I like your post's title, "More on Fellow Voters." I agree: moron voters.
And I agree that there's something to the question, what do they think the president does? When Colin Powell announced that he wasn't going to run, he called the presidency "the highest job in the land." It's not! George Bush is not my boss. And he's not my dad or my beacon of wisdom or my role model.
Remember when Gray Davis first got elected governor of California, and people were psyched that at least in California, dull lifeless wonks could win big elections? I want that feeling again -- that feeling that voters understand that running a government is a job -- like being a nuclear safety inspector is a job -- and that maybe you'd rather have Frank Grimes at the T-437 Safety Command Console than Homer Simpson, no matter how humanizingly flawed Homer is.
There's a problem with the any Democratic plan to define what the presidency is supposed to be, namely, The West Wing. That IS the Democratic definition of what the presidency is supposed to be, and you can't blame people for thinking that it's fiction because, well, it is. No one can ever live up to that, and it's so obviously patterned on Clinton and on what Aaron Sorkin thought Clinton could do that it taints every real-life Democrat who can't promise the resolution of the Social Security funding gap within one hour (just to name one wildly unrealistic plot line from season 5).
From my own experiences, I don't think the new yorker article is taking everything into account that it should.
Living where I do, I know a number of people who voted for Bush, even some of my friends. Certainly I know a couple who's arguments for their vote were willfully irrational at face value. One guy who was very argumentative, but stated boldly and repeatedly nothing could make him vote for Kerry. It wasn't that he didn't care about issues, he did, nor that he wasn't aware of them, he was, more or less. What emereged over several conversations was that his votes was based upon an emotional state that was built by years and years of listening to the news, and making repeatedly Republican judgments. He couldn't give an account of all the issues off the top of his head, he was interested in rational arguments but they weren't sufficient, because he knew in a subconscious manner that he was Republican. As I did get him to thinking of the issues, he eventually went on the internet and found a test which determined your party based upon answers to a number of questions on issues, and yes, he was solidly Republican. I suspect his case, his vote being based upon emotional not cognitive memory, is true of most voters.
I sense that the impetus for this post is that you're still coming to grips with Bush's victory. There's been a lot said here about the irrationality and bizarre ideologies of some voters. Having had some time to think about this, I'd like to point on that no one here could convince Ben A. to vote Kerry, and Ben is not any more irrational than the rest of us. I couldn't convince some of my friends, and had a hell of a time with others, all of which I would classify as social liberals. All of which suggests the popular case for Bush was not so weak as we would like to think, and doesn't necessitate explanation by appeals to moron voters.
My new diagnosis for what went wrong with the election is that the case was never really made, not even on the blogosphere, of what could be expected of a Bush second term. The Republicans have always hammered, playing to people's fears, about what to expect from Democratic leadership, yet we were pretty silent on what we expected from four more years of Bush till after the election. The arugment was implicit in all of the criticisms against Bush, but was never made explicitly on its own. I think that was probably a huge mistake.
I like your post's title, "More on Fellow Voters." I agree: moron voters.
And I agree that there's something to the question, what do they think the president does? When Colin Powell announced that he wasn't going to run, he called the presidency "the highest job in the land." It's not! George Bush is not my boss. And he's not my dad or my beacon of wisdom or my role model.
Remember when Gray Davis first got elected governor of California, and people were psyched that at least in California, dull lifeless wonks could win big elections? I want that feeling again -- that feeling that voters understand that running a government is a job -- like being a nuclear safety inspector is a job -- and that maybe you'd rather have Frank Grimes at the T-437 Safety Command Console than Homer Simpson, no matter how humanizingly flawed Homer is.
Posted by Bob | Link to this comment | 11-17-04 3:24 PM
There's a problem with the any Democratic plan to define what the presidency is supposed to be, namely, The West Wing. That IS the Democratic definition of what the presidency is supposed to be, and you can't blame people for thinking that it's fiction because, well, it is. No one can ever live up to that, and it's so obviously patterned on Clinton and on what Aaron Sorkin thought Clinton could do that it taints every real-life Democrat who can't promise the resolution of the Social Security funding gap within one hour (just to name one wildly unrealistic plot line from season 5).
Posted by diddy | Link to this comment | 11-17-04 3:52 PM
From my own experiences, I don't think the new yorker article is taking everything into account that it should.
Living where I do, I know a number of people who voted for Bush, even some of my friends. Certainly I know a couple who's arguments for their vote were willfully irrational at face value. One guy who was very argumentative, but stated boldly and repeatedly nothing could make him vote for Kerry. It wasn't that he didn't care about issues, he did, nor that he wasn't aware of them, he was, more or less. What emereged over several conversations was that his votes was based upon an emotional state that was built by years and years of listening to the news, and making repeatedly Republican judgments. He couldn't give an account of all the issues off the top of his head, he was interested in rational arguments but they weren't sufficient, because he knew in a subconscious manner that he was Republican. As I did get him to thinking of the issues, he eventually went on the internet and found a test which determined your party based upon answers to a number of questions on issues, and yes, he was solidly Republican. I suspect his case, his vote being based upon emotional not cognitive memory, is true of most voters.
I sense that the impetus for this post is that you're still coming to grips with Bush's victory. There's been a lot said here about the irrationality and bizarre ideologies of some voters. Having had some time to think about this, I'd like to point on that no one here could convince Ben A. to vote Kerry, and Ben is not any more irrational than the rest of us. I couldn't convince some of my friends, and had a hell of a time with others, all of which I would classify as social liberals. All of which suggests the popular case for Bush was not so weak as we would like to think, and doesn't necessitate explanation by appeals to moron voters.
My new diagnosis for what went wrong with the election is that the case was never really made, not even on the blogosphere, of what could be expected of a Bush second term. The Republicans have always hammered, playing to people's fears, about what to expect from Democratic leadership, yet we were pretty silent on what we expected from four more years of Bush till after the election. The arugment was implicit in all of the criticisms against Bush, but was never made explicitly on its own. I think that was probably a huge mistake.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 11-18-04 6:13 PM