Peggy Noonan discovers globalization

Ms. Noonan is a sharp mind, and her pieces are usually an enjoyable read. But this column is all kinds of wrong. Let’s start with her initial thesis:

OK, quick, close your eyes. Where is Barack Obama from?

He’s from Young. He’s from the town of Smooth in the state of Well Educated. He’s from TV.

John McCain? He’s from Military. He’s from Vietnam Township in the Sunbelt state.

Chicago? That’s where Mr. Obama wound up. Modern but Midwestern: a perfect place to begin what might become a national career. Arizona? That’s where Mr. McCain settled, a perfect place from which to launch a more or less conservative career in the 1980s.

Neither man has or gives a strong sense of place in the sense that American politicians almost always have, since Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, and Abe Lincoln of Illinois, and FDR of New York, and JFK of Massachusetts.

Really? “JFK of Massachusetts”? Or JFK from the Catholic District of Young Hope? And what about the conveniently ignored “Reagan of California”, or, for that matter, “Nixon of California”? I have trouble believing Reagan really exuded a strong ’sense of place’ rather than Am-urr-ica. And then “George H.W. Bush of . . .” well, where? You might make a case for Texas, but you could equally make a case for East Coast. Some elections are hinged on regional politics (see every election from about 1828 until the Civil War), but others are more about direction. This goes on:

Mr. Obama hails from Chicago, but no one would confuse him with Chicagoans like Richard Daley or Dan Rostenkowski, or Harold Washington.

AHEM.

And Mr. McCain, in his experience, history and genes, is definitely military, and could easily come from Indiana or South Carolina or California, and could easily speak of upholding the values of those places.

Isn’t this the point of presidential campaigns? Was FDR seen as the gleaming light of New York/Tammany Hall values (as he should have been), or was viewed as a man of the People, who would lift up the common man from his troubles? It would be a bit odd to try and run a national campaign without appealing to some sort of national values. I also question the George Bush “Texan” hypothesis. In retrospect, he was clearly associated with a sort of “cowboy diplomacy.” But this isn’t what he ran on in 2000; he ran on a platform of humble internationalism, channeling the spirit of Warren Harding as an antidote to the liberal interventionism of Woodrow Wilson/William Clinton (Irony is the clearly the name of this game).

Also, very sly to sneak California in there, a state that has clearly jibed with McCain’s values electorally for the last 30 years.

I miss the old geographical vividness. But we are national now, and in a world so global that at the Olympics, when someone wins, wherever he is from, whatever nation or culture, he makes the same movements with his arms and face to mark his victory. South Korea’s Park Tae-hwan moves just like Michael Phelps, with the “Yes!” and the arms shooting upward and the fists. This must be good. Why does it feel like a leveling? Like a squashing and squeezing down of the particular, local and authentic.

The best example of globalization is that fact that world-competitive swimmers tend to move in the same fashion? Just imagine when she sees the tape-delayed Greek basketball team deploy a zone.

Of course, the debate between McWorld and Jihad is age-old by this point. Yet as it applies to domestic, national elections, this will vacillate from election to election. This year, a clear redefinition after eight years of a polarizing administration, will be filled with a sense of universality and redirection. 2012, perhaps not so much.

But part of me tugs for Tim Kaine of Virginia, because he has a wonderful American Man haircut, not the cut of the man in first but the guy in coach who may be the air marshal. He looks like he goes once every 10 days to Jimmy Hoffa’s barber and says, “Gimme a full Detroit.”

Detroit: that’s a place.

Wait a minute: are we discussing the full Detroit as in the style during the 1950s? Are we talking about Detroit after the riots, and the subsequent flight out to the suburbs? Are we talking about the Detroit of the present, with a Chicago-esque cronyism in the form of Kilpatrick Machine, and the decline of the auto industry? My goodness, Detroit has changed over the last fifty years! Next you’ll be telling me that the Middle East is listening to rock music!