A Mutation of the Cornpone Syndrome

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency/Hugh Sidey

The yahoo syndrome has been detected in the White House.

God (or perhaps Senator Russell Long) help us if President Jimmy Carter succumbs. So far only Jody Powell, Hamilton Jordan and assorted other Georgians appear to be weakening, and they only mildly. There is hope before permanent disability sets in.

The yahoo syndrome is a mutation of an earlier condition. In Lyndon Johnson's time it was called "cornponeitis," and with Richard Nixon it came out as the "better people" prejudice. Both terms came from the Presidents' describing how they felt others unfairly viewed them.

The problem can be defined thusly: as long as Presidents are successful, they are proud (indeed, some might say, even overbearing) about their geographical, cultural and intellectual identities. But when success begins to elude them, they detect in the world beyond the White House walls (particularly in New York and Washington) massive arrogance and contempt aimed at their humble origins and quaint folkways. They develop large chips on their shoulders, which weight them into self-pity. The doubt and anger that result in such cases may well have damaged this nation far more than presidential overconfidence.

Some warning tremors of this sort are coming now from White House underlings who complain that Carter's words are being unfairly edited, that Henry Kissinger (a prime Carter campaign punching bag) is being excessively venerated, that the Georgia boys are being called a bunch of yahoos. Something described vaguely as the Washington Establishment is blamed for frustrating the President's plans by spreading its thin-blooded cynicism through the candlelit parlors of Georgetown. Of course, there is some truth in such criticisms. But there are also a few facts to be considered.

No scientific survey has been made, but it is a good guess that at least 86.3% of the people in Washington could start thinking of themselves as yahoos if they were to begin feeling paranoid. (For New York the figure is slightly less, perhaps 67.4%.) There remain in the capital a few old families whose ancestors established their claims to prominence by running brothels and selling swampland at exorbitant prices to homeless debtors just off the boats. But most of the Washington Establishment is only a few years removed from Dubuque lawyers and St. Joe hucksters, largely people of humble origins and quaint folkways.

Almost always, the first important complaints about the injustices borne by outlanders--or poor country folk, or the unentrenched--come from those who are having problems. Neither geography nor origins have much to do with it. Lyndon Johnson was a hero in Washington for decades, but when Viet Nam became an overwhelming problem for him, he began protesting that he was being picked on because he was not a Harvard graduate, liked the Presidential Seal on his cowboy boots and when he said hors d'oeuvres it came out "oar doves." In Nixon's dark days, he told and retold the tale of his family's hardscrabble origins and stories of slights from Dwight Eisenhower and the Kennedy clan.

Jonathan Swift first discovered the yahoos in his imagination back in 1726. What marks a genuine yahoo, of course, is that he fears in his heart that he really is one and so spends a lot of time going around protesting how terrible it is that other folks think he is one.

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