Main Street USA

I can understand the desire to invoke "Main Street" in presidential campaigns. Candidates want to seem "in tune" to Middle America. But I have to wonder if any candidate has been to an actual Main Street in years.

I have. And let me tell you, they're not dying. They're dead.

And they have been for years.

It's not the Dow, and it's not Wal-Mart. It's that no one has shopped on or cared about Main Street in 30 years.

On some levels I find it a bit insulting. It seems to me that people who want to appear as though they know "small town America" are the same people who produce movies that have mid-Americans watching a television with an antenna while sitting in the middle of a wheat field.

Now, I grew up on a farm in the early 80's, and I can honestly say that while I've seen some strange things happen in the middle of wheat fields, I've never seen a man with his 1952 Dodge pickup put a television on a milk crate, hook up the antenna and watch the presidential election results roll in. I seriously doubt it ever did happen, and it certainly doesn't happen now.

I can understand the nostalgia for "Main Street". Really, I can. But Main Street as those who lived in the 30's knew it no longer exists, and it would behoove a candidate to spend some time learning what Mid-America really looks like.

It's full of poverty, yet also full of hope. It's full of the downtrodden, but most are trying, really trying, to pull themselves up. And, I dare say, most never had enough money to invest in the stock market.

The people who live there may not be CEOs of major corporations with the ability to conjugate verbs, but that doesn't mean they spend their time in overalls hanging out in wheat fields setting up televisions so their kids can see this amazing thing called "moving pictures" either.

They are smart people trying to eek out a living. Let's give them a little credit.

Really, at least just a little.

L.