How Pew Divides the American Vote

Democracy is really working when two coalitions of nearly equal strength compete in a way that improves each side, and the country itself. And the competition should be about helping the voters, making their lives better, more secure.

America is closely divided today partly because each party efficiently gathers its resources and gets its voters to the polls. In 2004, the Democrats did well, the Republicans slightly better.

Working from Pew Research Center data, David Brooks wrote about how America divided itself in the aftermath of that election (New York Times, 5.15.05). The affluent top of the scale are pretty well set in their ways. Liberal Democrats are well-educated, antiwar, pro-choice, anti-tax cuts, and Pew says are 19% of voters. The balance of the upper 30%--11% of the total--are conservative: pro-war, pro-life, pro-tax cut business class Republicans.

The bottom 70% are more conflicted. About 10% are pro-government conservatives, poor Republicans who want government programs, but are foreign policy hawks and social conservatives. Another 11% are strongly socially conservative, but want government to check business power and protect the environment. This group is also anti-immigrant. Both groups of lower class Republicans are strongly individualistic, believing one can make it with hard work and good character. They oppose government handouts.

Pew divides lower income Democrats between conservative Democrats (15%), mostly older, more religious, socially conservative, and moderate on foreign policy issues, including many blacks and Hispanics, and disadvantaged Democrats (10%), many minorities, financially insecure, poorly educated, pessimistic, mistrustful of business and government, but want government help for the needy. Pew notes, “most Liberals live in a world apart from Disadvantaged Democrats and Conservative Democrats.” http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242

The middle ground (23%) is divided between upbeats (13%), who are well-educated and positive about their own situation, business, government, and the nation in general, and much less affluent disaffecteds (10%), financially insecure, cynical about government, and less likely to vote. Both these groups, so different in their attitudes, went heavily for Bush in 2004.

A Good Fence, More Good Neighbors

Dick Morris has advice on “How the GOP can survive the immigration debate” (The Hill, 3.29.06):

In 1964, . . . when Goldwater ran for president rejecting civil rights legislation, it doomed GOP chances among black voters for at least the next 40 years. Will the Republican need to appease its anti-immigration base similarly vitiate President Bush’s efforts to appeal to Hispanic voters?

Hispanics, . . having voted for Al Gore by 30 points in 2000, . . . sufficiently trusted Bush to back Sen. John Kerry by only an eight-point margin. If the Republican Party now turns its back on these newly swing Latino voters, it may permanently lose its ability to win America’s fastest-growing voter group, perhaps dooming the party altogether.

But the demands of the GOP base must also be accommodated. Here’s how:

. . .The GOP base wants a fence. It is vital to the entire concept of whether or not we can control our borders. All efforts to beef up manpower on the border have failed to stem the daily flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. A fence is the only way to do it. By backing a fence and demonstrably taking control of our southern border, the Republican Party will appease the demands of its base.

But to prevent disaster among Latino voters, it must accompany the fence with a more liberal policy on guest workers and criminalization. . .

The GOP base, happy with the fence, will probably go along with it. Whatever the Congress needs to do to differentiate the guest-worker program from amnesty it should do, but it must pass a generous guest-worker program. . . With a border fence to enforce the difference, a guest-worker program will work politically.

And it is also important for the Republicans to avoid symbolic acts like making it a felony to be here illegally or to employ someone who is. . . Deportation is and will be the answer to those we catch — and deportation has new meaning with a fence in place.

Yes to the fence, yes to guest workers and no to greater criminalization.

The Middle East: Turning the Corner?

Finally, a break in the stream of bad news datelined the Middle East. Kadima's leader, Ehud Olmert, will become prime minister of Israel, after his party won the most seats, 28, in Israel’s election, Labor won another 20, and the Pensioners Party, which seeks better rights for the elderly and will probably support Olmert’s withdrawal agenda, won 7 seats, for a total of 55, with 61 needed to form a government. Olmert should be able to find the final 6 seats he needs to become prime minister.

