Monday, November 10, 2008
Ideology and Elections
Written by Matthew Locke at 6:20 PMFollowing up on my earlier post, I wanted to comment on the absurdity of trying to divine American 'ideology' from election results. Firstly, it's not very useful to speak of American ideology in the context of election results because, in a fairly specific political sense, there simply isn't one. There are plenty of regional and ethnic and other interest groups that share a (very roughly) coherent set of beliefs, but to discover a broadly-held American ideology one must retreat to platitudes about individualism, democracy, exceptionalism, and the like.
That's not to say that study of American ideology, as such, is fruitless. Certainly I've spent countless hours reading fascinating writing, from Turner and de Tocqueville to more recent books like The Right Nation, which attempt to distill America's essence. Rather, it's to recognize that what makes up the stuff of American thought sets the limits on political debate but does not decide it. In other words, American ideology, to the extent that it exists, delineates what is politically acceptable but does not determine what is politically preferable within those bounds. America is neither naturally Republican nor Democratic; instead, Republicans and Democrats work within the realm of American thought and attempt to better reflect and appeal to Americans' needs and desires (and, sometimes, fears) at any given moment.
Which leads to the second point I want to make.
Most voters do not hold anything like a coherent political ideology. Many might think that they do, but they don't. Voting at the individual level tends to be a fairly irrational act. For most voters it is, at least in part, an emotional act of self-assertion. This is true even amongst the well-informed. Candidates, movements, and political parties go to great lengths to build emotional connections with their supporters. I had many perfectly rational reasons to support Barack Obama for President, but I also just wanted him to win: because he's an inspiring speaker; because I feel like part of a generational movement; because I wanted to see a black President; because I came to dislike John McCain; because, yes, I wanted to throw the bums out. There's a degree of herd mentality here, too -- which is partly why in aggregate voting tends to be fairly rational and predictable. (Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has spent most of the past year proving precisely that.)
To the degree that voting is rational it tends to reflect self-interest, not ideology, and typically a person's professed political ideology will fairly closely hew to their self-interest. Even this, however, is often quite irrational. People don't always have a perfect grasp of what is in their self-interest -- or, to be more diplomatic about it, different people may define their self-interest differently. Some voters, for example, will sometimes cast a ballot against their economic self-interest out of a desire to protect their guns. Voters also very often fail to perceive which party or candidate will actually fulfill their self-interest, misunderstand the potential effects of proposed policies, or believe incorrect information about party platforms.
The truth is that many, perhaps most, voters support a given candidate or party for pretty bad reasons. They vote the way their family has always voted. They vote the way their friends vote. They vote for the candidate with white skin. They think Republicans support an expanded welfare state or Democrats want to cut back spending. They think Democrats support terrorists or Republicans secretly destroyed the World Trade Center.
This is the 'low-information voter'. That's often said with disdainful presumption: a nicer way of saying 'stupid'. And sometimes that's right, but frequently it's not. Plenty of intelligent, well-educated people simply have no interest in politics. Hell, I consider myself a pretty smart guy, but if asked I couldn't name one member of the Rams' starting lineup. (I'm not even sure what sport they play. Hockey?) Granted, politics is more important than sports. And economics is more important than movies, but given the choice between reading a micro textbook till 3am or watching the latest Spielberg flick, I'm gonna see the movie.
But I digress. The point is, voters mostly cast their ballots for reasons independent of political ideology. Many, perhaps most, are low-information voters, but even the best-informed political junkies base their decisions on a combination of factors: emotion, partisan affiliation, self-interest, and so on. However, ideology has arguably become the most acceptable justification for casting a ballot one way or another, so many people will lay claim to an ideology without really knowing what it means. Which renders meaningless the following argument about the recent election (made here by Republican dunce Bill Kristol):[T]here was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.
In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country.
By now it should be clear that 'voters’ ideological self-identification' tells us very little about what voters really want or believe. In this case it says much more about the success Republicans have had in associating the word 'liberal' with bad things (taxes!) and 'conservative' with good things (values!). I highly doubt that 34% of all Americans could explain what conservatism actually means. Hell, I doubt most self-proclaimed conservative thinkers could properly elucidate it. So this is no really evidence that America is ideologically conservative. (Or even that it's more conservative than liberal.)
At the same time, it also renders moot the discussion about whether or not Barack Obama has a 'mandate'. I've always found the concept of a mandate slightly vexing. How is it possible to determine what kind of a 'mandate' any given candidate has when it's completely unclear why he was elected? Was 24.3% of my support for Barack Obama motivated by agreement with his political ideology, 12.6% by respect for his character and ability to lead, 18.9% by a desire to stick it to Republicans, and 5.1% by a hope for a tax cut? I don't know. Even on the aggregate level it's impossible to really tell.
Perhaps if Obama had won an LBJ-style landslide one could argue that conservative values had been repudiated. But then Goldwater's defeat came four years before Nixon's victory ushered in more than thirty years of conservative dominance. So that wouldn't tell us much.
The argument has been astutely made that the 'Democratic coalition' -- youth, the well-educated, urbanites, and minorities -- is expanding. Presuming this holds true for the foreseeable future, and America becomes more Democratic, that does not necessarily mean the country is becoming more liberal. It is arguable, and probably true, that high levels of support for Democrats amongst some groups does not imply an embrace of liberalism. Hispanics and African-Americans and Union members all have perfectly rational reasons to vote Democrat, but none of those reasons amounts to a wholesale acceptance of liberal ideology.
That does not mean that President Obama and the Democratic Congress can't govern liberally. It means that they have to govern well. Two of the major (probably the most important) reasons for Democratic success in this cycle stemmed from the current financial crisis: first, because economic self-interest has now returned to the fore for many voters; second, because of a general feeling that the Republicans in charge of the country cocked it up. The nation isn't necessarily more liberal, but it's willing to let a more liberal government have a try.
If Democrats govern well they will be rewarded. If they fulfill voters' needs and desires, they'll be re-elected. This won't mean that the electorate has suddenly become shifted leftward any more than the landslides for Johnson and Nixon moved the country from extreme liberalism to extreme conservatism in four years. It simply means that if people's lives have improved, and that improvement is (rightly or wrongly) attributed to Democratic governance, the Dems will get to keep the conch.
With all that being said, I should point out that American ideology does shift over time, and long-term dominance by one party can, in the long run, change what is and is not politically acceptable. Through a combination of political rhetoric and good governance the Overton window can be moved. We've seen this clearly in the past forty years: while a Republican like Barry Goldwater couldn't win a Presidential election when repudiating the welfare state in 1964, Democrat Bill Clinton had to repudiate it to win in '92.
This process, however, takes a long time. It isn't done by really convincing people that one ideology or another is preferable. It's done by running the country well and making sure you get the credit for it.
So let's not waste time worrying about whether America is center-left or center-right, and let's not waste time wondering how much of a mandate (if any) Barack Obama has. Let's concentrate instead on unfolding a pragmatic progressive agenda -- one that will help people for the sake of helping people, not to prove ideological superiority.
