following theories that emphasized government as a bulwark of the propertied
class. Although rich himself, James Madison worried about social inequality
and wrote The Federalist #10 to explain how the proposed government would
not succumb to the influence of the affluent. Madison did not fully succeed,
according to Edward Pessen, who examined the social-class backgrounds of
all American presidents through Reagan. Pessen found that more than 40
percent hailed from the upper class, mostly from the upper fringes of that elite
group, and another 15 percent originated in families located between the upper
and upper-middle classes. More than 25 percent came from a solid upper-
middle-class background, leaving just six presidents, or 15 percent, to come
from the middle and lower-middle classes and just one, Andrew Johnson,
representing any part of the lower class. One recent president, Bill Clinton,
also comes from a working-class background, for a total of two. For good
reason, Pessen titled his book The Log Cabin Myth.^17 Clearly Boorstin and
Kelley never read Pessen, or they could not have claimed that the careers of
our presidents demonstrate how persons can rise “from the lowest positions to
the highest.” In fact, most Americans die in the same social class in which they
were born, sociologists have shown, and those who are mobile usually rise or
fall just a single social class.
Beer has been one of the few products (pickup trucks, some patent
medicines, and false-teeth cleansers are others) that advertisers try to sell with