Nobody I Know Voted for Him
Allen Downey (Faculty)
Allen Downey is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and not a member of either major political party.
In 1972, when Nixon trounced McGovern, movie critic Pauline Kael supposedly said something like, "How can he have won? Nobody I know voted for him." If she said it, I'm pretty sure she was joking, but 8 elections later, I don't think the Democrats get the joke.
The Republicans are in control of the White House, the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress because the people who run the Republican Party understand and respect their opponents. Republicans think Democrats are wrong, but Democrats think Republicans are stupid, and that's why Democrats lose.
Presidential candidates are a product assembled by a committee and designed to win elections. Political parties start by choosing candidates they think are electable, but that's just the raw material. By the time you hear a candidate's name for the first time, the product has been refined, processed and packaged like a loaf of Wonder Bread.
Do you really think that George Bush doesn't know how to pronounce "nuclear"? Do you think that no member of his staff, or the Republican Party, or one of the 59 million people who voted for him, ever bothered to send him a note that said, "Hey George, it's noo-clee-ar?"
Every time Bush says "noo-kyu-lar", he annoys a few million people who weren't going to vote for him anyway, and he solidifies his public image as a folksy, down-to-earth, regular guy who's just trying to be the best president he can be (gosh darn it). For Bush, that's a net win, and he knows that it's a net win because the smart people that run his campaign figured it out.
If you think Bush is an idiot, you've been sold. If you think Kerry is a flip-flopper, you've been sold. Bush is a Texan? Sold. Kerry is a Catholic? Sold. And if you think Bush in the National Guard or Kerry in Vietnam has anything to do with anything, you've been sold, sold, sold.
The attributes and personal histories of these two men have nothing to do with the outcome of this election, except as raw material for the process. The question isn't why Bush beat Kerry. The real question is why the Republican Party beat the Democratic Party, and the answer is that Democrats neither understand nor respect their opponents.
Why not? I have a theory. I've spent the last 20 years on various college campuses, and here's what I've seen. When smart conservatives go to college, they find themselves surrounded by smart liberals. They are confronted by the liberal world view, and at least some of them come to understand and respect it. By contrast, smart liberals can go from matriculation to graduation without ever seriously engaging someone with a different point of view, and that's exactly what most of them do.
So with apologies to Pauline Kael, who was smarter than people seem to think, let me add a footnote to her quip: If you don't know anyone who voted for George Bush, that's why you lost.
