5 Reasons This Election Is Ward Cleaver vs. Eddie Haskell
For Americans over 40, Leave It To Beaver is an iconic television show, complete with archetypal American characters. Every week during its Eisenhower/Kennedy heyday, Americans watched a handful of naifs (Beaver and Wally Cleaver, and their innocent little friends) stumble into dangerous or embarrassing situations thanks to Eddie Haskell’s slick, dishonest machinations. Eddie, a skinny, duplicitous young man, was adept at ingratiating himself with adults when called upon to do so, but his main goal remained to upset the placid social order prevailing amongst Beaver-ville‘s young. When anarchy threatened, Beaver and Wally always knew that their mother June would express worry and dispense kisses, while their father, Ward, acting in a lovingly magisterial way, would impart wisdom, impose appropriate consequences, and generally restore sanity.
Although the show ran for only six seasons (1957-1963) and pre-dated the upheavals of the 1960s, decades of repeats ensured that it resonated in the American psyche. Generations of Americans have laughed with (and yes, sneered at) the tight little world of Beaver-ville, one predicated upon stable nuclear families: wise fathers, stay-at-home mothers, and grateful children.
Perhaps the scenario is a fairy tale that never reflected the majority of American families, but it’s a lovely fairy-tale, one that promises lasting security for the child who can escape the bad boy’s enticements and embrace the elders’ wisdom. It presents an America as we wish it would be, although we’d be glad to update its monochromatic cast. In the 21st century, Beaver’s neighborhood would have different races, colors, and creeds, and it would probably be home to a conservative gay couple down the block, raising an adopted orphan from China.
What’s so satisfying about Leave It To Beaver is that it presents a time-tested way of ordering the world: it trusts maturity. Even the best-intentioned young people lack the wisdom and knowledge to cope with instability, danger, dishonesty, and disorder. Their innocence and naivete mean that they’ll too easily trust demagogues and make foolish, hurtful, and potentially harmful mistakes.
What kept the show from being a tragedy, and turned it into an amusing morality tale, was that week in and week out, the grown-ups in the room were able to sort out the child’s chaotic world. Sadly, real life isn’t like that. Too often, naive voters put their faith in demagogues and there is no rescue. This election, though, there’s still a chance that Ward Cleaver’s political stand-in can win the vote and save the day.
From the moment Mitt Romney became the presumptive Republican candidate, this election took on the trappings of a contest between Ward Cleaver (played by Mitt Romney) and Eddie Haskell (played by Barack Obama). The comparison was easy at a superficial level: Romney bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Ward Cleaver, complete with commanding height, combed-back black hair, square jaw, and fatherly meme. Obama, too, is Eddie Haskell’s double since he shares the youthful face, lanky body, and manipulative, hustler’s demeanor.
If one digs beneath the superficial similarities, it’s uncanny how Mitt and Obama still stay close to the Ward and Eddie characters. Let me count the ways…
Obama (like Eddie Haskell) is trained as an intellectual – somebody who never has to prove actual results, only argue ideas. He has bought into many of the incredibly bad ideas of the left.
Romney is a professional realist. Like an engineer, or a computer programmer, a financier like Romney to compete in the real world where results are measured for all to see. He took $39 million in seed money for Bain Capital and turned it into $4 Billion.
(Yes, I am paraphrasing Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society”)
REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 3 of 3)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/26/rezko-obama-and-the-nadhmi-auchi-railroad-linking-chicago-washington-and-baghdad-part-3-of-3/
I can just hear Obama, walking backstage after the debate(s), laughing to himself -heh-heh-heh- ala Eddie Haskell, thinking “Boy, did I fool them”. Then, when his best-laid-plans go awry, and he discovers he didn’t “fool them”, he’s either nowhere to be found (no press conferences in what, 6 mos?) or he casts blame on others: Bush, the tsunami, Republicans, Congress, his dog, et al.
One face for the American public, another behind closed doors.
Exactly right! Ward Cleaver deals with problems; Eddie Haskell creates them — and then runs.