Middle East peace prospects took a turn for the worse in January with Ariel Sharon’s incapacitating stroke, followed by Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections. Now Olmert has not only prevailed, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejectionist Likud party totally routed, but he has also already issued an appeal to the Palestinians to move toward peace—not an easy gesture the day after the Palestinian parliament installed into office a Hamas-dominated cabinet.

Good for Olmert. Good for Israel. Peace is closer today.

The Courage to Fight for Democracy

Here are excerpts from “Cultivating the Seeds of Democracy,” by Anwar Ibrahim, former finance minister and deputy prime minister of Malaysia and visiting professor at Georgetown (Los Angeles Times, 3.25.06):

Emboldened by a hard-won ideological victory over the regimes in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, the U.S. once again has sought to foment democracy abroad to ensure security at home. . .

Although it cannot be denied that U.S. initiatives for reform have contributed significantly to developments in the Middle East, fear is growing that radicals may hijack democracy. Recent Islamist electoral successes in Iran, Egypt and the Palestinian territories have given rise to questions about the ability of liberal forces to prevail against fundamentalism.

. . . there are some who say that "stability" not liberty is what the U.S. should be promoting throughout the Islamic world. . .These views on democracy and stability in the Muslim world are not only wrong but carry grave consequences.

In a way, Washington's strategy may be viewed as expiation for past sins, when the U.S. was a stumbling block to democracy in the Middle East. Iran was a democracy in 1953 when the CIA engineered the coup that transformed it into an absolute monarchy. The U.S. also has supported other tyrants in the region, including, of course, Saddam Hussein. All of this in the name of stability and security in the decades-long confrontation with the communist bloc.

The best answers to the question of whether America should reassess its strategy lie in Indonesia and Turkey, refreshing examples of Muslim democratic self-assertion. . .

The press in Indonesia is free, and the elections are fair. Fundamental liberties are enshrined in the constitution and fully recognized and respected by the powers that be. . . Arbitrary arrests and political detentions are unheard of.

. . . In Turkey, the containment of an unrestricted military establishment has aided in that country's European Union ascension. [Indonesia and Turkey] now stand as beacons, both for Muslim nations and for those who seek to help them. . .

To be successful in its efforts to spread freedom, the U.S. must remember that constitutional democracy cannot take root in a society, whether secular or Islamic, without the firm commitment of the politically empowered to protect the fundamental rights to liberty, equality and freedom of all.

WMD: Absence Fooled Saddam Too

Jonathan Gurwitz wrote the following yesterday about the 2003 Iraqi WMD threat [San Antonio Express-News, 3.22.06]:

The media and the public are only now gaining access to a trove of official U.S. and Iraqi documents and tapes, much of it seized during the early days of the invasion. These sources make clear the reasons most major intelligence services [thought] Saddam continued to possess proscribed weapons of mass destruction and why U.N. weapons inspectors would never be able to locate them. . .

The U.S. military's Joint Forces Command engaged in a two-year project to analyze hundreds of thousands of documents and the transcripts of interviews with dozens of Iraq's political and military leaders.

. . . Researchers Kevin Woods, James Lacey and Williamson Murray provide the first in-depth analysis of the USJFC findings in an article for the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, now available online.

"Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside" makes abundantly clear why the Bush administration believed Saddam had WMD and could use them again — because Saddam's own regime believed it had WMD and could use them again:

"When it came to [WMD], Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them. Coming clean about WMD and using full compliance with inspections to escape from sanctions would have been his best course of action for the long run. Saddam, however, found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD."

Fearful of the consequences of delivering bad news to Saddam, Baathist leaders gave false assessments to their dictator and to one another about weapons programs. A footnote to "Saddam's Delusions" suggests that in the months following the fall of Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability.

. . . the blame for the tragedy in Iraq falls on a single person: the homicidal dictator who used WMD in the past and wanted the world to believe that he could do so again.

The MSM Determined to Win (Part IV)

No institution is monolithic, and that includes the media. But American democracy is polarized into two roughly equal camps, now battling for power every day. That polarization pulls the components of each camp more closely together.

The Democrats are the beneficiaries of the government Roosevelt built to fix and control capitalism. The camp includes bureaucrats plus institutions that need government’s help to further their agenda—entertainment and the arts, academe, the Third Sector, and the media. The media joined the Democratic camp by the 1960s, as working reporters who want government to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” took over the media’s top jobs.

