Culture in Politics

A recent article in the WSJ addressed the "culture wars" that seemingly define our electoral politics. Find it here (subscription req'd). Mr. Siegel writes:

...one stark distinction stands out among the differences between contemporary liberals and conservatives (the real differences, not the manufactured ones). Liberals always think that there is something broken in politics. Conservatives always think that there is something wrong with the culture.

After explaining why conservatives dominate the electoral dynamic that flows from this, he concludes:

No, there is no culture war. There is only the Republicans' unilateral mastery of the cultural strategy. The Democrats consider any attention to the practices and prejudices of everyday living a mendacious diversion from the "issues," while the GOP, the party of the status quo, has proven itself astoundingly skillful at using its cultural antennae to adapt to new times. Who knew? The Republicans may or may not be the party that will effect change. But they are certainly the party that knows how to ride it.

Naturally, Mr. Siegel's argument attracted all kinds of negative reactions from liberal dissenters, but this is exactly the problem he's elucidating. Urbanites don't seem to understand that outside the metro lines culture is how people define their lifestyles. Another reason why Thomas Frank misses the big picture.

Urban Myopia

An article today in the London Financial Times gets at the heart of what's been driving red and blue politics for the past few elections. I reprint it in full here because it's just so on the money in addressing the problems the Democratic Party has had for the past forty years. I think the most critical point for Democrats is that their refusal to acknowledge the political preferences of a majority of Americans in "fly-over country" means Republicans have not had to respond to problems of widespread economic insecurity. This is the most serious weakness of our current political divide.

Democrats must learn some respect

By Clive Crook

September 7 2008

This article is not the first to note the cultural contradiction in American liberalism, but just now the point bears restating. The election may turn on it.

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

Because it was so unexpected, Sarah Palin’s nomination for the vice-presidency jolted these attitudes to the surface. Ms Palin is a small-town American. It is said that she has only recently acquired a passport. Her husband is a fisherman and production worker. She represents a great slice of the country that the Democrats say they care about – yet her selection induced an apoplectic fit.

For days, the derision poured down from Democratic party talking heads and much of the media too. The idea that “this woman” might be vice-president or even president was literally incomprehensible. The popular liberal comedian Bill Maher, whose act is an endless sneer at the Republican party, noted that John McCain’s case for the presidency was that only he was capable of standing between the US and its enemies, but that should he die he had chosen “this stewardess” to take over. This joke was not – or not only – a complaint about lack of experience. It was also an expression of class disgust. I give Mr Maher credit for daring to say what many Democrats would only insinuate.

Little was known about Ms Palin, but it sufficed for her nomination to be regarded as a kind of insult. Even after her triumph at the Republican convention in St Paul last week, the put-downs continued. Yes, the delivery was all right, but the speech was written by somebody else – as though that is unusual, as though the speechwriter is not the junior partner in the preparation of a speech, and as though just anybody could have raised the roof with that text. Voters in small towns and suburbs, forever mocked and condescended to by metropolitan liberals, are attuned to this disdain. Every four years, many take their revenge.

The irony in 2008 is that the Democratic candidate, despite Republican claims to the contrary, is not an elitist. Barack Obama is an intellectual, but he remembers his history. He can and does connect with ordinary people. His courteous reaction to the Palin nomination was telling. Mrs Palin (and others) found it irresistible to skewer him in St Paul for “saying one thing about [working Americans] in Scranton, and another in San Francisco”. Mr Obama made a bad mistake when he talked about clinging to God and guns, but I am inclined to make allowances: he was speaking to his own political tribe in the native idiom.

The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him. The prevailing liberal mindset is what makes the criticisms of Mr Obama’s distance from working Americans stick.

If only the Democrats could contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate, they might gain the unshakeable grip on power they feel they deserve. Winning elections would certainly be easier – and Republicans would have to address themselves more seriously to economic insecurity. But the fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules this out.

The attitude that expressed itself in response to the Palin nomination is the best weapon in the Republican armoury. Rely on the Democrats to keep it primed. You just have to laugh.

The Palin nomination could still misfire for Mr McCain, but the liberal reaction has made it a huge success so far. To avoid endlessly repeating this mistake, Democrats need to learn some respect.

It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.

Can Obama Govern?

The Obama phenomenon seems tough to pin down. Shelby Steele does a pretty good job in his book A Bound Man. I recommend the book for a more thorough reading, but in a nutshell Steele argues that Obama is bound by the bargains he's made to get to heights he's climbed in American politics.

He's implicitly promised the black community that he will not betray their social and political agenda in return for their votes. To date he has chosen to work within the narrow confines of traditional post-60s liberal politics. Steele argues that Obama wears this mask to reassure his black support.

At the same time, to attract mainstream majority support from whites, Obama has made the bargain not to challenge whites on racist grounds. White supporters in return retain the innocence of racial fairness. By bargaining with whites, Obama raises suspicion among blacks (witness Jesse Jackson's bitter outburst). But pandering to black challengers like Jackson and Jeremiah Wright risks scaring off white supporters. This is Obama's personal bind.

My own question refers to his governing bind. As I've discussed previously, polls show American voters see themselves slightly to the right of center on political ideology. This means no big government programs to solve their personal problems. They also perceive Obama and Clinton far to the left and Bush off to the right. John McCain comes closest to how they view themselves. Let us first assume that this is not Obama's true position, that it's mostly a reflection of primary politics. This is a generous assumption given Obama's legilative record to date.

Let us also assume Obama is able, purely by force of personality and charisma, to win the presidency. Surely the Democrats will retain a large majority in the Congress and perhaps even a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. How will Obama tack to the center on policy given liberal control in both houses of Congress? After also having bound himself to the liberal demands of the minority community?

Is seems virtually impossible for Obama to govern a center-right polity from the position he's anchored himself. He will have to take his marching orders from the liberal wing of the legislature or risk getting bogged down in intraparty rivalries. Think of the first two years of the Clinton candidacy but without a grace period. Liberals will claim the country really is not center-right, but given the evidence that appears to be mostly wishful thinking.

Red vs. Blue Redux

If you've been following the discussion here at Purple Nation you know that what explains our political divide is a little bit of ideology based on a whole lot of differences rooted in urban, rural, and suburban lifestyle preferences. The real divide is exaggerated by the party platforms (as Democrats appeal to urbanites and Republicans appeal to ruralites and suburbanites), and all this gets loudly amplified by the media.

In a previous post I showed how the data on 2008 Democratic primary voting reveals the same red-blue dynamic as the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Now with the conventions behind us we can see how the parties and media are splitting into red-blue tribes and escalating the race along those lines. Obama and McCain can only ride this wave, they're helpless to contain it. I expect we'll have another red-blue election and four more years agonizing over it. I wonder if the experience will be traumatic enough to change our patterns of behavior.