Across a divide of decades, Sarah Palin is openly fueling the class-based resentment that motivated the Nixons in the 1960s but could only be expressed back then in coded terms like “the silent majority.”
In her interview with Brian Williams this week, Palin evoked memories of what Pat Nixon let slip publicly only once in 1968 in an interview with Gloria Steinem, whose status as one of “The Beautiful People” triggered a monologue of aggrieved self-pity.
Asked to describe members of the elite she rails against on the campaign trail, Palin answered, “Oh, I guess just people who think that they’re better than anyone else. John McCain and I are so committed to serving every American. Hard-working, middle-class Americans…So anyone who thinks that they are–I guess–better than anyone else, that’s my definition of elitism.
“So it’s not education?” Williams pressed. “It’s not income-based? A state of mind? It’s not geography?”
“Anyone who thinks that they’re better than someone else,” Palin repeated firmly.
This echoes what happened when Steinem asked Pat Nixon to define herself and opened a floodgate of resentment that sounded like “a long accusation”: