Right Wing Nut House

It seemed like a great idea. The bluest of blue newspapers, the Washington Post, sent one of its best young writers, David Von Drehle, into the wilderness of red state America to find the answer to the question foremost on the mind of any liberal worth his salt; how did George Bush win?

The earnestness with which the Washington Post attempted to uncover the secrets to electoral victory for their beloved Democratic party in an America that no longer pays much attention to them would be laughable if it weren’t so interesting as a study of the pathological nature of American liberalism.

The very premise of the project is reminiscent of New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett sending Henry Stanley to the darkest of Africa to find explorer/missionary David Livingstone in 1871. Stanley’s job was to find out whether or not Livingstone was alive and to bring back word of his explorations. Von Drehle’s charge-to find out why George Bush won-might not have the drama of that long ago journey of Stanley’s, but it certainly must have seemed to him just as arduous.

Beginning in Nebraska and ending up in Texas, Von Drehle’s journey encompassed 700 miles through the reddest of red counties, never coming within a hundred miles of a county that voted for John Kerry. He runs into his first problem with trying to describe red/blue divide in terms of height:

Blue islands and blue archipelagos, a blue isthmus here, a blue peninsula there, rise in a Red Sea that stretches from coast to coast. Rise quite literally, in many cases, because blue country is often marked by skyscrapers and high-rise condos and state capitol domes and university clock towers. Red country, as we shall see, is often quite flat.

I guess the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Nevada don’t have mountains as high as those majestic, snow capped Ivy League University clock towers.

Outside of Abilene, Kansas someone asked Mr. Von Drehle why the media never portrayed “people like him” in a positive light:

All I could answer was that we were tired of hearing pundits tell us about “Red America” and wanted a firsthand look. For months, the passions had been running awfully high. A lot of Democrats seemed settled on the belief that Bush supporters were stupid and selfish and sanctimonious, when they weren’t downright religious fanatics and bigots. Whereas the Republican op-ed types seemed to feel that every conservative voter west of the Mississippi was somehow endowed with an innate wisdom and bedrock virtue not seen since the last days of Socrates. When I first saw that county-by-county map, I felt drawn to go there, to hear for myself why George Bush was reelected. I did this knowing that Bush voters can be found anywhere. Why not just stay home and hunt for some here? I guess for the same reason a person might visit China and not just Chinatown.

This isn’t so much a Stanley and Livingstone meme as much as it’s a motivation similar to what drives photographers and writers for the National Geographic. After all, you can go to Detroit and find a community of Afghan exiles. But its so much more exciting to get dressed up in your Banana Republic khakis, jump in your Travelall, and hit the road to Kandahar. It should also go without saying that there’s not much chance of contracting dysentery in Dearborn.

In Waco, NE Von Drehle stopped at a bar to talk to the yokels. His description suggests some kind of blue state safari where the Thompson’s gazelles are spooked by the site of a blue state big white hunter:

A minute ago there were 12 regulars seated in the puddle of light beyond the pool table. Seven men clustered quietly together while five wives chatted amiably at the table beside them. Turns out a good way to get folks moving in Waco, Neb., is to introduce yourself as a reporter from Washington, D.C.

Considering the hit pieces they’ve done on conservative Republicans since Richard Nixon, can you blame them?

How about this breathtaking description of life in “The Red Sea” as he calls Bush country:

One of the first things worth noting about the Red Sea is that people live there because they like it. (Several people proudly pointed out to me that there are no houses on the market in Waco.) This basic fact strikes wonder in some city dwellers, who live in cities because they love cities. They love the bustle, the myriad options, the surprises and the jolts and the competition. It can require a leap of imagination to perceive that there are people who seek precisely the opposite, and not just on weekends and vacations.

This “leap of imagination” apparently escapes even Mr. Von Drehle who “reports” the momentous news that people live where they live because they want to. How can something so self evident be considered a surprise except to the most completely clueless? Notice also that Mr. Von Drehle doesn’t believe there are “surprises,” or “jolts,” or “competition” in red state America because people who live there “seek precisely the opposite.” What people seek in places like Waco, NE is a decent place to raise their children and respite from nitwits like Von Drehle who constantly tell them how ignorant they are for not wanting to live in a place where if you leave your door open at night (as they do in Waco and countless other small towns in red state America) you’re more than likely to be murdered in your bed.

One resident of a Nebraska town remarked how he liked being able to throw a snowball as far as he could without hitting anybody. Too bad Mr. Von Drehle couldn’t have stood in the path of that snowball. It would only be fair after he slimes the gentleman who made the remark:

I couldn’t help noticing that among the people Paul Kern won’t likely hit with a far-flung snowball are black people, openly gay people and people born in foreign countries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, York County, Neb., is 97 percent white and more than 98 percent U.S.-born. One of the area’s distinctive entertainments is, Kern said, “watching a ballgame where all the kids on both teams are white, if you can believe that.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with the other!” he hastened to add. “But just to show you how it is around here.”