The media’s power over the Democrats stems from its success in bringing down Johnson and Nixon, and in ending the Vietnam War. These successes shape the MSM today. The MSM has two related goals: 1) get the U.S. out of Iraq, and 2) end Republican government.

Iraq, to the MSM, is a Vietnam-sized mistake. We didn’t belong in Vietnam, and we don’t belong in Iraq. We don’t need the combat deaths (instant combat footage, smiling pictures of now-dead Americans, weekly body counts). We don’t need the American-inflicted horror (pictures of Abu Ghraib/My Lai). We don’t need to be where people are fighting among themselves instead of the enemy. The media ended one war; the MSM is determined to end another.

And the MSM objects to Republican rule. The media once indiscriminately worked over presidents on both sides (“you spin, we expose”); they were too political, too deceptive, too secretive, too incompetent, too corrupt. After taking down Johnson and Nixon, media helped assure Ford couldn’t get elected and that Carter and Bush 41 would fail after one term. Only “Teflon President” Reagan survived their treatment.

The MSM even gave Clinton a rough time, and low poll numbers, until Republicans took over Congress and tried to shut down the government in 1995. That crisis thrust the MSM into the unfamiliar role of defending a president, which it did for the balance of Clinton’s presidency. Clinton’s second term Gallup Poll approval rating never went below 54%.

Confronted by Bush 43, a non-“Teflon President” who stole one election, smeared a war hero to take a second, elected and retained a Republican congress, and threw the country into an unnecessary war, the MSM is super-determined to cripple his effectiveness and end Republican control ASAP. Of course, Bush’s disinterest in the MSM’s agenda makes it all worse. Bush challenges the MSM like no president before, and the MSM aches to win.

The MSM Contained (Part III)

The media has proven its independence by going after Democratic as well as Republican presidents. Carter had been president for two years in 1979, when his former speechwriter, 29 year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar James Fallows, published a searing inside look at Carter’s failing management style (“The Passionless Presidency,” Atlantic Monthly, May-June 1979). Fallows’ articles knocked Carter so off balance he retreated to Camp David for ten days in early July, where he developed a nationally-televised address delivered July 15 that blamed the American people, not himself, for a “crisis of confidence” marked by “paralysis and stagnation and drift.” Carter’s presidency never recovered.

Reagan, an ex-actor highly skilled at using television to reach his audience, was able to bypass the media establishment and run the country from 1981 to 1987, supported by Congressional conservatives. After Democrats re-captured the Senate in 1986, the media's party once again controlled Congress, and held on there even as Bush replaced Reagan in 1988. In contrast to Reagan, Bush was unable to bypass the media, which showed its strength during the 1990 budget battle by forcing Bush to break his pledge not to raise taxes.

In 1992, a poll of top journalists found that 91% supported Clinton over Bush. [www.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp] Nirvana for such types arrived with Clinton’s 1992 election, since Democrats still retained Congress. But nirvana lasted just two years.

Americans showed their dissatisfaction with Democrats in 1994 by putting Republicans in charge of Congress, ending Democratic control of the House that had lasted 40 straight years. The Gingrich revolution was a blow to the media, especially after Clinton moved right in 1995 to cater to this new power. Fortunately for the media, Gingrich both over-reached with the battle to impeach Clinton and proved to lack the skills Reagan had used to bypass the press.

But with Bush 43’s win in the “stolen” election of 2000, a Republican became president for the 5th time since Vietnam, against just 2 Democrats. From 1968 to 2006, a span of 38 years, Republicans had held at least a piece of power for 32 years. The MSM clearly wasn’t all-powerful.

The MSM Triumphant (Part II)

Democrats dominated the U.S. political scene from 1932 until the party fractured over Vietnam in 1968. And the electronic media (radio, then TV) largely aided Democratic presidents’ efforts through the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War (“politics stops at the water’s edge”) until around 1965. While many leading regional newspapers, and the influential Luce publications TIME and LIFE, leaned Republican, Henry Luce backed Kennedy in 1960—making a difference that year.

