by Peter Brown
Barack Obama will be America's first urban president, and it's likely the decision he made as a young man about where to reside will show up in ways large and small during his White House years.
Let's be clear: Urban is not meant as a euphemism for black or liberal, although the president-elect is both.
Mr. Obama is a city guy -- not a suburban or rural person -- somewhat by upbringing, but more by choice as an adult who could live anywhere. As such, he sees the world through a different prism than those presidents who came from more suburban or rural locales.
"He chose an environment where he came face-to-face with issues that people who live in the suburbs don't know or think about," says Bill Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer.
Mr. Obama made the choice for an urban lifestyle when he became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. That decision set him apart from most of his countrymen, only about 20 percent of whom live in the big cities.
The nation's big-city mayors have long complained that the lack of a White House with an urban orientation meant their constituents suffered while the government paid more attention to the suburbs and rural areas.
Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, wrote this for the Political Perceptions column at the Wall Street Journal Online. See the full column.
Comments
You're kidding me. You mean New York City isn't a city? Does that mean the President who was born and raised in New York City, went to law school at Columbia and served in the New York State legislature wasn't an urban President? Is that true also for the President who were born and raised in Cincinnati or in the immediate vicinity of Boston? And I guess we can't call New Haven, Connecticut and urban area either.
.
Please stop all this hero-worship. It's really getting sickening.
Posted by: John W. | November 24, 2008 7:26 PM
You mean we don't have to elect blunder headed low IQ fake cowboys (Bush, Reagan) as President anymore?
YES!
Posted by: No more doughy rich white guy Republicans fron the south | November 24, 2008 8:00 PM
Nixon was a Corporate Lawyer in Manhattan between '62 and his White House election in '68.
Posted by: Joe S | November 24, 2008 9:04 PM
At first I thought the title and topic were bordering on BS, but after reading passages like this: "The nation's big-city mayors have long complained that the lack of a White House with an urban orientation meant their constituents suffered while the government paid more attention to the suburbs" I thought that the writer had some valid points. Thanks.
Posted by: Dennis | November 24, 2008 10:29 PM
Yes. He's a BUPPIE. I already knew that from the rich kid vacations, the private schools, the ivy league, the slumming to become one with the masses so he could produce a Madison Avenue award-winning campaign.
I still hope he'll do a lot of good anyway. I still hope he'll care about the rural kids who are just as smart as he was but lack the opportunity to get a scholarship to join the oligarchy.
Tnanks for reminding me.
It makes Noam Chomsky's coments on today's Democracy NOW! program more relevant:
http://i3.democracynow.org/
Posted by: I don't mind worshipping a real hero--I'm not sure about said hero's friends right about now | November 24, 2008 11:57 PM
Another meaningless distinction among the electorate, or so we are to believe, has reared its ugly head !! Now we will be getting an urban agenda, an urban lobby group !! Come on, President-elect Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America, another American. Celebrate the uniqueness of his election, an African-American citizen, who loves America and her citizens. Isn't it a nice change from the previous administrations, with their divisiveness and exclusiveness, not to mention their total incompetence and possible, criminal intent !! Change is basic to life, to fight it, is to oppose life !! Good luck, President-elect Obama, in changing this nation from a small-minded few, to an educated many, with opened minds and generous hearts !! We never know what the future holds, may it be good fortune for President-elect Obama and America !
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | November 25, 2008 1:13 AM
I think the idealized Obama transcends, or personifies transcendence over, race and class and also such dubious if no false dichotomies as urban/rural.
But if your point is, some one who as a young man went to work helping laid off steelworkers in the field is likely to have different perspectives on life from a prep school product who at the same age was chasing floozies in some bar in Alabama, I would think that's correct.
If the current situation turns into a real depression as I think it might, why, then, everyone except folk in Kenilworth and Wilmette will be on more or less the same playing field.
Depression as a catalyst for Change.
Posted by: ornery | November 25, 2008 2:04 AM
Is this column a joke? "The first urban president?"
Teddy Roosevelt was a New York City native who once ran for mayor of New York City. Isn't he "urban"? We've had presidents from New York City, Buffalo, Boston, Indianapolis, Cincinnati--I could go on. The point is that the whole premise of the article is based on an obvious untruth.
Posted by: Bruce | November 25, 2008 8:28 AM
Does it matter?
What matters is Mr. Obama going to support failures? I just saw a clip from the market news where a loan company rep was asking the person how much they pay for cable when it should be more like why the F do you even have cable if you have trouble paying your mortgage. Once again, Americans = failures. And somehow I'm going to foot the bill. Keep blaming Bush when all of you are like Bush. All bunch of idiots save few of us who actually care to manage our money. Forget transcending garbage. It would be nice if he just got real with all the failures who helped him into office.
Posted by: GaryP | November 25, 2008 8:44 PM