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A Transformative Election Without A Transformative Candidate
JB
I caught the debates tonight. Both candidates acquitted themselves well, but in the current political context this is greatly to the advantage of Bush.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham famously argued that American democracy features pivotal and transformative elections, (which Burnham called "critical elections") during which the parties realign, new political collations form, and one party begins to dominate. These elections occur roughly every 36 years; examples are the elections of 1824, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968. The last major transformative election of this sort-- i.e., one that produced a major realignment-- occurred in 1968, as the New Deal coalition began dissolved and the South moved from the Democratic to the Republican parties. The 1980 and 1994 elections confirmed and solidified this change. Thirty-six years from 1968 is 2004. Thus, the time is ripe for another transformative election, one in which, one might think, the Democrats would form a new winning coalition.
The problem is that the current Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, does not appear to be a transformative candidate. He does not offer a message of transformation. Rather, he offers a message of greater competence and better judgment in prosecuting the war on terror. 2004 will not be a transformative election unless the people of the United States see a clear choice between the status quo and a new approach, and believe that by choosing one candidate they are making a decisive change in the direction of the country. Although it is certainly possible that Kerry might produce such a change, there are few signs of this in his campaign or in the way he delivers his message. This is probably his greatest weakness as a candidate. He is offering competence and judgment when he should be offering a decisively different vision for leadership. He should be campaigning for a decisive rejection of the politics of the past and offer a bold vision for the future. This, so far, he has failed to do.
There are two possible explanations of the current situation. One is that the country is indeed ripe for a transformative election, but it will not occur until 2008, when, tried of eight years of incompetence and kleptocracy by George W. Bush, the people of the United States will decisively reject his policies. The other, and far more troubling possibility from my perspective, is that 2004 is indeed a transformative election, but the transformative candidate is George W. Bush, who is ushering in a long-term Republican majority.
If the second scenario holds, the best analogy would be to the 1896 election, in which the Republicans forged a new winning coalition that replaced the configuration that emerged directly after the Civil War. The Republicans dominated the Presidency from 1860 to 1896, and they dominated the Presidency from 1896 to 1932, but the Republican Party had changed greatly in the interim.
I hope that the second scenario does not come to pass. If it does, I fear greatly for the future of my country, for the new Republican party that Bush appears to symbolize is a toxic combination of plutocracy, intolerance, and foreign misadventure.
Your political analysis is subtle. I agree that Bush, at least in the beginning of the debate, struck me (a radical leftist) as the more "transformative candidate" only because his rhetorical strategies were positive and affirmative whereas everything Kerry had to say was negative, "going to war was a mistake" etc.
For Kerry to be a "transformative candidate" he must be more strident. It may not be "good political strategy" for him to move left of center, but as part of Kerry's captive (in the worst sense) audience, I was disgusted by his blandness, his total lack of conviction.
Bush was his usual broken robot self, looking like he was about to have a brain aneurysm each time he was forced to respond to Kerry, and towards the end of the debate he started to break down, spewing random cliches and mangling words and phrases.
Since 2001 I have changed from believing war to be a necessary evil to believing it to be a severe moral wrong, last defensible, perhaps, in World War II (and even then it is hard to deny that the Holocaust was worsened by the expansion of the war). Prozac may have had something to do with it.
I admit Kerry is on my side of the fence here, discussing "that war should be a last resort" and conducted in alliance with significant foreign powers, but what I'm really looking for in Kerry is that he attack the whole "war on terror" ideology. The "war on terror" will be just like "the war on drugs," and "the cold war," an ongoing excuse to "save" poor people by dropping bombs on them, putting them in jail, etc. when their leaders, right or wrong, don't "get along" with U.S. ideology. For instance, Kerry's blurb about opium production in Afghanistan was an attack on Bush's promotion of the country as an exemplar of the spread of democracy, but the comment itself exemplifies Kerry's tired political button-pushing: forcing the Afghan government to attack its own people who are growing opium or cannabis would only turn it into another Columbia, perpetually at war with itself. What the U.S. fears most is a "free market." I am tired of having to hope my candidate believes in the same things I believe in, of hoping there is some substantive belief between his back and forth sound biting.