During the Vietnam War, the media became a powerful, separate political force in America. New York Times correspondent David Halberstam, a Harvard graduate whose reporting from Vietnam was so on-target (he won a Pulitzer in 1964) Kennedy asked the Times to transfer him out, inspired a generation of journalists covering the war. Halberstam published his Vietnam book The Making of a Quagmire in 1965, just as American combat troops were entering Vietnam for the first time. Halberstam had it right from the beginning.

Television news helped turn the country against the Vietnam War with its same-day “living color” combat footage that came into American homes nightly. The near-realtime TV shots of Vietcong invading the U.S. Embassy grounds, along with other close-fire reporting during Tet 1968, led the impartial CBS anchor Walter Cronkite to editorialize on air that the U.S. should leave Vietnam. LIFE generated another key turning point against the war when it published pictures of the 242 men killed in Vietnam in one typical week, May 28-June 3, 1969. And LIFE did it again with its graphic November 1969 report on the My Lai Massacre.

Republican Nixon was president by 1969, having benefited from the media’s drive to end Democrat Johnson’s Vietnam War. Nixon nevertheless deeply distrusted the media, especially the three he placed at the top of his “enemies” list: the New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBS News. Nixon’s mistrust proved founded. In 1972, the Post unfolded an historic investigation of the “Watergate caper” that helped force Nixon from office within two years.

Thus by the mid-1970s, the MSM had aided the 1960s civil rights struggle, pushed forward the feminist revolution, ended the Vietnam War, toppled a president, and become America’s dominant agenda-setting institution, more powerful than the Democratic Party itself.

The MSM (Part I)

David Brooks said last night on “The Lehrer Report” that polls reflect people who reflect the cluster of beliefs that best honors them. In other words, people validate themselves by associating with the values system that tells them they are worth something.

We have two general clusters of beliefs in America today, those reflected by the Democrats and those reflected by the Republicans. Fox News and talk radio have given Republicans somewhere to go besides churches to validate their beliefs.

The Democrats, who during the Roosevelt years built the modern-day intelligentsia that now dominates five of America’s nine major institutions, have long had the media—now called the “mainstream media” (MSM) to distinguish it from Fox and talk radio—to validate and amplify their beliefs, along with the resources of government bureaucracies, entertainment and the arts, academe, and philanthropy/nonprofits (the “Third Sector”).

Religion is divided, recognizing that Judaism, mainline Protestantism, and Catholic support for welfare and peace lean Democratic. So is big business divided (think John Corzine, Robert Rubin, Warren Buffett, Felix Rohatyn, George Soros, Maria Cantwell, etc.). The only Republican institutions in the big nine are the military and small business. (My thanks to John Glassman, American Enterprise Institute, for this analysis [Scripps Howard News Service, 1.18.05]).

While Fox News plays a vital role for Republicans, it can’t match the MSM’s domination of our national dialog. And Fox has freed the MSM to be more openly partisan; with Fox around, other media have less reason to be “fair and balanced.”

Bush and Iraq: For Better, For Worse

Bush is doing badly in the polls, because of Iraq. His Gallup Poll approval rating of 36% is the lowest of his presidency.
[Poll at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/archive/?poll_id=19]

Iraq is what Bush will be most remembered for, according to 64% of responders. And 61% of those polled said Iraq would play the “most important” or a “very important” role in deciding how they vote in the upcoming Congressional elections, not good for Bush since 60% think things in Iraq are going badly.

Only 42% say going into Iraq wasn’t a mistake, the running poll's lowest percentage ever. In Vietnam, the Gallup Poll didn’t find that little support for the war until after Tet in February 1968, a month before Johnson announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.

Yet hidden in these, for Bush, dismal numbers were signs of rising confidence in the economy:

"Rate Economy Today"
Date: Good/Poor
3/06: 59%/41%
9/05: 53%/47%
4/05: 50%/49%
12/04: 53%/47%

"Rate Economy A Year from Now"
Date: Good/Poor
3/06: 60%/37%
9/05: 49%/50%
4/05: 51%/48%
12/04: 60%/39%

Saving Lives or Spinning Facts?