No, we know what he’s like behind ‘closed doors’ because the doors are never fully closed, like his remark about ‘wait until after the election, then I don’t have to worry about being reelected’. The incumbent has been exposed to all who have their eyes and ears open and head out. R/R 2012
I was going to comment at Bookworm that PJM is imitating her, as she had previously written about comparing Obama to Eddie Haskell etc. Then I look up and see that Bookworm wrote the PJM article.
Yes, she’s done a great expansion of the original point — and it was the perfect article for the day after the debate…
That was one of the best synopsis of the two personalities I’ve read, well done.
Thank you very much!
There is one apparent difference between Haskell and Hussein: As far as I know, Eddie Haskell didn’t use or sell drugs. Barack Hussein Obama reportedly not only used, but also sold, cocaine in college.
Well, even the best analogies only go so far….
I think you meant “fatherly mien,” and not “fatherly meme.”
You’re right. I blame autocorrect!!
I think either works…
For Americans over 40 Leave It To Beaver is an iconic television show
Over FORTY? Try over 50, at least. People under 50 years of age weren’t borm when Leave It To Beaver was already in syndication.
And I am not yet 40, but saw plenty of reruns of the show in the early 80′s to remember several episode plots, and all the main characters. It may not be quite the ‘iconic’ show it is to people a bit older than me, but I am familiar with the show.
You forgot, many of us, like myself know this show from reruns!
I was at an age in between Wally’s and Beaver’s when the show was in its heyday. Today, there is no surer way for me to conjure up a warm and nostalgic feeling than to watch a Leave It To Beaver rerun. Back then you always knew that Eddie would be exposed – even though he was never around to accept the shame or the blame. My wish for the election is that this holds true to form. As in the show however, I won’t expect to see Eddie called on the carpet to explain his duplicity and callousness. But so what – all will be right with the world again.
Oh crikey, I remember the Beav when there were only 3 (not counting anything on UHF) channels and *I* was the remote. And, oh yeah, the world was B&W and mysteriously became colorized right about the time the grandparents bought a color tv. Blame the garish colors on Star Trek on their desire to show difference even on B&W sets.
Modern children can’t appreciate The Wizard of Oz the way we old people can. I still remember the first time I saw it on my grandmother’s brand new, color TV. I was very little, but I still remember being overwhelmed. Somehow the world looks more innocent in black and white.
OMG! What an interesting but crazily biased article! Why cant Republicans simply accept the fact and the reality that Obama is one of the greatest presidents in American history, a practical God-Send, here just in time to save this great country from the perilous selfish, self-loathing, racist, cave man and hypocritical mentality of the Repugnant…I mean Republican/tea-party thugs?
I too watched Leave it to Beaver, and the comparison to Eddie Haskell to Barack Obama, while funny, ends only at their lankiness, neatness, and intelligence. Barack Obama’s life has been one of service and sacrifice (ala Wally) while Romoremoney’s has been one of self-enrichment, greed, and self-serving shape-shifting to please whom ever needs to be pleased at the moment – a well oiled weather vane – now who is the real Eddie Haskel? Seriously, between Eddie and Wally who would be the Repugnant..I mean Republican and who, the Democrat? I hope the author revisits this silly comparison after Nov 6, and Mitt gets the Landslide thumping he/Eddie deserves.
The Repugnant..I mean Republican party continues to marginalize itself with a 1950′s mentality and reality-skewed articles like this. Interesting read though…and like Eddie would say..hehehehehheh!
Are you Chris Matthews’ sock puppet?
More like his rubber glove.
What an image!
I do not want to see what color, consistency and kind of slime ANTN is covered with!
I totally agree – also… missed humor by not comparing Paul Ryan to the Beaver
I thought about that, but it (a) diminished Ryan’s stature and (b) made the article too unwieldy.
Barack Obama’s life, insofar we know anything about it, has been choom and coke followed by eventual stints at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, about which we know nothing and for which the paper trail has been concealed from our eyes.
After Columbia and before Harvard, there was community organizing in southside Chicago, an area of the country where young men are still slaughtering each other today with alacrity. Law school came on the horizon for Barack as community organizing was such a disappointment.
As State Senator, Obama’s reputation was one of voting “present”, except, of course, his classic “legal scholar” argument as to why a baby that survived a late term abortion could not be allowed to live.
In his brief tenure in the US Senate, Obama was recognized as the most Left leaning in history, that is, when he actually voted and didn’t resort to “present”.
