-
sponsorship
Anthropologist E.E. Evans-Prichard studied the Nuer, a pastoral people living in the Upper Nile region of Africa, herders who moved with their animals to the tune of the region's rivers. In flood times, Nuer tribes retreated to higher ground, and when the waters receded, the Nuer clans moved to the grassy valleys.
Nuer tribes were constantly crossing paths, and so they could easily fall into conflict over lost animals and scarce forage. Professor Evans-Prichard wrote in the 1940s about the intricate ways the Nuer encouraged cooperation and resolved conflicts.
The Nuer put special faith in a group of arbiters known as "men of the earth." Men of the earth had no formal powers. They couldn't arrest people or make arbitrary decisions. But the Nuer granted these people a kind of local authority to settle disputes. If a fight broke out, a man of the earth could stop the conflict by running between the combatants and hoeing a line in the dirt. If a tribal member was killed in a fight, a man of the earth arbitrated compensation to be paid by the winner to the dead man's family.
The "man of the earth" was a deal-maker, a negotiator, a compromiser. He was the person given the job of representing all the conflicting interests of the tribes.
A man of the earth was a politician.
John McCain and Barack Obama began this campaign running as men of the earth—post partisans who promised to race between the red and the blue, hoeing a line in the turf that would bring the bickering to an end. That's not how these races ended, of course, not just because McCain or Obama changed but because the country didn't.
Over the last 30 years, most communities have grown either more Democratic or more Republican. Through an incremental process of migration and self-selection, people have clustered in like-minded neighborhoods, clubs, and churches.
Migration had consequences. Legislative districts grew more lopsided, and they elected more-partisan representatives. Politicians no longer mediated competing interests in their districts. They represented increasingly one-sided constituencies that grew more extreme in their ideological isolation.
The meaning of politics changed. Voters didn't want men of the earth. They wanted partisans.
Republicans, perhaps, first realized how the country was changing and catered to the division that Americans were creating. By 2008, however, it didn't matter who started it. This was the way we lived. A Guardian reporter in deep-blue Brooklyn found a checkout clerk who wondered, as a "social experiment," what would happen if he donned a McCain button. A nearby shopper admitted she was still concerned about what might transpire on Election Day. "I'm worried about all the ignorant people—I don't mean that pejoratively, I mean uninformed people—who are out there and who will swing it away from Obama," Tamara said.
At McCain rallies, Obama is a "socialist," and a member of the Texas State Board of Education wrote that the Democrat "truly sympathizes" with terrorists and intends to declare martial law if elected. At one East Coast public university, a dean of undergraduate studies sent an e-mail to faculty reporting that there had been "an increase in complaints by students who believe a chilly climate exists for conservative view points. ..." Americans appear ready to end a culture of racism with this election—symbolically, at least—but prejudices based on what others think and where they live run wild.
The earth was what the Nuer had in common. If locusts swarmed or a drought persisted, every tribe suffered. When the grass was thick, they all prospered. They were called "men of the earth," anthropologist Max Gluckman wrote, because "the earth, undivided as the basis of society, (symbolized) not individual prosperity, fertility, and good fortune, but the general prosperity, fertility, and good fortune on which individual life depends."
What do Americans have in common today? Not much. Oh, we share a lot with our neighbors, with the people at our church. Too much, in fact. But we don't know fellow citizens just a few counties over. It takes a "social experiment" in some parts to imagine how it would be to live as a member of a different political party.
The danger the next president faces comes from his single-minded friends as much as his political opponents. Politicians need room to do their jobs. They need the authority to make deals with the other side. This isn't a power that's won on Election Day. It can come only from a people who come to realize that their well-being depends as much on the "ignorant people ... out there" as their like-minded and righteous neighbors.
-
sponsorship
A few days after the 2006 election, the Washington Post announced, " 'God gap' in American politics has narrowed substantially."
By 2006, so went the theory, evangelicals were disgruntled with George W. Bush. All the fundamentalists, charismatics, megachurchers, and Southern Baptists were shifting away from the Republicans. The evangelical church was undergoing some kind of fundamental change, and their votes were there for the Democratic taking.
Oh yeah? Seventy percent of white evangelicals voted Republican in House races in 2006, according to exit polls. Back in 2004—when it was abundantly clear to every angry lefty that the religious right was taking over the country—Republican support among white evangelicals was only four percentage points higher.
There was no shift among churchgoers, despite the hype. White evangelicals voted for Democrats in 2006 in the same percentage as gays and lesbians voted for Republicans, both at about 25 percent.
Reporters wanted there to be a big story in 2006, something besides the Democratic takeover of Congress. But, really, the tale of 2006 wasn't about big changes. Instead, the election was decided by small shifts that reached across the board. Democrats picked up three points, five points, seven points among each of the demographic or geographic subgroups of the American electorate. Gallup found the 2006 vote to be a "rising Democratic tide that lifted support in almost all key subgroups."
The few true independents remaining in the electorate voted Democratic, explained Gary Jacobson at U.C. San Diego. Talking with MSNBC.com, Jacobson said the election was "more of an accumulation of small shifts of a few points that added up to a larger trend. ..." There was no one group that switched allegiance, that realigned from Republican to Democratic. Democrats were a bit more loyal. Republicans a bit less.
Well, maybe Ds were a lot more loyal. In my old hometown of Louisville, Ky., Democrat John Yarmuth beat a five-term incumbent. Louisville has a large black population, and Yarmuth won that vote, but in no greater margins than usual. And he didn't make any broad inroads in Republican parts of town. Yarmuth didn't carry a single precinct where Republicans had a majority of registrants, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Yarmuth won in '06 because white, liberal neighborhoods "got even more liberal," giving the Democrat "astounding" majorities, according to a former chair of the local Republican Party.
