Candidates Fight Hard to Seem 'Average'
April 16, 2007 — -- If the 2008 presidential election was a reality show called "I'm Running for President," this week's episode would have been called "… and I'm Just Like You."
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards whistled Dixie in his Seneca, S.C. birthplace, using small town beginnings to establish himself as a Southern Democrat to Southern conservatives.
Outside a nearby family restaurant, Edwards told reporters "I'm different than some Democrats because I grew up in the South," Edwards said.
At a program last week organized by the politically influential Service Employees International Union, Edwards was the first Democratic presidential contender to work the early shift at a suburban nursing home, tending to the residents who live there, complete in jeans and a blue, collared shirt.
Around the same time, a Republican presidential aspirant, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made headlines of his own, taking heat in the national spotlight for wrongly estimating the cost of a gallon of milk by half.
In a field of nearly two dozen, the candidates are fighting to be in touch, to be visible, to be heard, to be electable. Some of them are millionaires hundreds of times over. Others boast political pedigree.
But when they're fighting for the votes of an American public whose median household income, as of the last census, was $46,242, their bank statements and blue blood quickly fade to background.
For those votes, they'll become your neighbors, give you a clean shave at your rest home and even let you quiz them on their last grocery bill.
"I don't really think voters are looking for a president who knows the price of things in a grocery store," said Michael Hagen of Temple University's Department of Political Science. "In this stage of the campaign, the impressions that the candidates are trying to get across have more to do with connecting with people on some level they understand."
Lynn Vavreck, a political science faculty member at UCLA, agrees. They do it, she says, to "convey an image to voters that they're 'just like you.'"
An image and values that reflect the voting bloc, Vavreck said, signal " to voters that the candidate knows your problems and how to make things better for you."
Just ask President Bush.
During the 2000 campaign then-Gov. George W. Bush, son of a former president and grandson of a U.S. senator, masked his New England ties and Ivy League pedigree behind a Texas drawl and everyday appeal.