As president, his tenure has been an utter disaster for the country.
I hope this brief synopsis enlightens you.
Chicago pols who whine about “the rich” use their positions and influence every step of the way for personal enrichment.
Obama’s right hand gal and former Chicago slumlord Valerie Jarrett is a case in point, as is Obama’s chief campaign manager, sleazeball David Axelrod.
You people fall for a great Big Lie in this constant mantra coming out of the Left that they are for the “little guy”.
That’s why they consider you Useful Idiots.
Very well said. All we know of lil barry is choom and coke. And like most of that ilk, no integrity.
Dear antn
Your diatribe was Bizarre! What has been a calm courteous discussion
You tried to turn into a mud fight in a pig pen. Besides being a graduate
Of government school ( that don’t teach true history ) you obviously are
A follower of Alinsky and Gramsci. They believed in dragging society
Down into the sewer. God bless you and hopefully you will one day grow
Up and wake up.
Griff
Dude…you forgot your “/sarc” tag.
@antn
Service I can see as he never had a job that produced anything that was substancial, even articles for the law review that he edited in college. Sacrifice? He supposedly started with nothing, has a $2,000,000 mansion and is virtually guaranteed at least a mid to high 6 figure income on the speaking tour for the rest of his life. Some sacrifice.
Ken Osmond, sometimes mistaken for porn star John Holmes, was an LAPD motorcycle officer:
http://www.litb.com/keno.htm
Wow. Excellent article, very compelling analogy. Yes, he does remind me of Eddie. And Mitt certainly acts like Ward.
A funny thing about that show: I’m, well, as you say, “over 40.” Well over it. In fact, I barely remember being 40, but I believe it was cloudy. Anyway, I do remember the show Leave it to Beaver, and in fact watched it all through its seasons in the evenings, with my parents. Beaver and I are the same age, chronologically. We sort of grew up together.
Over the years, people have argued whether or not there ever was a world like that, or was it completely made up for television. Rest assured, the show reflected the world we lived in, not vice versa.
We all knew Eddie’s, Lumpy’s, and some of us had (or were) big brothers like Wally, who never let us down, and indeed always steered us towards Dad, who could fix things. Heck, I remember a family down the street who so completely resembled Father Knows Best that we used to call them the Andersons. And there was a widower in our neighborhood who had three sons and worked in the aviation industry. Some things you really can’t make up. I even remember a young housewife who lived two doors down (my parents were witnesses at their wedding) who used to clean house wearing pearls, and probably heels, because she always wore high heels.
America used to look a lot like it did on television, except of course it was in color.
It’s funny; people react to the television shows of the ’50s and early ’60s the same way they react to the moon landings: they can’t believe it was real, because they can’t imagine themselves being able to be those people and live the way they lived. Sad.
Thank you! I watched the show in repeats when I was a child (so I am over 40), but I don’t remember the ancillary characters to much. It was just that, watching the two go head to head, the Ward v Eddie comparison became too strong for me to ignore.
Born in 1947, I can attest to my neighborhood and my family’s and my neighbors’ families having a lot in common with the Cleavers; no pearls for Mom though. Dad’s collar was blue, and his advice was sound.
So who is the modern day Lumpy Rutherford?
HILLARY CLINTON !!
You win the internets!
=)
If memory serves,Thornton Wilder…the script writer for “Hello Dolly”…was paraphrasing a line first uttered by Sid Richardson…last of the great Texas oil wildcatters,when he wrote that line for Dolly….he reportedly said “Money is a lot like manure…it can do a lot of good if you spread it around…but if you just let it sit there in a pile,all it does is stink”
Good memory. I last saw the Thornton Wilder play in 1981, at a community theater in the North of England, of all places, so I have little recollection of the Wilder original.
If Mitt is Ward and Obama is Eddie, I guess that makes Biden Larry Mondello . . .
14. Snake Plissken
Biden reminds me of Moe,
(Three Stooges.)
No offense to Moe,
he actually had better leadership quality.
When Biden made a jovial comment to a grieving father about the size of a dead child’s testicles, he went from stupid to senile. I’m hard pressed to think of a 50s TV character or to whom Biden can be analogized.