Democratic voters got rid of all those with Rs behind their names. Ideology, policy, voting records—none of that mattered. Liberal Iowa Rep. Jim Leach lost. So did liberal Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee. Before 2006, Republicans had held 18 seats in House districts where John Kerry won in 2004. After 2006, Democrats had reduced the number of so-called split districts to eight.
Partisanship in the country didn't begin to break down in 2006. It hardened.
Tomorrow: Democrats like to think that their Senate candidates in Missouri, Virginia, and Montana won in '06 because of a special ability to connect with rural voters. Nice story, but what's the real lesson for Obama from the "Redneck Caucus"?
-
sponsorship
Let's consider what's not new in this election.
There's a lot. The last five or six elections have been pushed along by trends that have been in place since the mid-1970s. Despite the extraordinary circumstances this year, the basic political contours of the country haven't changed (or haven't changed yet!).
If anything, 2008 appears to be more an extension of the 2006 midterms, an election that changed little in the country's basic political makeup from 2004—except, of course, for the name of the winning party. More on that tomorrow. Today, let's consider how static our politics have been.
Churchgoers Are Still Republicans
Thirty years ago, how often you went to church didn't mark you as a Democrat or a Republican. Evangelicals didn't have a party.
As the parties sorted according to lifestyle instead of class, weekly churchgoers and evangelicals became reliably Republican voters in presidential races. There's no evidence this is changing. Oh, there have been plenty of stories about the breakup of the evangelical vote. I'd read the stories, but the more hardheaded pollsters and religion scholars would find, as John Green did last month, that "Barack Obama's attempt to reach out to Christian voters ... is failing."
In the fall of 2004, George Bush had a 60.4 percent to 19.6 percent edge over John Kerry among evangelicals. This year, Green found, McCain leads Obama 57.2 percent to 19.9 percent. Maybe that will change, but it hasn't yet, according to Gallup. Evangelicals and churchgoers may be "lukewarm" about McCain, but they are still supporting him in numbers just a smidgen below 2004 levels.
Women Voting Democratic
In the 1970s, more women voted Republican than men. Over the past 30 years, they have increasingly voted Democratic. Again, there was a spate of stories about a reversal in this arrangement, but by late September Gallup had women supporting Obama 52 percent to 39 percent.
Fewer Genuine Independents
Political reporters love the story about the rise of the independent voter and the "decline of parties." But over the past 30 years, the number of true independents has declined, and allegiance to party has grown stronger. (Princeton's Larry Bartels wrote the most important paper on this phenomenon.)
Yes, there are more people who register as independent or tell pollsters they are independent. But almost all these people vote reliably for one party or the other. People tell pollsters that they are independents, but when pressed, they admit that they almost always vote for the same party.
Split-Ticket Voters Disappearing
Split-ticket voting has been declining for the past 30 years, too. We are less inclined to pick and choose between parties. People are picking sides and voting that way up and down the ballot. That was especially true in 2006, when Democrats, especially, cast large numbers of straight-ticket votes in New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Rural Is Still Republican
Rural voters have been moving toward the Republican Party since the '70s. That trend continues, too.
Replay 2006
Democrats thought the 2006 midterms were a turning point. They weren't. All these trends stayed in place. Just the results changed. Tomorrow we'll see why 2006 is a good model for 2008.
-
sponsorship
Dan Balz at the Washington Post writes about a "collective breakdown of leadership in Washington," while the paper's lead editorial says the country faces "A Test of Leadership." Over at the New York Times, Jackie Calmes writes that the House vote Monday "was the product of a larger failure—of political leadership in Washington. ..." On the op-ed page, David Brooks compares "this generation of political leaders" to FDR and finds "they have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority. ..."
These are all really smart folks, but this time, I think, they have it, as my mother would say, completely bassackwards.
What we have today is a failure of followership.
Americans don't follow like they used to. Every institution that once had "authority" has lost followers over the last two generations. Mainline church denominations have been losing membership since 1965. So have the old clubs and civic groups. Newspaper readership penetration peaked in 1965 and has been declining ever since. Are people fleeing newspapers because a lack of "leadership," Mr. Know-It-All Editorial Page?
People aren't following anymore. And not just in the United States. University of Michigan political scientist Ron Inglehart has been polling worldwide since the 1970s. (See his World Values Survey here.) What Inglehart finds is that people in richer countries are less "elite-directed" and are increasingly engaged in "elite-challenging" activities.
People don't follow. They express.
They don't go to Democratic Club meetings, like the ones held around my hometown of Louisville. They certainly don't wait around to be told what to think by a "leader." They petition or boycott.
People don't read the boring old newspaper. They blog.
"We are witnessing a downward trend in trust in government and confidence in leaders across most industrial societies," Inglehart wrote in 1997. (Yes, that was a decade before Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House.)
The generation that emerged in the second half of the 20th century lost faith in every vestige of hierarchical authority, from the edicts of Catholic bishops to degrees in Free Masonry to the speeches given by governors and senators. (Ask people in business what it's like to "lead" Gen Y workers. Talk about a group of nonfollowers.) Editorialist and reporters write about the "collective breakdown of leadership" as if an entire generation of Americans were born without the skills of a Sam Rayburn, Dwight Eisenhower, or LBJ. There are just as many leaders as there have ever been.
What's missing are old-fashioned followers.
And, you know what? If we're waiting around for leaders to get us out of our messes, we're going to be waiting for some time. Because followers make good leaders, and followers are gone for good.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?