Improvised Explosive Devices—IEDs—are responsible for killing over 60% of the Americans lost in action in Iraq over the past year. Appropriately, the U.S. has made a top priority out of combating this dangerous threat to American troops.

David Gregory of NBC News, however, in his March 13 story from the White House, oddly treated the President’s interest in countering IEDs as a public relations gambit. Here’s Gregory’s full report (emphasis added):

Today, Mr. Bush boasted of new technology he claims has reduced the threat of roadside bombs, known as IEDs, responsible for so much carnage.

[Clip of President speaking:] “Today nearly half the IEDs in Iraq are found and disabled before they can be detonated.”

IEDs are a major source of the violent images Americans see on their television screens so often. That’s why the White House hopes highlighting the battle against that threat may actually move opinion on the war. David Gregory, NBC News, the White House.

Time to Get Serious about Protectionism

It is ever more clear that Democrats will ride the protectionist horse to return to power in Washington. This blog is about the importance of free markets. Protectionism is the enemy of free markets. If we interfere with free trade in the name of protecting jobs, we interfere with capitalism’s ability to grow jobs abroad and at home.

Here's why the protectionist threat is real. Mark Shields, the liberal half of Jim Lehrer’s weekly look at Washington politics, warned that outsourcing would hit America’s service sector hard in the coming years, costing us up to 42 million jobs. He didn’t say so, but his figure comes from an important March Foreign Affairs article by Princeton Economics Professor Alan Blinder, who used to be on Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Clive Crook, in his National Journal piece titled, “A Third Industrial Revolution” (3.10.06), called Blinder’s article “fascinating,” because it makes offshoring “potentially a very big deal.” Blinder:

believes that what we have seen so far is just the timid beginning of a third Industrial Revolution [electronics, following manufacturing, then services].

. . . he envisages enormous economic disruption, and urges policy makers to think hard, and urgently, about how to prepare for this.

. . . Blinder concludes that "the total number of U.S. service-sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of current manufacturing jobs" -- in other words, between 28 million and 42 million jobs.

[Blinder says for those remaining behind:] "People skills may become more valuable than computer skills. The geeks may not inherit the earth after all -- at least not the highly paid geeks in the rich countries."

Broder Wrestles with Ethnocentrism, Racism

David Broder used to be a thoughtful journalist. So I wonder about these two statements from his column, “Nativist sentiment helped kill the Dubai ports deal,” (Washington Post, 3.9.06):

[Bush’s national security] reputation . . . has been damaged by the continuing strife in Iraq, a nation which — according to this week's Washington Post-ABC News Poll — 80 percent of Americans now believe is headed for civil war.

Mr. Broder, what difference can it make what Americans, even 80 percent of them, think about the prospects for civil war in Iraq? It’s Iraqis, not Americans, who will or won’t civil war.

Then on the Dubai port ownership fiasco, Broder writes:

Some portion of the antagonism stemmed directly from the fact that this is an Arab-based company.

“Some portion”?! Broder may be uncomfortable Democrats turned racist on this issue along with (more predictably) Republicans, but how can he suggest that anything but racism was involved?

Martin Luther at 500

Five centuries ago this year, Martin Luther became a monk. No person has had a bigger impact on the 500 years since.

The title of John M. Fontana’s book about Johann Gutenberg, Mankind’s Greatest Invention, makes the valid point about Gutenberg’s printing press. Printing gave reading—hence power— to the common person.

Gutenberg printed his first Bible in 1455. But it took Luther to make the invention world-transforming, just as Henry Ford, not Gottlieb Daimler, transformed the 20th Century with automobile mass production.

Luther taught that we are justified by faith, not works. We don’t earn our way into heaven, we believe our way. It is between us and God. Justification by faith makes each individual equal before God, a radical concept to the early 16th Century's Pope and kings ("Dieu et mon droit"), and one still unfamiliar to much of today’s world.

As the printed Bible empowered Luther, he used it to empower each individual. Knowledge makes us free. Luther specifically denied a priesthood the right to get between the individual and God, denied the Pope’s role as the final interpreter of scripture, translated the Bible into German, encouraged individual study of the scriptures, and actively worked for a competent education system.

