When was the last time we had a president that was raised in a city? When was the last time that we had a president that had been a representative of a city? Obama has spent his life in Honolulu, Indonesia (presumably in a city), New York City, Boston, and Chicago. I can’t think of an example of someone with that kind of urban experience being president. Can you?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
31 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Wikipedia calls Hope, Arkansas a small city. So would that have given Bill Clinton a small amount of urban experience? < ducks >
Is like comparing a goldfish to a blue whale.
In February, I drove from Oklahoma City to Chicago. Halfway up Illinois I saw the orange glow on the horizon that grew and grew and grew. No such glow from St. Louis that I had also approached in the dark.
“Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders … “
A lot has changed since Carl Sandburg wrote those words, but our city (Obama’s and mine) is still awesome.
It was snark.
I’ve lived in the NYC vicinity my entire life. There’s perhaps a little too much of a glow here.
I know. And I concede, your orange glow is bigger than my orange glow.
One of the most exciting things to me is Obama’s deep awareness of both the positive culture of urban ghettos and also the horrible devastation of poverty, crack, and gang warfare. Federal politicians rarely mention urban concerns, and usually do in terms that are euphemistic and hardly address deep class divides.
I volunteer at a local soup kitchen in Oakland. Obama is the only presidential candidate I’ve seen in my (not very long) life who would fit in fine as a volunteer there.
Reagan spent much of his life in L.A. though he wasn’t raised there. Nixon was from the L.A. suburbs and represented that area in Congress. And of course JFK from Boston.
But the LA suburb where Nixon lived was more a small ex-urban town at the time he lived there than a suburb as we have come to know them. Modern day southern California bears scant resemblance to pre WWII southern California.
Go to the Wikipedia entry and take a look at the photo from 1920!
That…plus, I’m really glad Obama is well-versed on Constitutional law and his early career was spent empowering people.
Oh, I’m soooo happy…we have a nominee!!!! McSame is toast.
YAYYYY!!!
Agreed. But I like the urban point. I didn’t like some of the comments I read re: Ohio results that were basically implying that urban dwellers/ people in densely-populated counties are being forward (and yes possibly “uppity” with all its awful connotations) for wanting their votes to count as much as the votes of rural residents.
Wishing for a way to do those who-won-by-county (or -state) maps with an indication of how many people live in each county (or state) as well as which candidate prevailed.
(Compare, for instance, the maps in this PDF of an Atlantic Monthly article called “The World is Spiky”. And yes it is a retort to some of the claims in the book of one infamous Thomas Friedman.)
Thomas Friedman, ew….
Donna Brazile, Rep. Wexler, YAYYY!!! OBAMA 08!!!
Hmmm. Depends on the definition of city, I suppose. Presidential birthplaces/early hometowns:
Bush 43 – New Haven, CT
Clinton – Hope, AR
Bush 41 – Milton, MA/Greenwich, CT
Reagan – Tampico, IL (lived in Chicago briefly)
Carter – Plains, GA
Ford – Grand Rapids, MI (born in Omaha, NE but never lived there long)
Nixon – Yorba Linda, CA (basically southern California)
Johnson – near Stonewall, TX
Kennedy – Brookline, MA
After that we start talking about people who are old enough that being raised in the city was not the norm. Even so, I think there were city boys in there — Franklin Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, which is basically a suburb of Poughkeepsie, Taft comes from Cincinnati, and Garfield hails from Cleveland.
Here’s an interesting map I found in researching this. It shows the birthplaces of the Presidents. Note the tight cluster around Boston. 🙂
http://www.mibazaar.com/ushistory/
Nixon’s birthplace is probably urban these days. Looks like it’s basically Anaheim. Probably not so urban at the time, though.
Is not urban at all. It’s barely a city. It’s one giant housing development and two main drags of shopping.
I don’t know, from your description and its Wikipedia page it sounds like Yorba Linda is a lot like my current home town of Shoreline, Washington. Similar population, similar description (lots of housing and a couple of main drags for shopping). Certainly not inner city, hang out on the fire escape, the population of Wyoming per square mile urban, but not like growing up on a farm either.
The difference appears to be that I live a quarter mile from the Seattle city limits, while Yorba Linda is a ways away from the big city.
You’re right
While many of these places are urban now, all but one was really rural when those Presidents lived there.
Bush 41 represented Houston in Congress.
