Anti-Intellectualism among American Voters
We learn today from the most recent Gallup tracking Poll that political independents are shifting to McCain in fairly big numbers, from 40% pre-convention to 52% post-convention.
Why is this so? Well, between the earlier and the most recent poll numbers lies the Republican National Convention. What happened there that drew so many of the independent voters into the McCain camp?
The first answer is, of course, that McCain now has a women on the ticket, and independents like that, probably many of the same ones who had earlier supported Clinton. But this by itself would not have been enough. For not just any woman would have brought the big bounce to McCain among Independent voters.
I believe it was this particular woman, Sarah Palin, and all that she represents, that best explains the bounce. Would Hillary Clinton on the Obama ticket have done the same thing? Well, we'll never know, but I don't think so. What Hillary represents, although she tried hard not to be just another failed liberal candidate, is definitely not what Sarah represents.
Too understand exactly what Sarah Palin brings to the Republican ticket, to understand the polling results we have just seen, we will need to look at the American voting public. Presidential campaigns since the end of the Second World War have demonstrated over and over again that democratic and liberal candidates (see my earlier Blog entry) were not going to win over this public to their liberal causes.
The Democrats, who again and again have nominated liberal candidates, seem not to have understood this. They probably couldn't quite believe that their liberal policies were out of favor with the voting public. And in this regard they were probably right. For in our country during the past half century and longer liberal politics and liberal policies have dominated both Democratic and Republican administrations.
However, there is another factor, that does much more that the liberal designation to explain the failure of the Democrats to elect one or more of their liberal and a bit left of center candidates. (The several exceptions, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton, only prove the rule, and in Jimmy Carter's case he didn't so much win as did the Republican candidate, Gerald Ford, lose.)
The other factor is the American's distrust of the intellectual, so well analyzed and described by Richard Hofstadter in his 1962 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Hofstadter makes the case against intellect and his case, although not articulated by the Independent voters, probably does much to explain their movement to the McCain/Palin camp.
In Hofstadter's words, "Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness…. (see Thomas Friedman's op ed piece, 9/10/2008)
"It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice…. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism."
From this Hofstadter concludes, "Once the validity of these antagonisms is accepted, then the case for intellect, and by extension for the intellectual is lost. Who cares to risk sacrificing warmth of emotion, solidity of character, practical capacity or democratic sentiment in order to pay deference to a type of man who at best is deemed to be merely clever and at worst may even be dangerous?"
In regard the possession of warmth of feeling, strength of character, practicality, and democratic values the voter doesn't question John McCain, or his choice for vice-president, Sarah Palin, who clearly embodies these values.
Of the four candidates Barack Obama is the intellectual (Joe Biden is much more the politician) and thus he has had, almost since the beginning of his candidacy, the difficult assignment of dispelling the American's traditional distrust of the intellectual. While everyone agrees that Obama is a terrific orator, a great speaker, and is admired for this, he is not loved.
Indeed, probably too many see his public speaking ability as placing him above them, as knowing or seeming to know more than they do, as for example, when he knew that the voters of Pennsylvania "clung to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
While an intellectual would probably find nothing wrong with this statement neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin would ever even think this way, let alone talk this way, and that alone places them much more in the American mainstream. All of which makes Obama's task even more daunting than before he made this, and other such statements.
Unless Obama can become in the public's eye less of an intellectual, and more of a regular guy, like Ike and the Gipper, and like John Kennedy in important respects, and like Bill Cllinton and even George Bush, he's going to lose this election. Obama may have missed perhaps his best opportunity to overcome the public's perception of him as an out-of-touch intellectual by refusing outright the series of town hall debates as proposed by McCain.
The Republican convention showing us two regular guys, people just like the people next door, people we can trust, made the bounce happen. Haven't we known forever that people vote their likes and dislikes, their prejudices, their emotions, their heart, all much more than their head?
While Obama is not at all head and no heart he seems completely unable to stand up there, in front of us, and not be most of all a highly intelligent and thinking man, yes an intellectual, addressing the problems confronting our nation, proposing reasonable policies, but failing, helas! to win our trust in Obama the man.
** I add this footnote to the above.
Today, September 9, campaigning in Lebanon, Va., and complaining about the GOP
ticket portraying itself as agents of change, Obama said… "You can put lipstick on a pig. But it's still a pig."
Given Sarah Palin's comment during her acceptance speech at the convention, when she asked, "You know what the difference is
between a hockey mom and a pit bull? …Lipstick!" and therefore the association in our minds of Palin and lipstick, Obama's comment seems disastrous to his chances. Can he, will he recover? What happened to his reputed excellent judgment when he said this?
