the new map

They were like this with Nixon too. One of the odd things I have always wondered about was why people believe the Republicans are for limited government. If you ask self-defined Republicans what they believe in one of the first phrases to jump from their mouths is "small government". After all, the Nixon, Reagan and Bush Junior administrations have all been about completely unlimited and very large government.

Wire-tapping, price fixing, enemies list, illegal courts and extraordinary rendition, secret arms sales, break-ins, throwing journalists in jail and intimidation of journalists, corporate welfare both in terms of huge tax cuts and in terms of massive defense spending, attempts, mostly successful at court-packing with idealogues rather than serious jurists, this has been anything but small government.

But you throw a few phrases around, project an image and it's amazing what people will think.

I think there are two really big reasons that people tend to identify the Republicans as defenders of limited government even though they are the very opposite of that definition.

First, the Republicans, running on this ticket have had more success in national elections than, until recently, in congressional elections, therefore, they have pressed their advantage in the electoral branch to maximize what political power they have. Having now had not a small success in these congressional elections they have failed to change their mindset and instead have adapted and adopted to this "the president is always right and it's patriotic to support the president" nonsense because it's what they've been developing since Eisenhour. That's why the Monica Lewinsky scandel was exactly what they needed and why it resonated so loudly in Republican corridors during the Clinton presidency. They now had reason not to support the president (who is always right) because he had disgraced the office and was "unfit for command" and thus they could avoid looking too obviously like hypocrites; having in essence developed a cult of personality approach (and Bush the Elder was always only lukewarmly supported because he failed to cultivate this approach to leadership the way Nixon, Reagan and afterwards The Younger did), it was more important to tarnish character than policy in trying to recover and solidify their base (especially for fund-raising).

This is not to say that no reasons existed to oppose Clinton's policies, from either side of the aisle. The 1996 Federal Communications Act that he so championed is one of the worst pieces of crap ever to come from this government and his failure to enact new healthcare legislation was a failure born of amazing arrogance by those he allowed to take the helm on that issue. Only on the second issue were the Republicans in any opposition, citing cost, philosophy and mostly resorting to labeling and name-calling in their opposition. Sadly, their actions during the health care debates, dumbing down the debate, avoiding real issues and defending the rights of the richest four or five percent of the country in the name of the middle class only set the blueprint that they used so successfully in 1994 and again in 2000, 2002 and 2004. On the other hand, it's safe to say that on policy, Clinton was more successful, more knowledgeable and more prescient than the current president, but that has nothing to do with Republican perception of leadership.

I have already touched on the second reason that the Republicans have managed to define themselves as exactly what they are not. Neither party is for small government, but the Republicans have been quite successful at defining where big government exists. It doesn't exist in the defense industry, doesn't exist in writing legislation that restricts competition and maximizes competitive advantage for the huge corporations who usually have a hand in writing the legislation, doesn't exist in creating a war without justifiable reason, no it exists in student loans and grants, it exists in WIC and estate taxes, it exists in the activist judges continued support of constitutional protections for flag-burners, abortionists and the gays. The Republicans have managed to make voting for them a kind of referendum on cultural issues rather than actually about any policy.

Vote for us, they say, and the gays won't make a mockery of marriage having orgies at discoes in New York and LA, the immigrants and the various coloreds won't be sitting around smoking crack, having babies and collecting your money and loose girls won't be having abortions every five minutes because they couldn't keep their legs crossed. Vote for us and you will have the America you grew up with. Meanwhile, they have advocated torture and the breach of fair trial.

But now, in the wake of 9/11 that idea of the America you grew up with, whatever it actually was, has amazing resonance. Nobody wants this world of potential falling beams and now two very large beams have crumpled back to earth, sending souls leaping from their sides. In terms of images, no image has helped the Republican cause more than that image of those two towers sinking into the hard rock of Manhattan's Financial District, any image of Guantanimo Bay pales in effect for most Americans. That a Republican president failed to acknowledge the coming crisis of 9/11 at any point until the afternoon after the morning of 9/11, that his response has completely failed to make accountable those people who were responsible for 9/11 and that his policies have only had the effect of making it more likely that more 9/11s will occur and that those same policies have taken us farther away from that previous America does not matter in the referendums held since then. What matters is that people feel safer with Republicans because Republicans appear to support more strongly the world that existed before 9/11. Many people who supported Bush cited the idea that they felt they felt safer with him, an absurdity, but that's the point. They felt safer with him because he represented not safer actions, the opposite in fact, but more importantly, he represented an America that would hold onto values that seemingly had no relation to this new and uncertain future. And he also was the president, and you support the president in a crisis, that's being a good American; there are no Monica Lewinskys to drag foolish words from his lips and make him look "unfit for command". The image he has projected, a man clumsy with words, working with his hands on his ranch, those have been carefully orchestrated traits and actions (along with many others) to send a message to those voters who pick up on images more forcefully than they do matters of policy, that this is a man who will fight for their idea of what America is. When it comes to matters of policy, his message has been much more muddled than it has been on projecting what kind of personality he is. This image was amazingly successful up through the 2004 election and even into 2005. Unlike Reagan, the confluence of world events has undone him, unlike Reagan, he is largely responsible for these events.

Many strategists have argued that values actually did not tip the scales to the Republicans in the presidential race and up until now the Congressional races held since 9/11. I believe this is wrong. The pollsters who have come to the conclusion that they initially misidentified a key component in the Bush victory in 2004, as well as the continued Republican hold on Congress, actually were right, but they failed to identify the marriage of values to image, allowing people who have been adversely affected by Republican policies to more easily able to latch onto one issue, one value, or one image to justify their voting choice. How else to explain West Virginia or Southern Ohio? How else to explain Florida?

Many Americans are increasingly finding solace in what they are not, rather in what they are. And this has impacted how they vote and what they choose to identify as key reasons to vote a certain way. It may be less flattering to say of these voters that they are also slightly turned on, in terms of interest of course, by issues like homosexuality, abortion and deviance and law. Though the attempts at authoritarianism have failed miserably to protect Americans or their rights, a bunch of thugs who look like dads and grandpas have had tremendous success on projecting these images. But as Wallace Stevens wrote, "not ideas of the thing, but the thing itself". Anyway, there was a man for you, old Wallace.


a young philosopher in Hartford - and an amazing poet - Wallace Stevens