Limousine liberals and corporate-jet conservatives

George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter bash elitist lefties, but their faux populism masks a slavish devotion to the interests and indulgences of the wealthy. Part 2 of "Big Lies."

By Joe Conason

Aug 19, 2003 | "Tax-cutting Republicans are friends of the common man, while liberals are snobbish elitists who despise the work ethic." One of the most successful themes of conservative propaganda is the notion that the right, not the left, represents everyday working Americans. Conservatives claim to speak for the silent majority and depict liberals as silly, affluent elitists who despise the work ethic. Promoting envy and resentment of "limousine liberals" is the right-wing version of class warfare. It's an updated, socially acceptable substitute for the traditional prejudices used by the most unsavory right-wingers to distract people from voting in their own interest.

There is no point in denying that limousine liberals exist or that they can be obnoxious -- but any trouble they cause is far outweighed by the depredations of another remote and arrogant elite: corporate-jet conservatives. Recent revelations of that set's incomprehensible greed and callousness make the limo liberals seem like saints. And unlike any clique of left-wing movie stars, they're a real problem.

At the turn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt denounced such people as "malefactors of great wealth." A hundred years later, there are two very important differences: The rich have indeed gotten far richer -- and the president of the United States is not their foe but their frontman.

For that job, George W. Bush possesses excellent qualifications of personality and temperament. He's a rich guy who enjoys masquerading as a regular guy, and he honestly hates the clever types from New York, Washington and Los Angeles who consider him dumb and vulgar. Ignorant but certainly not stupid, he's an unusually talented politician. He schmoozes and chats at county fairs and fat-cat feasts with an ease that always eluded his father. Moreover, although most voters realize that he will first take care of the wealthy -- the oilmen and the corporate lobbyists -- they like him anyway. He seems charming, approachable, caring and playful. His drawling gaffes sound unpretentious and real. And he can perform for hours at a time, in front of perfect strangers whose background is entirely different from his own.

Bush is a modern master of pseudopopulist style. What that style blurs is the profound Republican cynicism toward the same people he embraces and cajoles.

Bush belongs to the real elite. Yet he appears far more comfortable playing the role of commoner than his father, whose taste for pork rinds always seemed out of character. George W. used to say that the big difference between them is that his father went to Greenwich Day School in that tony Connecticut suburb, while he attended San Jacinto High School in dusty Midland, Texas. He didn't mention that after one year, he left public education behind to attend exclusive prep schools in Houston and Massachusetts, leading inexorably to his Yale matriculation as an underachieving "legacy" admission.

George W. is the kind of "regular guy" who burns through millions of other people's dollars in failed businesses, drinks too much until early middle age, dodges an insider-trading scandal, picks up a major league baseball franchise, and eventually finds himself in the Oval Office as commander in chief of the world's only superpower, thanks to a justice appointed to the Supreme Court by his father.

He likes to talk about helping the average taxpayer. "Average" is the word he used in his 2003 State of the Union message to mislead the public about the effects of his tax cut, saying that "92 million Americans will keep, this year, an average of almost a thousand dollars more of their own money." Doesn't that sound as if Bush is saying each of those 92 million citizens will find a $1,000 check from the Treasury in the mailbox? It does, but the truth is that wealthy taxpayers like Bush himself will get many thousands of dollars, while everyone else will get a few hundred dollars (except for those at the bottom, who will get no tax break at all).

There is a meaningful way to calculate the average effects of the Bush plan: The fortunate 1 percent at the top will receive an average annual tax cut of about $45,000. The less fortunate 20 percent in the middle of the income distribution will have their taxes cut by an average of $265. The least fortunate 60 percent at the bottom will get an average annual tax cut of $95.

It all depends on what the meaning of "average" is.

Next Page: Regular-guy Rush Limbaugh, wine snob

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