Those ordinary Americans

I myself am not acquainted with any ordinary Americans. I know more than a few extraordinary Americans, some of them living right around here: people who work at volunteering as if it were a job, people who name the library as a beneficiary in their wills, and people who go out of their ways to help others in the most amazing and humbling ways and then act as if it were nothing — including the bona fide heroes among us who risk their lives on a regular basis in order to keep the rest of us safe. Of course I also know folks who don’t or can’t do these kinds of things (or not right now, anyway), but I often also know astonishing stories about things they’ve done or experienced in their lifetimes.

So who are the politicians talking about when they refer to “ordinary Americans?” Not themselves; that seems clear. I can’t help suspecting that they’re talking about “the little people” — what a semi-celebrity from my days in publishing once called, disdainfully, “those people we fly over.”
What’s interesting is how much these politicians know, or think they know, about what we run-of-the-mill groundlings want or need. They have anointed themselves as veritable experts on our tastes and preferences. I hear it over and over, in sonorous tones: “The American people don’t want their health care messed with.” “Americans are tired of the war in Afghanistan.” “What Americans want now is …“ (Please choose from the following options: universal health coverage, tea parties, financial regulation, no financial regulation, no new taxes, no budget deficit, a solution for climate change, a declaration that there is no climate change.)

These diagnoses are usually supported by polls or surveys, and I’m wondering who responds to them. Have you ever been polled? If the answer is yes, you are probably either retired or on the mailing list of a political party or interest group. Working adults aren’t very available to pollsters, because even when they’re at home, they’re too busy (and perhaps cautious) to talk to some stranger about their politics or their hopes and dreams for their country. As for surveys, they’re almost always slanted, with questions of the are-you-still-beating-your-wife variety. An example I saw recently was: “Do you favor a government takeover of health care?” (Duh — nobody favors a government takeover of anything.)

For what it’s worth, though, we do a reliable national survey every few years that tells us what the American people want. It’s called an election.

Susan Harper is the former director of the Commerce Public Library. She lives in Commerce.