[Mb-civic] John Dean: Understanding the 2004 Presidential Election

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1105-27.htm

Published on Friday, November 5, 2004 by FindLaw.com  
Understanding the 2004 Presidential Election:
Beyond the Polarized Electorate, And The Republicans' Superior Voter 
Turnout
 
by John W. Dean 
  
A large number of Americans are very unhappy - indeed, many are extremely 
depressed - about the 2004 presidential election returns. Countless 
supporters of Senator John Kerry are literally scratching their heads, unable 
to fathom how seemingly rational people voted for President George W. 
Bush to serve a second term. Given our poor economy, and the disastrous 
Iraq war -- with its bogus justification and its thousands of American 
casualties - Kerry supporters find it hard to imagine, let alone understand, the 
case for casting a Bush vote. 

Political pundits explain the election as the result of a deep division within 
America. They note that we are a culturally polarized nation, with the red 
states and the blue states providing a map of the divide. Pundits also explain 
the election as a result of voter turnout: Conservatives, they say, proved 
themselves superior at getting their voters to the polls on November 2nd. 

These explanations are doubtless correct, to some extent. But they are also 
dreadfully incomplete. Books will be written deconstructing and biopsying this 
2004 contest. Hopefully they will reach farther than these surface 
explanations to understand what occurred. 

Pollster John Zogby appropriately dubbed this an "Armageddon Election" 
given the "closely-divided electorate with high partisan intensity on each 
side." But the word "Armageddon" suggests another explanation as well: I 
suspect religious overtones and undercurrents played a major role in the 
election. 

Kerry Voters' Question: What In The World Were Bush Voters Thinking? 

A few days before the election, I got some insight into the thinking of Bush 
voters, when I listened to a call-in by a liberal community college instructor, to 
a conservative radio show. 

The caller explained that she was a periodic listener who thought the host 
was honest, though she seldom agreed with his beliefs. She recounted a 
conversation with two of her colleagues. She said they were intelligent, 
politically active Bush supporters. 

The caller had told her friends that no weapons of mass destruction existed 
in Iraq, and that this had recently been confirmed in the report of President 
Bush's envoy Charles Duelfer. But her colleagues insisted there had indeed 
been WMD, and cited the same Duelfer report. 

The caller had also told her friends that there was no connection between al 
Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq - and pointed out that Vice President 
Cheney had admitted as much in the Vice Presidential debate, and that the 
9/11 Commission's report had so found. But her friends insisted there had 
indeed been such a relationship; that Cheney had misspoken, and she was 
wrong about the 9/11 Commission's report. 

Where did her two colleagues get their factually erroneous information? The 
caller explained that they attended the same evangelical church, and got their 
information from a sermon their minister had given on the subject. 

The talk show host conceded that the caller was correct on all of the points 
she'd raised. And then he made a comment to this effect: "This isn't the first 
time I have had callers raise this nonsense being spread from the pulpit. Now 
I am a Christian, but I am not an ignorant Christian. What in the world are 
they thinking spreading this erroneous junk information?" 

Looking For Answers 

What I had heard intrigued me. Were conservative religious leaders pushing 
junk information on their parishioners? I began listening to a wide cross-
section of radio stations, to see what was being said. 

Several Christian radio shows included frequent, unabashed proselytizing for 
Bush votes. Ministers, and their guests, regularly said that a vote for George 
Bush was the vote that God wanted cast. One minister advised listeners that 
"God's watchman" would be observing us all "in the polling booths," and 
reporting what we did directly to God. 

Of course, this is anecdotal evidence. It was (and is) too soon for any reliable 
studies to have surfaced. But the religious influence in this election certainly 
accounts for at least part of the reason why Kerry supporters cannot 
understand Bush supporters. Conservative religiously leaders have been 
boasting of the massive turnout they instituted for the election. 

Again, though, this is but part of the story. In truth, not only is there a culture 
divided between Bush and Kerry supports, but they seem to inhabit separate 
realities - and different views on religion's role in voting are only one 
dissimilarity between their two disparate worlds. 

