in, they can’t change their minds about him.”

But while Hitchens says he can see why some people are put off by Gore, he doesn’t see how that translates to support for Bush, who he believes is “mediocre in every way. If you took away the name, [his running] would have been an impossibility.”

That mediocrity, however, may be Bush’s biggest asset. Reagan’s gaffes and malapropisms, Hitchens says, allowed people to identify with him more strongly. “They figured, ‘Oh, that’s the kind of thing I would do if I were president.’ ”

Americans want contradictory things from a president, he says, a leader who is dignified yet not too remote, someone who is extraordinary, yet somehow just like them. “Maybe what those polls are measuring is cognitive dissonance. Voters are trying to hold two opposing thoughts in their heads.”

“On the other hand,” he adds, “the ability to do that is supposed to be a sign of intelligence, so maybe it’s not so bad.”