To Luther, piety meant someone who was free in conscience by virtue of faith, and charged with the duty of proper conduct within a community of similarly-committed individuals. A community of free and equal individuals. An emerging democracy.

China-bashing Chuck

The Washington Post’s Sebastian Mallaby (3/6) has a warning about the next target of American protectionists: President Hu Jintao of China. Hu is coming to the U.S. in April.

To get ready for the visit, Sen. Chuck Schumer, whom Mallaby calls “one of the chief brewers of the Dubai storm,” is pushing a bill that will impose a 27.5% tariff on all Chinese goods unless China revalues its currency. His bill can’t become law, but it can identify the Democrats with strong, nativist sentiment against a country that is running a massive trade surplus with us, supposedly taking away American jobs (think WalMart), challenging American scientific supremacy, violating human rights, and is building the world’s most powerful military challenge to the U.S. Did you really think Schumer would let Hu’s visit go well?

Too bad. There is no way China will cave like Dubai is doing in the face of Schumer’s demagoguery. China needs a devalued currency to protect its agricultural sector. Farmers are losing out to the coastal cities in China, are restless, and pose a political problem for Hu. He isn’t going to revalue China’s currency in a way that makes foreign food products cheaper for coastal Chinese than food produced in China’s interior.

Schumer could care less.

Iraq on Tenterhooks

Here is a highly abbreviated form of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:

Americans Killed in Action (monthly average)

2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 47

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar: 2.50
Goal: 2.50
actual: 1.84 (2/06)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 3,600 (2/06)

American combat deaths are down this year, though not dramatically. Crude oil production, which the U.S. optimistically believed would start paying for Iraq’s recovery soon after Saddam was removed, has yet to recover to prewar levels. And the best single measure of basic quality of life in Iraq, electricity production, was lower in February than it was when Saddam was in power. Not good.

Then, there is the current delay in forming a government to run Iraq. Yet Iraq is up from its low points, and has so far averted civil war, though Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has done his darndest to get one going. It feels like the future of Iraq hangs in the balance right now.

The Consumer is King

Last year, the Economist ran a special section on how the consumer has become king (4.2.05). It seems that things happen first in the world of private sector sales. Politics and culture catch up and/or mount resistance later. When Eisenhower ran 60-second commercials on TV in 1952, many commentators were horrified that the General of the Armies would try to sell himself as one would sell a box of soap. The rest is, as they say, history. Capitalism teaches democracy how to sell.

Here is some of what the Economist had to say:

• “The days of mass marketing are over.”—Larry Light, McDonald’s.
• Consumers do not trust ads.
• Network TV and newspapers in decline.
• 92% of the ads recorded on DVRs are skipped.
• Consumer attention is becoming a scarce resource.
• Advertisers have to be able to measure results of advertising.
• “Below the line advertising”—new media, direct mail, public relations, promotions, sponsorship, product placement—is worth more than 2x that paid for traditional display ads.
• Top ad agencies now include interactive ads, direct marketing, public relations. PR is the runway for the ad plane.
• Ad agencies have to put all the pieces together for a client.
• Brands belong to the people who use them.
• Brands help people navigate through complex markets.
• To build a brand, 1) have deep insight, well beyond traditional research, into what consumers want, 2) relentlessly attend to their needs, 3) make consumers part of marketing.
• People “cross shop”—for the very expensive and very cheap.
• Chinese consumers want brands they can trust and afford. China may become P&G’s number two market.
• Nestle provides Japanese consumers recipes on their cells so that they know what to buy on the way home.
• South Koreans consider e-mail “so last week”; it’s all TXT.
• Mobile phone marketing must respect users’ time.
• 30% of those who built their Mini Coopers on line bought the car they "built".
• A website typically holds a browser for 2-5 minutes.
• Internet ads work because the advertiser pays only for clicks.
• Online sales are rising fast, with mobile phones the new platform.
• “The market will get more fragmented, customers’ needs will get more diverse, and sophistication and empowerment will continue to grow.”—Mike George, Dell.