Why Small-Town Boys Make Good

What do Dixon, Boise, Saint Johns, Mission, Westminster, Shirkieville, Floresville and Clio have in common? If, understandably, the light does not dawn, try this: Laurinburg, Walters, Rumford, Mitchell, Everett, Doland and Pocantico Hills. In case the riddle is still not solved, two more names should give it away: Plains and Grand Rapids.

The list, of course, includes the birthplaces and/or home towns of current and former Presidential Hopefuls (in order) Reagan, Church, Udall, Bentsen, Shriver, Bayh, Connally, Wallace, Sanford, Harris, Muskie, McGovern, Jackson, Humphrey, Rockefeller, Carter and Ford.

All qualify, with only a little imagination here (Rockefeller) and there (Ford), as small-town boys. They ran off to Washington or their state capitals, which must tell us something about small towns as well as the men. But it is a fact that with the exception of John Kennedy, every President of this century since Taft was born or reared in a small community. Which leads one to wonder why, in our age of ultimate urbanization, we end up with men who never had firsthand experience living right down in the crowded center of Megalopolis.

True, a couple of people's places were omitted--Cleveland and San Francisco. But Milton Shapp did not go far; Jerry Brown remains an oddity in the down-home parade of 1976.

"We exaggerate the citification of this country," says Irving Kristol, the New York University urban expert. "We do have an urbanized culture, but we are not a city people." Those fellows running for the White House are more a profile of America than we commonly recognize. The Census Bureau says that 80% of our population live in communities of less than 500,000 people, a city size not all that big.

In the suburbs and in many smaller cities, the folks still think a lot in small-town terms, insists Kristol, even while indulging in the urban world to work and go to concerts. The professor adds that this vast majority of people are not beset with the metropolitan problems that have dominated our public dialogue for years. More moderate sized cities, like Minneapolis, can actually solve their garbage, traffic and downtown commercial problems. This leads people like former Mayor Hubert Humphrey to believe that they can work wonders from the White House.

Daniel Boorstin, Librarian of Congress and a Pulitzer prizewinner for his book The Americans: The Democratic Experience, says that life is "more graspable" in smaller places. He believes that the immense cities often overwhelm the people who grow up there, discouraging them before they reach the age of leadership. In smaller places, he reckons, hope, a certain confidence and an ability to cope are nurtured. Boorstin is intrigued at how some of the open-air, back-fence values of Editor William Allen White, the Emporia sage of the 1920s, have re-entered the national discussion and how the small-town wisdom and wit of Will Rogers have been rekindled on the stage with amazing success by James Whitmore (who also does a nice impression of the man from Independence, Harry Truman).

"I think a person gets a better grip on himself and on the world when he spends those early years in a smaller place," muses Bill Moyers, public television's impresario, who was raised in Marshall, Texas. He says that solitude, knowing friends and enemies intimately, having a more hospitable environment--all provide a gentle entry into the harsh world. "People in towns get a better sense of themselves, their places. The families stay closer, the landmarks last longer."

In small places most people survive easily, and many who live so close to church, flag and mother leave home charged with what Moyers describes as a strain of Calvinism. It is composed of equal parts of missionary zeal to help others and fierce self-interest. It was best described, he says, in the admonition that Rebekah Baines Johnson, formidable matron of Johnson City, delivered frequently to her son Lyndon. "Do good," she said, "and you will do well." Onward Calvinist soldiers from Plains and Dixon and Grand Rapids and ...

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