I am an American who has grown increasingly disenchanted with "the American story." Everyone seems to have one. As evidenced by the biography-laden speeches at the Republican National Convention, John McCain and Sarah Palin are running an entire campaign on the promise of the power of personal narrative: McCain's tenure as a POW; Palin's "hockey-mom" origins and moose-hunting proclivities; and, of course, their opponent's supposedly inferior narrative, his insufficiently American, American story.
The Republican candidates' crass deployment of identity politics is depressing; their attempt to lay claim to "true American patriotism" unsurprising at best. But we mustn't forget that "the American story" is a theme embraced by the Democrats as well, and that the effect of their narratives is equally problematic. Barack Obama has the single mother, Michelle Obama has the city-worker father, Joe Biden has the commute from Wilmington to Washington, D.C. They're blue-collar, hardworking, working-class, value-filled folks. Their parents pulled themselves up by the bootstraps. Their successes are proof of the endurance of the American dream.
I don't mean to mock the Obamas or Biden or dismiss their remarkable personal narratives. Nor do I deny that each has made what Michelle Obama memorably called "an improbable journey." But I do want to call into question the way these narratives are deployed, the language used to tell their tales of triumph, and the erasures that happen when we allow a single, limited version of "the American story" to become the template for all Americans. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a major in Literature. She is the Managing Editor of India Currents, a California-based monthly magazine in circulation since 1987.
We are accustomed to hearing stories of the "ordinary" Americans whom politicians meet "every day" during their campaign stops and town hall meetings. I will never forget-, each candidate begins, filling in the blank with "the single parent," with "no health insurance," who works "the day shift and the night shift" and "can't afford college tuition," the military families, the blue-collar, hardworking people who have touched their lives and inspired their political journeys. During the primary season, John "the son of a mill worker" Edwards was particularly notorious for using such names and narratives to tell his tale of two Americas. Today, every candidate devotes some section of their remarks to comparable shout-outs.
Of course, there are struggling individuals and families in America, and of course, they deserve to be heard, represented, and advocated for. But to what extent are they invoked as a politically expedient way to bolster the candidate-in-question's own lower-middle-class credentials? We are so used to hearing the rhetoric - because, we assume, it is what is required to connect with the majority of Americans - that we aren't critical of its attendant condescension.
I was invigorated by Hillary Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention. But one thing she said seemed representative of all that irks me about political rhetoric. "I ran for president," she said, "... to provide opportunity to those who are willing to work hard for it and have that work rewarded, so they could save for college, a home, and retirement, afford gas and groceries, and have a little left over each month" (emphasis added).
A little left over each month. As a goal for a life? Why must the American dream be presented entirely in terms of work and reward - home, retirement, gas, groceries, savings - and no other aspect of the human condition?
Hillary Clinton did not say that "the single mom who adopted two kids with autism" deserves, just as much as she does, to be the first female president of the United States, that it is only a twist of fate that she, Hillary, is the Senator, and the single mom a reference in her speech. You will never hear Barack Obama say that every American deserves not just a college education, but an education from the likes of Columbia University and Harvard Law.
Rarely do we hear a candidate talk about the right of all Americans to be rewarded for their "thinking," the right that all Americans have to leisure and pleasure, to mental stimulation, to creative challenges, to fulfilling relationships, and an enjoyable life.
Instead, all we hear are references to how hardworking the ordinary American is, and what material rewards the ordinary American is entitled to as a result of that work. All we hear is that the politician, too, comes from a family of blue-collars and hard workers, and that America will reward those who put their nose to the grindstone and keep on grinding.
Not only does the repeated invocation of the "hard working American" delimit Americanness itself, but it also opens the way for the base sniping we have seen since the conventions: in a nation founded on the ideal of equal opportunity for individuals of inherently equal worth, we are now judging the worth of each other's working class credentials.
A little left over each month. Maybe the problem is not that the Democrats are dreaming too big - that, as Ted Kennedy said, Obama believes in "an America of high principle and bold endeavor" - but that even their standard is too narrow. The standard of the American dream that is evoked by today's politicians is a standard of the individual American as laborer and consumer. The American story we are told is a story of hard work and limited reward, of individual exceptionalism, and an illusory dream.
I want to hear something more. I want to hear about the ideas that changed these politicians' lives - ideas beyond work ethic. I want to hear about the systems and circumstances - the schools, the neighborhoods, the councils, the food eaten, the roads driven - that affect all Americans differently. I want us to parse those differences instead of continuing to fabricate our sameness.
We know the stock American fairy tale; now it's time for nuance and depth. Politicians should stop bludgeoning us with biography, stop condescending to their constituents, and start talking about all the things that matter more than the stories they so love to tell and that they think we Americans so love to hear.