Bush 43 is from Dallas.
Reagan was essentially from LA. Think about it, he was Hollywood. Nixon, too.
Well, Honolulu in the years he was there was VERY quiet. I went there in the 1970s and it still had a suburban feel. Not true today, by any means. Even by the late 80s it was very different. But he wasn’t living there then.
And you haven’t read his book! Shame! 😉 He grew up very poor in Indonesia, far from modern conveniences. He was not in a city there, no sir.
So while I think that would be interesting, it doesn’t really apply to his upbringing. However, as a young adult, he spent a lot of time in NYC and of course, Chicago. So I think your argument still holds. But you can’t say he ‘grew up’ in a city – just not true, unless his growing up started in college..! 😉
Fine points you raise – however, I think I did much of my growing up in college (or after!). 😉
My response. 🙂
You’re hilarious!! I wonder how long before all comments are done that way???
I can forgive you not reading the book, but citing Wikipedia as a source? Now that really IS shameful! 😉
I just noticed in the RFK article, now that the 40th anniversary is coming up, Mel Ayton or his friends removed my links and added his. (He’s the Gerald Posner of the RFK case. I mean, that’s like having Karl Rove write the ‘definitive’ case on the war in Iraq. But less funny.)
And another…okay, it took me longer to write the code than it took to me to record the damn thing, I either should log off or stop drinking.
wow faboo – you’re beautiful! Video comments add a new dimension of understanding, don’t they? It’s easier to get the body language, the tone, the intent of the comment.
And it’s funny you say that, I was talking with someone last night on there and that was the topic of our conversation. It does, though there are still misunderstandings on the site, especially because of cultural, political and language issues. It’s interesting to watch how people work to diffuse the situation. I’ve only seen a few blow ups and there is actually a troll on there, which is, if you can believe it, even sadder than a troll on a blog.
Blogging while buzzed, eh? Loved the burb!
And hey – I was teasing re Wikipedia – hence the wink after.
Yeah – if we all did this by video, it would be really interesting!
I just finished his book Dreams from my Father, and during the Indonesia section I was impressed by the poverty of the rural area where he lived and the fact that we might have a president who had lived in a Third World country. He has also gained immense perspective on both Third World poverty and colonialism from his time spent with his father’s family in Kenya, also covered in the book.
Exactly. And he was not ignorant of the US’s role in Indonesia.
I mean, we could have a president who actually knows some of our country’s Real History. Can you imagine how excited that makes me??? ;D
.
The elementary school SD Fransiskus Asisi of Barry Soetoro was in Menteng Dalam, Central Jakarta, the world’s 11th largest metropolitan area.
Support for Barack Obama as he contends for the chance run in the 2009 election on the Democratic ticket comes from many places, including a Jakarta school where he studied for two years, Detik.com reported.
Barry SoetoroEighteen of his classmates gathered at the public elementary school SDN Menteng 01 in Central Jakarta to declare the establishment of Obama Fans Club. “(The fans club) is our way to support to Barry,” said coordinator Rully Dasaad, referring to Obama’s nickname.
Hawaii-born Obama moved to Indonesia at the age of six to live with his mother, Ann Dunham, and Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro.
Obama’s Jakarta Trail
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Thanks – that’s a fun article!
His charisma is dynamic. Hillary has claimed that it is sexism and also race but it wasn’t either. He’s magnetic. You’re right, also. He knows the urban setting; he knows about people and what they want from their lives.
I’d say Obama is an urban type, more so than any other president. He’s urban streetwise, knows the ropes, could turn up without notice on the sidewalk of any U.S. city, big or small. As one commentator remarks above, he wouldn’t necessarily look out of place in a soup kitchen. Whether so or not, no other president could possibly have tried to fit that role without looking awkward or condescending. The image is urban. Can you imagine Mrs. Clinton or Mr. McSame ladling out soup to the homeless? The heartland of the U.S. consists now of all the urban centers spread across the country. Isn’t that where most people live, including the surrounding suburbs: metropolitan areas? It’s a hoot to call Iowa or the mid-west the heartland. It’s even more than a hoot to put on a cowboy hat and clear brush. But the U.S. people accepted it as reality: Hollywood exit stage left. I recall that Obama wore such a hat in a publicized photo, but my memory keeps playing tricks on me. I recall that he looked silly and embarrassed. Send him to a soup kitchen instead! I love the image.