Anyone want to guess whether or not Mr. Kern actually used the term “distinctive entertainment” when talking about watching two teams of all white ballplayers?

One of the more fascinating aspects of the article was this study about the relationship between voters and their marital status:

There are 30 states — including all the Red Sea states — in which married couples form a majority of all households. Bush won 22 of the 30, by an average of 21 percentage points. The eight that went for Kerry were very narrow victories, an average of five points. Utah, with the highest percentage of married folks, gave Bush his largest ratio of victory: 71 to 26.

A similar relationship was found in states where married couples were outnumbered by single people and where the percentage was about equal. Mr. Von Drehle, tries to draw some conclusions about the data:

One could dream up all sorts of theories about this. Married people have, on average, a more stable financial situation. They have, on average, more avenues of support in times of trouble. You might say that marriage involves the surrender of certain personal liberties in favor of creating lasting institutions. You might say marriage favors stability over experimentation. All of these might point, on average, to a more conservative disposition.

Only a liberal would believe that conservatives are for “the surrender of certain personal liberties in favor of creating lasting institutions…” It must make it easier for them to believe that a happily married John Ashcroft cheerfully tried to gut the constitution because he had no problem with American citizens surrendering personal liberties.

Von Drehle actually comes close to summing up the Bush voter rather well and in a straightforward manner:

After a campaign in which the Democrat made very little effort to seek their votes, the Red Sea folks decided to cast their ballots in large numbers for George W. Bush. Something he said or did struck a chord with some note of their own political music. Maybe it was the feeling that bureaucrats just don’t get it. Or the idea that elitists hold the heartland in contempt. Maybe it was the worry that traditions are under attack. Maybe it was the view that coastal culture is an enemy, not a friend, in the effort to raise children. For some, it was the feeling of authenticity and apparent horse sense. The attitude toward land and resources that comes from living amid an abundance of both. The significance of personal faith.

Von Drehle’s travelogue doesn’t give him the single overarching answer he’s looking for. How could it? In a nation of 290 million people, it’s impossible to pigeonhole 60 million of them by trying to discover their motivations for voting, especially when it comes to voting for a President. Von Dehle, to his credit, realizes this:

I suppose there are no great surprises there — these views represent many of the strands that have been collected over the past generation into the political camp we call “conservative.” But the focus on this common label may obscure the individual nature of these voting decisions. I met regular churchgoers and people who attend church seldom if ever. I met young libertarians and elderly prims. I met a wealthy man and a man unemployed and deeply in debt. I met people who admire Bush and people who have little regard for him.

I imagine this might disappoint those people who seek a large and unified explanation of something as important as a presidential election. How much more satisfying it is — especially for those who make a living from explaining elections in catchy sound bites — to conjure up overarching themes, towering trends, looming like alps over an election. Nothing sells like a big trend story, whether the trend is “right-wing backlash” or “values revival.”

Mr. Von Drehle seemed to make a mostly good faith effort in trying to understand those strange and wonderful creatures who inhabit what he calls “The Red Sea.” And aside from several gratuitous slaps at attitudes and traditions of his subjects, he made some cogent arguments and observations about his travels.

What bothered me more than anything was the underlying theme running through the entire article that he was almost in a foreign country and that the observations he was making was of a different America than the one from which he came.

I wish he had concentrated more on what unites us as Americans than on what divides us as political and cultural adversaries.

UPDATE:

Pat over at one of my old favorites Kerry Haters points out more Von Drehle cluelessness. It involves a woman who says she couldn’t support Kerry because he was pro gay marraige and pro abortion. Von Drehle sniffs:

Later, I double-checked what Kerry had said on those subjects. During his campaign, he opposed same-sex marriage and said that abortion was a private matter. But Joyce Smith heard it the way she heard it, and voted the way she voted.

Pat’s comeback:

Look, this is one of the signal problems that Democrats have, something that I have commented about on more than one occasion. They don’t say what they really believe, but their actions speak louder than words. What is John Kerry saying when he says that abortion is a private matter? Essentially that he’s in favor of it. As for gay marriage, Kerry’s either lying, or completely out of touch with his own party.

Absolutely correct. For all their talk about changing how the party talks to voters, wanting to speak the “values language” of the Republicans, the fact is, the Democrats won’t get anywhere until they stop trying to hide who and what they are. Voters will vote for people who they have disagreements with. But they won’t vote for people they know are liars.

BTW, check out Pat’s excellent blog at Brainsters