I'M JUST THAT SIMPLE

By JEFF GREENFIELD

It was a riveting sight: there, in the capitol itself, a U.S. Senator often mocked for his halting, inarticulate speaking, reached deep into his Midwestern roots and spoke eloquently, even poetically, about who he was and what he believed, stunning politicians and journalists alike.

I refer, of course, to Senator Jefferson Smith. In Frank Capra's classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart plays this simple, idealistic small-town American, mocked and scorned by the big-moneyed, oh-so-sophisticated power elite--only to triumph over a corrupt Establishment with his rock-solid goodness.

At root, it is this role that soon-to-be-ex-Senator Bob Dole most aspires to play: the self-effacing, quietly powerful small-town man from Main Street who outwits the cosmopolitan, slick-talking snob from the fleshpots. And why not? There is, after all, no more enduring American icon.

How enduring? Before we had a Constitution, Thomas Jefferson was arguing that the new nation's future would depend on a base of agrarian yeomen free from the vices inherent in big cities. One of the classic, image-driven presidential campaigns featured William Henry Harrison as the embodiment of homey rural virtues, the candidate of the log cabin and hard cider, defeating the incumbent Martin Van Buren, who was accused of dandified dress and manners. One of Van Buren's more vocal detractors was Davy Crockett, who went from frontiersman to the U.S. Congress without ever trading in his coonskin cap for a top hat. (A century later, fellow Tennessean Estes Kefauver won a Senate seat and a passel of presidential primaries when he made a coonskin cap his own symbol of country roots.)

Abe Lincoln was a prominent railroad lawyer in 1860, but he campaigned for the White House as the simple Midwestern rail-splitter. And his last moments were spent watching a play, Our American Cousin, in which an unsophisticated rustic journeys to Britain, where he gets the better of his highfalutin relatives.

Our popular culture is dense with unassuming, homespun heroes and heroines: from James Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer to Mark Twain's Tom and Huck, to Will Rogers and Ma and Pa Kettle and the Clampetts of Beverly Hills, to Forrest Gump, who took the myth one step further by demonstrating that a double-digit IQ could lead to immense worldly success if accompanied by a good heart and simple decency. It is the essence of Capra's best-loved heroes. Jefferson Smith must contend with the schemes of Senator Paine, his onetime hero who plays a scene decked out in white tie and tails. In Meet John Doe, Gary Cooper battles the fascistic schemes of the super-rich Edward Arnold, who is seen in an elegant dining room complete with tuxedo and cigar. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Cooper must defend himself against a courtroom full of slickly dressed, high-priced, big-city lawyers. In It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey learns that without his good heart and small-town values, the whole town of Bedford Falls would have fallen to the corrupt greed of Mr. Potter.

There is, of course, a huge disconnect between this professed love of the simple, unspoiled life and the way we actually live. As a people, we've spent the better part of the 20th century deserting the farms and the small towns for the cities and the suburbs; we are torn between vacationing in Disney World and Las Vegas.

Our politicians too haven't exactly shunned the temptations of the cosmopolitan life. The town of Russell, Kansas, often seems to be Dole's running mate, but the candidate spends his leisure time in a luxury condo in Bal Harbor, Florida. Bill Clinton still believes in a place called Hope, but the spiffy, celebrity-dense resorts of Martha's Vineyard and Jackson Hole are where he kicks back. Gerald Ford spends his post-presidential days not in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but in California and in Aspen, Colorado. Ronald Reagan embodied the faith-and-family pieties of the front porch and Main Street, but he fled Iowa for a career and a life in Hollywood. (Of all our recent Presidents, only Jimmy Carter has walked the rustic walk, living his whole life in Plains, Georgia, returning there after his presidency--and he has often been scorned as a joyless churl.)

Still, the hunger for the way we believe we are supposed to live is strong, and the distrust of the intellectual hustler with his airs and his high-flown language runs deep. It makes sense for the Dole campaign to make this a contest between Dole as the laconic, quiet man whose words you can trust and Bill Clinton as the traveling salesman with a line of smooth patter but a suitcase full of damaged goods, a middle-aged Eddie Haskell from Leave It to Beaver, slick enough to fool the clueless grownups but never the other kids. It makes sense for Dole to make his campaign song Thank God I'm a Country Boy--even if he is humming it 30,000 ft. up in a corporate jet on his way to a Florida condo.