Sunday, April 20, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.
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The American public grows more naive and juvenile by the hour. Take the matter of accusing Sen. Barack Obama of elitism. Of course he belongs to an elite class of Americans — the Clintons even more so! Most American presidents from George Washington to FDR to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to the Bushes have been elites. That’s how they got to be president.
Most presidents were to the manor born, attended elite institutions of learning, traveled the globe like royalty and lived highly privileged lives. Nobody could be more of an elitist than George W. Bush.
The 39 men of the Continental Congress who signed off on our Constitution epitomized the meaning of the word. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, owned more than 100 slaves. The American icon known as Thomas Jefferson had as his first memory that of being carried on a pillow by one of many slaves.
Common, ordinary, everyday people — John and Jane Doe — rarely become president, at least not until they’ve been accepted into the ranks of the elite, such as Harry Truman and Bill Clinton.
We’re not quite the merit-based, up-by-the-bootstraps society we claim to be. America needs to get real — and not just about politics.
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