JAMES Q. WILSON: Why Did Kerry Lose? (Answer: It Wasn't 'Values.')

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: November 8, 2004 4:41:59 PM EST
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] JAMES Q. WILSON: Why Did Kerry Lose? (Answer:  
It Wasn't 'Values.')
Reply-To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com


From the Wall Street Journal --
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109987690402167230,00.html? 
mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries

COMMENTARY
Why Did Kerry Lose?
(Answer: It Wasn't 'Values.')
By JAMES Q. WILSON

It is easy to explain the election. Too easy. Depending on your  
instincts
and how much time you are given to think, you can say that the  
electorate
has moved to the right or that John Kerry flip-flopped or that the
Democrats were unable to appeal to the moral values of people. Thomas
Friedman wrote in the New York Times that President Bush was re-elected  
by
people who disagree with him on what America should be. His evidence is
that "Christian fundamentalists" have used their "religious energy to
promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad." Garry Wills has
said much the same thing.

These explanations are wide of the mark. The nation did not undergo a
rightward shift in 2004 any more than it had when it elected Reagan in
1980 and re-elected him in 1984. The policy preferences of Americans are
remarkably stable, a fact that has been confirmed by virtually every
scholar who has looked at the matter.

There is no doubt that John Kerry showed great skill at embracing deeply
contradictory positions, but that does not make him unusual; all
politicians have mastered the art of self-contradiction. What was
remarkable in this election is that one candidate, President Bush, never
changed: He said what he meant and meant what he said.

If the Democrats could not appeal to the moral values of people, that  
fact
must have been lost on the 48% of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry.  
It
is true that moral values were important to some: based on exit polls,  
to
about one-fifth of all voters. And of these, the overwhelming majority
supported President Bush. But almost exactly the same fraction said that
jobs and the economy were the most important issues, and of these the
overwhelming majority supported Sen. Kerry. And if you add together
terrorism and the war in Iraq, 34% found these to be the most important
issues (Mr. Bush carried those worried about terrorism, Sen. Kerry those
critical of the Iraq war). Given these facts, why does a Times reporter
write that moral values were the "defining issue"? I have read her essay
three times and cannot discover an answer.

I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian
fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering "divisions and
intolerance." It would make as much sense to say that liberals are
fostering division and intolerance by favoring abortion and gay  
marriages.
In fact, abortion was not an issue in the election and Messrs. Bush and
Kerry both opposed gay marriage. A ban on gay marriage was approved in
Oregon, a state won by Sen. Kerry.

In truth, American politics has frequently been gripped by moral issues.
It is one of the aspects of our history and culture that makes us
different from most European democracies. We have become morally engaged
by the struggle against slavery and against liquor and for civil rights.
David L. Chappell, in his splendid history of the civil rights movement,
reminds us that this was not simply or even mostly a political struggle
about well-understood rights but rather a religious effort to define  
those
rights and to motivate people to recognize them. It is easy to forget  
that
there were religious leaders on both sides of that struggle. Those who
defended segregation urged followers to confine preaching to the word of
God and not to meddle with cultural matters; those who attacked
segregation said that the word of God required them to prevail by  
changing
the culture.

It is true that President Bush improved his voting support among people
who attend church frequently and who describe themselves as Catholics,
Protestants and Jews, but Sen. Kerry won nearly half of all Catholic  
votes
and over three-fourths of all Jewish ones.

The ritualistic condemnation of Christian fundamentalists neglects two
things. The first: Secularists are just as likely to provoke moral  
outrage
as are religious believers, yet we rarely read stories about the Secular
Left. The second: Research shows that organizations of Christian
fundamentalists are hardly made up of fire-breathers but rather are
organizations whose members practice consensual politics and rely on
appeals to widely shared constitutional principles.

One can make a good case that the economy or the war in Iraq were just  
as
important as morality. Of the people who thought tax cuts were good for
the economy, 93% supported President Bush; of those who thought they  
were
bad for the economy, 92% supported Sen. Kerry. About half the people
thought the Iraq war had made this nation more secure; 89% of them
supported President Bush. For the half that thought the war had made  
this
country less secure, 80% voted for Sen. Kerry.

People vote for the president for a host of reasons that pollsters have
difficulty in grasping. All we seem to know very clearly is where they
live. The Red (Bush) counties are found not only in the South and the
Midwest but in the interior of California, Oregon and Washington, and in
upstate New York and eastern Pennsylvania. The Blue (Kerry) counties are
largely the site of big cities. Texas may be Bush country, but its
southern counties went for Kerry. To explain the vote requires us to
explain the variety of factors that characterize the voting preferences  
of
the great heterogeneous mass of people one finds on farms or in cities.  
No
political scientist has done this and I doubt that many journalists will
do it either. I have attended lots of scholarly meetings where  
professors
try to predict election outcomes with, at best, moderate success. One
problem is that they have only some very gross measures on which to  
work,
such as the state of the economy and standings in the polls.

The pollsters do no provide much information because they usually gather
too few responses to permit observers to cross-tabulate data into all of
the relevant categories. What is the vote likely to be in Ohio among
gun-owning union members who attend church but who have just lost their
jobs and think the U.S. should spend less time fighting wars? Or how  
will
business people vote if they have received a tax cut, think our invasion
of Iraq is not going well, and oppose abortion?

I draw lessons from the election, but not very deep ones. One is that  
the
profound liberal bias among many big-city newspapers and most TV  
stations
did not determine the outcome. Evan Thomas was wrong when he said that  
the
left media would add 15 points to the Democrats' total, but may have  
been
right when he later scaled down his projection to five points.

* * *
What is most impressive about this election has been the extraordinary
success both parties have had in registering new voters and getting them
to the polls. Suppose the Democrats had done this better than the GOP.  
The
result might well have been a Bush loss in Florida and Ohio, and thus  
the
loss of the election. Our press would now be running columns about the
liberal shift in public opinion, the defeat of fundamentalists, and the
importance of antiwar sentiments. But in fact the Democrats did not do a
better job than the Republicans. Perhaps the columnists should now just
say that Karl Rove out-organized his opponents.

Mr. Wilson is the author, inter alia, of "The Moral Sense" (Free Press,
1997).

Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose  
use
has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The
'johnmacsgroup' Internet discussion group is making it available without
profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding  
of
literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes  
a
'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of
the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for
purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain  
permission
from the copyright owner.

For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

    "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
    "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
    "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from  
magic"
     -- Arthur C. Clarke
     "You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP)

                           John F. McMullen
    johnmac () acm org johnmac () computer org johnmac () m-net arbornet org
                   johnmac () tmail com johnmac () echonyc com
            jmcmullen () monroecollege edu johnmac () alumni iona edu
               ICQ: 4368412 Skype, AIM & Yahoo Messenger: johnmac13
                   http://www.westnet.com/~observer


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/XgSolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnmacsgroup/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    johnmacsgroup-unsubscribe () yahoogroups com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/