If he wore glasses, Biden would remind me of Mr. Magoo (with apologies to Jim Backus).
All of this is Obama’s Eddie Haskell hustle. And he does it all with Eddie’s trademarked smarminess.
There was a rumor out there for a long time that the actor who played Eddie, Ken Osmond, became a porn star.
Apparently not true & a function of the fact that some real porn star used his name for awhile.
After retirement, Obama will be out there with a nearly $200,000/year taxpayer funded pension, for life, not including lifetime secret service protection. (Whatever happened to the days when Bess and Harry got in the jalopy and drove home to Missouri ?)
I could imagine Obama transitioning from Chicago pol to porn star. He did, after all, recently describe himself as “eye candy” on The View.
A former democrat president was a mini porn star even while “serving” in the Oral Office.
My feverish imagination envisions Obama after he has been president being cast in some live action saturday afternoon kiddie show. He would be sort of an action hero who travels the globe righting wrongs and battling evil villians. Think of it as “Barack Obama, Warrior President!”
Actually, Bess and Harry got in a cab after Ike’s swearing-in, went to Union Station and took a train home to Missouri. That summer of 1953 they did take a trip by car to New York and back; a terrific book on their excellent adventure was published a year or two ago. I sure as heck hope we don’t start making a habit of big sendoffs for departing presidents as was done for Clinton in 2001.
I think the Secret Service detail for the President is only for ten years after he leaves office. By then he won’t kn ow any state secrets, passwords, frequencies, etc. Being an apostate, the mark of the truly unreliable, may be more of a concern for the incumbent than a lengthy jail term in Mexico as an accessory for 100′s of murders.
Actually, I think Obama is more like Dr Smith of the old Lost In Space series. However, he is surrounded by several nefarious beings of alien origin as well. But as Dr Smith, Obama thinks of himself first, how he can appear magnificent, how he can profit and how he can exact revenge on supposed enemies. The Robinson family, representative of the citizens of the US, are forced to suffer for Smith’s selfishness and misconceptions and arrogance.
Occasionally, things happen to point out Smith’s lackings but he never learns. He’s simply wired that way. Were it not for Mrs Robinson’s pleas for tolerance of Dr Smith, he would’ve taken a one-way trip out of an airlock in the first couple of episodes.
Dr. Smith was mean on the surface. Although I don’t like Obama myself, I had to factor in the likability factor that others seem to see in him. To the extent he has some charm, he’s smarmy . . . ergo, Eddie Haskell.
Indeed he was but I am speaking to the crafty, ulterior-motive-driven, nefariousness and selfish attitude. Inasmuch as he was “charming” when he was up to something, as Major West always surmised while the rest of the family took his platitudes at face value; Always a mistake.
I do not find Obama likeable at all. Having seen his kind in the military and in corporate America, the fake, gooey cover is easily seen past and the real person underneath the veneer revealed. It’s a skill everyone in my family possesses and possessed to include my grandparents on both sides, making me believe everyone had such skills.
Some refer to it as cynicism whereas I call it a necessary survival skill.
Mark Twains father died when he was 11.
“Having dabbled in war’s waters in Libya, he’s decided that the Syrian people are on their own.” What Eddy Obama did in Libya, with The Beaver, and Wally, prevents any of them doing anything substantial in Syria. Even the Dems in the Senate would not backstop his action. Elections you know? Leading from the bunker comes with a price!
To qoute Barbara Billingsley “Ward, don’t you think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night?”
“You were awfully hard on the Beaver last night, Ward.”
– Barbara Billingsly
A similarity that the writer has surprisingly missed: Mitt Romney was an elder in his church; in fact he was a bishop. Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, was an ordained Methodist minister, who said that if it ever came to pass that he could no longer square his acting with his faith, the acting would have to go.
The show is also a great deal more nuanced than people admit. Ward wasn’t always wise. He was human, too, sometimes impatient, sometimes too enamored of his own upbringing, and at those times he needed to be balanced by the wisdom of his wife June. The show demonstrated that boys need fathers, sure, but also that boys need mothers, and that husbands and wives need one another.
