The day before the final debate between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, a group of mayors reiterated a longstanding plea. Cities matter, they said, and it was time for the candidates to show they understood that and tell the country what they would do about it.

Their entreaty went unanswered. Obama and McCain managed to touch on lots of things in their third encounter — from Joe the Plumber to health to whether a community organization threatened the fabric of democracy — but they did not discuss urban issues.

Small towns get a lot more notice — at least from Republicans.

“We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity,” Sarah Palin said in her acceptance speech, quoting ultra right-wing writer Westbrook Pegler. The GOP vice presidential nominee went on, “They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars.”

This, some commentators quickly observed, does not paint a true picture of American in the 21st century. “We’re in total denial about the fact that we’re an urban country,” said Diana Lind, editor of the Next American City.

Perhaps, but the rural image of America persists in campaign rhetoric and policy discussions. And this year, neither Barack Obama of Chicago nor John McCain of Phoenix chose to break the pattern.

Urban Nation

“We haven’t been a nation of small towns for nearly a century,” Time magazine’s Joe Klein groused after Palin’s speech. “It is the suburbanites and city dwellers who do the fighting and hourly wage work now, and the corporations who grow our food.”

The comments by Palin, Giuliani and others at the Republican National Convention, the Time’s Gail Collins complained, implied that people who live in cities do not have good values, work hard — or even honor their war dead.

About 80 percent of Americans live in or around cities — though most do not live in densely packed center city neighborhoods. Some 86 percent of U.S. jobs are located in the metropolitan areas, which generate an estimated 90 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Of course, as with almost all numbers, others offer a different interpretation. In terms of people, Carl Bialik has written, most people live neither in big cities nor small towns, according to the U.S. Census. By Bialik’s count, though, about 82.4 million Americans live in large cities.

Given the propensity of politicians to pander to the smallest interest groups, why do they lambaste cities with such impunity? Or to put it another way, why does former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — a man who enjoys opera and pricey cigar bars — sneeringly thrash Obama for being “too cosmopolitan?”

Read article here