What do you do for a living? Say you’re an elementary school teacher, a grand occupation to say the least. Would you like to be considered by peers and students alike an elite teacher? Would you not want to be considered an elite anything? To be considered the best? Of course you would.

But not if you want to be President. Not today. No, for some reason elite is now synonymous with out-of-touch, clueless, detached and unable to enjoy the role of President of the United States and leader of the Free World. Elites are the latte drinkers, the chardonnay sippers. For shame! Give us Junior Samples. Bring back “Hee Haw.”

The Joe Scarboroughs of the world and Hillarys for that matter will chide you for being great, exceptionally educated or a member of an exclusive class. And I’m not sure what that class consists of, frankly. You see, we’ve crafted this imaginary small town vision that right-winger pundits wax rhapsodic about, a latter day Mayberry, where Aunt Bea leaves pies on the sill to cool, where Old Glory flies everywhere, where Pappy teaches the young tad to master the shootin’ iron (much like Hillary’s taught her, I hope). A place where the Bible is thumped lovingly and with reverence. And these folks aren’t motivated by fear and bitterness, but that certainly helps. No, they’re possessed with a sincere and profound sense of . . . honest to God gun-totin’, non-bitterness-inspired evangelicalism.

While we sneer at the notion that Barack Obama may be “elitist,” the dreaded French are sneering at the notion that their Prez, Nicolas Sarkozy, may not be elite enough. They’re not fans of the churl. In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman writes in “A Lowbrow In High Office Ruffles France” that the French wish that Sarkozy would act more high falootin’ while we are the opposite. I know, I know, the French. The evil French who wisely eschewed invading Iraq and turned their back on their liberators who wanted to liberate anew. I know, I know.

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Since when is boorish, churlish, beer-swilling behavior preferred over erudite, polished and refined? After eight years of a brain-damaged Boeotian, why aren’t we begging for the anti-Bush, i.e. a literate, classy, highly-educated, posh and eloquent candidate who reeks of savoir fare? What’s Barack to do now to prove his commonplace ordinariness? Laughingly extend a curled finger begging someone to pull it? How about a whoopee cushion? Loud borborygmic eructations in public? What? Tractor pulls, yeah, that’s the ticket.

We look yet again like the unsophisticated hayseeds that apparently we are and have confused the genuine article and the real McCoy with the unsophisticated, commonplace and pedestrian. Not that there’s anything wrong with being pedestrian. Just ask my screener. But remember, we’re talking about the man or woman who will (we hope) resurrect us from the international shame and humiliation that we’ve endured for eight years under Bush.

Call me an elitist. And if you do, thanks.