The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters 

The term "separate realities" isn't mine - it comes from an important and 
incisive October 21, 2004 report by the Program on International Policy 
Attitudes and the Center for Intentional and Security Studies at the University 
of Maryland, entitled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters." 

Importantly, this study wasn't funded by partisan political groups. To the 
contrary, it was underwritten by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford 
Foundation. 

The report's findings are stark: Bush and Kerry supporters agree that the 
U.S. should not have gone to war if there were no weapons of mass 
destruction or if there was no support of Al Qaeda by Saddam. But - like the 
colleagues of the caller mentioned earlier - other Bush supporters have 
closed their eyes to the reality that, in fact, there were no WMD, and there 
was no Al Qaeda connection. 

According to the report, Bush supporters have similarly rejected the reality 
that world opinion was against Bush - believing, contrary to facts, that it 
actually favored Bush. No neutral observer could possible dispute that, as a 
factual matter, world opinion strongly opposed, and continues to oppose, the 
United States's actions in Iraq - and would have preferred Kerry to Bush as 
President. 

Indeed, Bush's own argument has been that he is unwilling to hold an 
international referendum on his policies - not that he would prevail were such 
a referendum held. The only supportive countries he has cited in the debates, 
among the "Coalition of the Willing" are the U.K. and Poland. 

Why Are Bush Supporters Resistant to Well-Established, Non-partisan Facts 

The report shows that Bush supporters seem to simply ignore information 
they don't like - even if it is confirmed by the Bush Administration itself! They 
continue to believe in arguments even Bush and Cheney themselves have 
dropped - the WMD, and the Saddam/Al Qaeda connection, respectively. 
And this may be because they get their information from unreliable sources. 

Steven Kull, the report's author, provides a rather benign explanation for why 
this is: "The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," Steven 
opines, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the 
near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate 
wake." 

This bond between Bush and his supporters, Kull notes, interacts with some 
"idealized image of the President" that they hold. And the two, together, make 
"it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect 
judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his 
policies, or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at 
odds with [those of] his supporters." 

To study this report is to realize that Bush won reelection through blind faith 
and loyalty. Bush did not acquit himself well in the debates: Kerry won 
adherents each time he spoke. But it seems it did not matter: Bush 
supporters either weren't watching, or weren't really listening, when the 
debates occurred. This becomes more glaring because the University of 
Maryland study shows the Kerry supporters were living in the real world. 

A "Broad Nationwide Victory" And a New Bipartisanship -- Not Exactly 

When introducing the President's victory appearance, Vice President Cheney 
said, "We've worked hard . . . and the result is now clear: a record voter 
turnout and a broad, nationwide victory." (Emphasis added.) Forty-eight 
percent of the nation's voters -- all those (literally and figuratively) blue voters 
-- will take exception to Cheney's arrogant analysis. 

Cheney's claim is all too reminiscent of 2000 when with no mandate 
whatsoever, the Bush Administration started by employing radical policies as 
if it had one - quickly burning bridges rather than building them. The first four 
years of this administration were devoted to winning a second through 
partisan hardball, and insiders tell me that the second term will seek to 
consolidate and expand Republican control through as much of the same as 
necessary. 

In his victory speech, after thanking supporters, Bush said, "I want to speak 
to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger 
and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can 
do to deserve your trust." Yet the next day, in his first post-election press 
conference, he described working with his opponents as their agreeing with 
his goals and aims. 

With four years of evidence, Kerry supporters - realists that they are, who 
have learned to watch what Bush and Cheney do, rather than what they say - 
will hardly be persuaded that this administration seeks a new era of 
bipartisanship. That is particularly true given that the President suggested at 
his recent press conference that the divisiveness will end when everyone 
agrees with his positions. Little wonder there is widespread depression. 

The sensible take on the next four years will not be found in the President's 
faux offers of thorny olive branches with very short stems. Bush and Cheney 
are not going to trim their sails, and with the ship of state listing dangerously 
starboard, no one should expect smooth sailing for the next four years. 
Humility does not come easily to these men of hubris. Rancor should be 
expected. Indeed, it may be necessary to keep them from sinking us all. 

John W. Dean is a former counsel to the president. 

© 2004 FindLaw.com

###
 

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