What once promised to be the cleanest election in recent times is fast degenerating into spiteful class warfare. Both candidates are making out that the other is unsuited to be president because they are out of touch with ordinary voters. Both claim to be agents of “change” and champions of the underdog. Both suggest the other is disqualified by virtue of their access to privilege.

The language of class warfare is couched in code. The subtext of John McCain’s message is that Barack Obama is not fit to govern because he has lifted himself out of his own class through education and joined a powerful “elite” made up of Ivy League graduates and rich liberals.

Senator McCain, the Obama campaign suggests, cannot hope to understand what ordinary Americans are going through in these difficult times because he, too, is an “elitist,” the third generation of a distinguished naval family, who is married to an heiress.

Little of this elite talk makes sense. It has been a long time since an elite was overthrown by the people. What usually happens, in the Bolshevik as in the American Revolution, is that one elite replaces another.

It was the great contribution of an Italian sociologist, economist, and philosopher, Vilfredo Pareto, to point out that whatever system of government is invented, and however democratic it is intended to be, the masses continue to be ruled by an elite. What was important, he reasoned, was to ensure that access to the governing elite is meritocratic.

The key issue for voters in seven weeks’ time, therefore, is not how to avoid being governed by an elite come January, but which elite will more likely satisfy their wishes.

Americans congratulate themselves on having abandoned old European notions of class and consider themselves beyond sneering at someone’s background or kowtowing to those who set themselves apart. Such snotty tomfoolery is left to the British. What, then, to make of Mr. Obama’s assault upon Mr. McCain’s wealth? Or, to be more accurate, Cindy McCain’s wealth.

If poverty were the prerequisite for the presidency, Mr. Obama and his wife would no more be qualified than Mr. McCain. But the trick was played on Mr. McCain because it is known that, notwithstanding the hard working, wealth accumulating, gung ho ethos that has made America great, a large and perhaps decisive number continue to envy the rich.

Mr. McCain’s answer to Mr. Obama’s below the belt blow was to unleash a force of nature: Sarah Palin. If voters want someone who knows about real life as it is lived by the vast majority of Americans, he suggests, Governor Palin is your woman. No fancy North Eastern ivy clad college for her. No cocktail parties, high falutin’ restaurants, and networking opportunities. Just a down to earth small town hockey mom of five who has mostly been educated in the university of life.

Mrs. Palin echoes the experience of Margaret Thatcher, who, to climb the heights of the Conservative Party, first had to arm wrestle the party’s establishment. Lady Thatcher faced a snooty, exclusive old boys’ club that had always led her party, genuine card carrying elitists who, by dint of birth, wealth, upbringing, and education, felt themselves deserving of an automatic place in the British legislature.

She faced the same shameless social and intellectual snobbery that accompanies discussions about Mrs. Palin. Lady Thatcher’s enemies argued she was woefully unprepared for the task, socially unsuitable, personally ill equipped. They sniped at her accent, her dress sense, her hair, her family background. She was traduced, dismissed, and patronized. Her victory was all the more sweet because she won in the face of those who believed themselves her social superiors.

Messrs. Obama and McCain are largely immune from the petty snobberies that dog Mrs. Palin. They are slyly waging class war because the key election demographic is once again what used to be termed Reagan Democrats, blue collar working men and women who are suspicious of both parties because they believe, with some justification, that their lot will not be altered much whoever gets elected. Some of them believe that an elite is doing them out of what is due to them. It is to woo these neglected citizens that the two candidates have embarked upon a “lowlier than thou” contest.

It is certainly more effective than boasting of your worth. Winston Churchill, a true toff who mostly maintained an open mind to those who did not share his noble ancestry, could be snobbish. He once described Labour leader Clement Attlee as “a humble man, with a lot to be humble about,” which must have offered little solace when in 1945 Attlee evicted him from Downing Street in a landslide.

And it is Mrs. Palin with her humble roots who appears to be winning the election for Mr. McCain. The polls show a significant shift in his favor as her very ordinariness curries support from Democratic voters who once backed Hillary Clinton.

Pundits, even many distinguished conservative pundits, insist the governor is not ready for prime time and that they cannot imagine her doing well in Washington. For all their erudition and sophistication, and however they may prefer to dress up their thinly disguised disdain, their concern is prompted by banal, garden variety snobbery. Their calculated condescension confirms what that distinguished New Yorker Mason Cooley once observed, “If your nose is up in the air, you cannot see where you are going.”

nwapshott@nysun.com