The first family you can identify with: Politico

Quoted via Politico:

“Ever since the election of Andrew Jackson, having the common touch has been essential,” says H.W. Brands, author of the FDR biography “Traitor to His Class.” “These days, no one in politics claims to be of the upper class. Everybody wants to be part of the middle class.”

But not many recent presidents have been able to pull it off. George W. Bush tried to be down-home, with a modest ranch in Crawford, Texas, but he could never quite escape representing both East Coast old money and Texas new money. Bill Clinton was beloved for his hardscrabble Southern story, but his everyman populism was mismatched by his calculating style — his adviser Dick Morris famously polling on where he should vacation — and his overtly ambitious wife, who, as she memorably put it, was not one to sit home and bake cookies. George H. W. Bush exemplified a patrician upper class — even though he professed his love of pork  rinds and NASCAR. Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood fame, paired with his humble origins and advanced age, made him likable yet an anomaly, while his wife, Nancy, was the sine qua non lady who lunches.

In the Obamas, however, a wide swath of Americans can see themselves. One major reason is their relative youth and the age of their children. Not since the Kennedys has a first family with young children lived in the White House, and the normal rites of child-raising — from taking kids to school to playing with them in the backyard — enable the Obama’s to seem to have the same concerns as millions of other parents. more