Another thing: the show would never have been so popular if it hadn’t reflected at least soemthing of what was considered ordinary behavior. We look at it now and say, “There’s no way that boys would go to a party in a white shirt and tie! That would be like going to a baseball game in a white shirt and tie!” And yet, if you look at the old broadcasts of baseball games — the World Series in sweltering Saint Louis, as late as 1968, five years after the show ended, you will see most of the men and women well-dressed. We are a generation of people who HAVE to “debunk” our forebears just so that we won’t look like such pygmies by comparison.
This wouldn’t be Tony Dow, would it?
And, today, unlike the 50′s, it would be foolish to appear in public well dressed, unless escorted by a bodyguard, a guard dog, and carying a 38.
“Perhaps the scenario is a fairy tale that never reflected the majority of American families,”
I was born in 1953, and I barely knew what divorce or single parenthood was until I was in my teens. The VAST majority of families I knew were traditional nuclear families. My maternal grandmother worked outside the home most of her life, but she also with my grandfather raised my mother, made a 3 to 5 acre garden every years then canned and froze the results, and was ana ctive memeber of her church. I know how hard they, my parents, and my paternal grandparents worked, because as soon as I could walk I was expected to help.
Did everyone grow up in a married father and mother household, and were all the marriages happy? Of course not!
I submit however, that the costs of the so-called social progress we live in today far outweigh the benefits.
At my kids’ preschool, by the time the kids were ready for kindergarten, half of the children’s parents had divorced. I don’t believe that when I grew up in the late 60s and 1970s, any of my friends came from broken homes.
“Obama never held a real job”? Well, he has now. President of the United States.
There is something rather creepy about positing that the older white guy is the “father figure” for the younger black guy. Is that we are voting for now – father in chief? I suppose that appeals to a certain group of people…
As today’s news reports about Benghazi demonstrate, Obama doesn’t take his first real job very seriously. And I, unlike you, am totally uninterested in a person’s race. You must be a liberal, Brutus.
“Well, he has now. President of the United States.”
And as he has aptly demonstrated over his time in office, President of the United States should never be one’s first job! It’s too important to trust to an immature narcissist as the consequences can be catastrophic.
Get used to it: “Former President Obama.”
Warrantless Eavesdropping Before Supreme Court BY DAVID KRAVETS 10.26.12
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/scotus-eavesdropping/
I worked afternoons, so didn’t watch “Beaver,” but the values and principles held to by the writers and actors are what made our nation successful and influential in the past. The abandonment of these principles during the “60′s” brought on the murders, robberies, dope using and selling, illegitimacy and other infractions of good social order which we see, and perhaps suffer, in the news, local and national, every day. For example, in the fifties,I doubt that any baby-sitter ever stabbed to death two of her charges, seeking an assassin to kill one’s wife was quite rare, and seeking legality for most kinds of dope was unheard of.
Hey! What an insult to Eddie!
“and no one ever liked Eddie Haskell”
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/01/24/mitt-romney-and-the-eddie-haskell-phenomenon
from 2008 the above and how it has changed now everyone know no one could come close to beating Obama except for Mitt Romney and we shall see
The only difference I can see between Haskell and O’Bummer is Eddie never knocked up Mrs. Cleaver, but Barry (If that IS his name) screwed 300 MILLION AMERICANS!
Excellent work. Well done Bookworm!
Talk about people not dressing up anymore, I remember changing into a dress to go to the bank. I would have been mortified to go in shorts or jeans.
And of course, the house the show was filmed in is iconic in its own middle-American way–it’s the same house Dr. Marcus Welby lived in in the 70′s, and it was used two years before the Beav started in the Bogart classic The Desperate Hours.
I should add, the exteriors of the house!
Great comparison, but I’m baffled. Who liked Eddie Haskell? Obama is as you say, so why is this election close? Something more is afoot and I don’t know what it is, but it scares me.
I only have one criticism really with this article:
“coming in at approximately 30% of his income — far exceeded that required under his faith”
Actually, the 10 percent required by his faith is a modern revelation compromise for the selfishness of a community that couldn’t live the the true requirement. That would be ALL that a person has given away to charity, and then getting what is needed for survival returned to you to be used to grow MORE wealth to give away.
Bookworm, lovely job. Thanks for the smiles…I am so nervous right now. We can survive any election result but our kids may,be sunk.
Kb