Exile on Main Street

Ezra and Yglesias take exception to the "Main Street" metonym that's made its way through the media and campaigns. Of course, it should come as no surprise that high-profile Washington pundits from California and New York respectively should reject even the synecdoche of small-town America. On this, they are correct: Most Americans do not live in small towns. Nevertheless, most of America's geography is dotted by them, and all of those small towns have Main Streets—and all of those Main Streets need badly to be transformed, not into urban corridors but livable communities where citizens can prosper reasonably, contributing to states who contribute to the wealth of the nation rather than withdraw from it. And who is ready to talk about how? Not John McCain but Barack Obama, who is ready to have the debate about how to make that change, a debate that John McCain wants to avoid, and so on, and so on.

Rather than lend credence to an imagined bucolic America that exists only in Norman Rockwell's watercolors, this metaphor draws attention to the significant problems posed by sub/exurbanization, increased income disparity, and the displacement of small and local businesses by massive corporations and international firms. At least, there's an opportunity to redirect "Main Street" toward that discussion. What does John McCain mean by Main Street?, asks Barack Obama. It's not where you and I live.

It's also just not feasible to ignore all the Main Streets despite the fact that not many people live along them, because our government structure assigns disproportionate power to those states wherein Main Streets lay. Hence Barack Obama is chasing an EC vote in Nebraska, where one hopes he's able to sing a Main Street carol convincingly.

Beyond the fact that almost everyone will read "Main Street" with the most immediate, cliché meaning in mind, the bigger problem with the metaphor is in its application: Wall Street versus Main Street. I suspect that this negative construction is not a useful way to think about financial regulation in broad terms but clearly, but I can't say.