Beam on Politics: Say hello to Everyman

The other fellow competing for Regular Guy status in the four-person Democratic Senate primary is Representative Michael Capuano, the former mayor of Somerville. (Attorney General Martha Coakley acts like she is running for queen; so far, so good. City Year co-founder Alan Khazei is interviewing for the Adlai Stevenson Chair of Stirring Political Discourse at Harvard's Kennedy School. But I digress.)

Like Pagliuca, Capuano hails from an un-fancy background and has done a lot with it. He earned an Ivy League education, a good law degree, and has been a workmanlike if unsensational member of the House of Representatives since 1998.

Just as Pagliuca can talk to the private equity sharpies and the hedge fund greedheads, Capuano can also communicate with the moneyed elite. But on the campaign trail, he reverts to Joe Sixpack, reminding voters about his youth as a "throwaway kid" not expected to attend college, about his father's stints in veterans' hospitals, and his elderly mother living on Medicare.

"I grew up in Somerville and I attended Dartmouth," he said after a campaign event in Lynn. "I can communicate with different kinds of people, but I am always delivering the same message."

All candidates observe the animating myths of American politics, that "anyone" can rise to political prominence, and that politicians are "just like you and me." Franklin D. Roosevelt, who attended Groton and Harvard, somehow convinced the American electorate -- four times -- that he empathized with their life stories. Ronald Reagan, whose closest friends were insular and reactionary California plutocrats, acted the part of the aw-shucks radio announcer from Midwestern Illinois to a T.

Of course, the candidates in this Senate race are not like you and me. What were you doing on Saturday? I was watching the Boston College-Notre Dame game. By the first quarter, Capuano was already immersed in his third campaign appearance of the day. The same speech ("Most of you don't know me..."), similar questions -- what about my Medicare? -- the same request for votes.

Where were you Sunday mid-day? I went for a bike ride and watched the start of the Patriots game. Pagliuca and Capuano were at Newton City Hall, competing for the favor of the local pols. For Capuano, it was the third event of his day, and he had to drive down to Scituate after that.

Politicians are a breed apart. Try landing a Rhodes Scholarship, as Bill Clinton did. Try becoming the head of the Harvard Law Review, as Barack Obama did. Try amassing a $400 million fortune some time, as Pagliuca did. If getting rich were easy, more people would do it.

As a rule, elite politicians are generally more accomplished, work harder, and are more ferociously competitive than the people they pretend to resemble. They're better than you and me, though woe betide the man or woman who gets caught saying it. For public consumption, they are just regular folks, hopin' to land your vote.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com