To split the difference between Messrs Miller and Krikorian, I would doubt Karl Rove formulated anything quite so explicit as Mark’s source heard it. But I do think it raises an interesting question.

I did agricultural labor at the age of 17, then graduated to bus boy at the Westbury Hotel in Toronto at 18, then my career collapsed and I was reduced to becoming an NR columnist. John is right: Nobody aspires for his child to become a seasonal fruit picker (and, if you’re that touchy blogger I linked to earlier, feel free to accuse me of more homophobia). But there’s a difference between doing it at 17 for the summer and still doing it 20 years later. The presumption that these are “jobs Americans won’t do” even for a few months on the way up to the heights of success is a little unsettling.

If memory serves, Derb once quoted J K Galbraith (who was raised on a farm in Ontario) to the effect that “if you’ve ever worked on a farm, nothing else ever seems like work”. Even Al Gore’s bizarre fantasy that he spent his childhood clear-cutting the roof terrace of the Fairfax Hotel with a double-bladed ax testifies to the enduring belief that at least some minimal dues-paying just-enough-for-a-stump-speech-anecdote acquaintanceship with the horny-handed-son-of-toil routine is generally regarded as worthy and character-building. To suggest that it’s unreasonable to expect even bored teens waiting to go up to college to do Anger Management Studies to put in a stint or two is a big shift.