Essay #2

This is the second in a series of essays on the future history of our time, focusing specifically on how (and if) the Bush-Clinton Years will be characterized in American political history. The first essay was written as history from a historical perspective, ostensibly in 2032. The futuristic author writes of these decades where everything international changed, but everything American stayed the same.

In this essay, I am writing as my normal self, making the case for the success of the neo-conservatives. Many have presumably written this type of thing for real, and many more have tried to figure out how to make it a reality. Writing as a layman, however, with only a cursory knowledge of the Project for a New American Century (from whose name I borrowed my title) and other neo-con think tanks, I will do my best to outline why the derided, decried, and despised George W. Bush could be the first emperor of a Republican dynasty.

Republican Ascendancy and the New American Century

It’s the hearts and minds, stupid.

George W. Bush won the popular vote by 3,500,000 American votes. However, he could have lost it to just 120,000 Buckeyes – approximately the same number as lost jobs in Ohio during Bush’s term. Without attaching blame or credit for the recession and recovery, we can make the inference that in reasonably healthy economic times, Americans vote their conscience, not their wallet.

All polls indicated that John Kerry was the choice of those who voted the economy. By massive margins – especially in Ohio – voters concerned with job loss voted against the incumbent. Yet Bush won.

Pollsters and pundits have already fingered the source of Bush’s victory, and it is creating a new category and vocabulary in politics, and unless the Democrats act swiftly and will give the Grand Old Party a grand old time at the top of the heap in the 21st century.

I call this new category “hearts and minds”. This phrase became popular earlier in the year describing the task that lay before the administration in Iraq; it proved to apply more immediately to our own election. The concept of “hearts and minds” goes beyond the traditional “values” concept, though the two are closely related.

The “values” concept refers to a set of morally loaded political topics such as abortion, gay rights/privileges, civil rights, international human rights, and church-state relations. It also refers to the morality and rhetoric of an administration: does it frame policy morally or economically? Does it allow morality to enter into judgment?

“Values” has become a thorny issue in American politics since 1960. More and more American women repudiated motherhood during the Sexual Revolution, and Theresa Heinz Kerry repudiated apple pie during the 2004 campaign. President Clinton’s peccadilloes and personal immorality led to his impeachment and contributed to President Bush’s election in 2000. Where neither party held a moral edge in the early part of the century, conservative Christians have been increasingly polarized towards the Republicans because of Democrats’ humanist worldview and applications thereof, on the abortion issue more than any other.

However, only recently has the divide between the parties’ worldviews grown deep and broad enough to move beyond being a “values” issue for religious Americans. Bush successfully demonstrated that John Kerry – and much of his party – was out of touch with many of the fundaments of American practical philosophy. More importantly, he convinced them that his worldview was not only more in line with theirs but it was also the right one. Kerry tried – and failed – to make the case that his economic and social initiatives were morally and philosophically superior.

A discussion of these virtues in detail merits discussion. The Bush worldview is a strangely coherent amalgam of neo-conservative, evangelical, civic, and humanist thought. He is traditional on Republican “values”, but his values also include a soft form of nationalism. Unlike Kerry, Bush firmly believes that America is better than other nations in many ways. He believes in democracy – and is willing to risk peace for the sake of expanding America’s sphere of likeminded democracies. He believes that military service carries inherent virtue (though he evaded it himself). Deep down, he believes that you get what you deserve, that some “have nots” are really “deserve nots”. He doesn’t have a sense of low-grade guilt about his own success. He doesn’t spend much time thinking about past wrongs, and thinks that human universalities are more powerful than cultural differences. He’s optimistic and has never drawn a fatalistic breath. He believes that we control our own destiny, and is not convinced that history is bound to repeat itself.

While the above list is by no means exhaustive, it highlights the points on which Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry differ. Much more important than their personal difference on these truths is that their political bases and parties are in general agreement with the candidates – and general disagreement with each other. The underlying cause of the much-talked-of rift in American polity (Red v. Blue, Metro v. Retro, etc.) is the changing value systems of each group. Since 1980, the Left has moved further left, and the Right has moved further right. Neither political conviction is fully tied to a religious belief or a lifestyle, though obvious correlations exist.

The Red-Blue Divide is clear enough; but how does that benefit one party over the other? Is it simply a matter or numbers? Will demographic changes swing the advantage to the Democrats eventually? Is the best way to ensure political dominance to procreate rapidly?

No. Numbers obviously play a role, but the Republican Party is structured in such a way that it can survive – and benefit from – increasing grassroots polarization. By contrast, the modern Democratic Party is a weakening coalition of special interests cobbled together by Franklin Roosevelt and extended during the ’60’s and ’70’s. Do Blacks, labor unionists, Ph.D.’s, homosexuals, liberated women, Hispanics, environmentalists, liberal Christians and atheists really have that much in common? Whence the unified “poor man’s party” of William Jennings Bryan?

If you simplify the Democratic Party into three branches, they are Labor, Liberals, and Minorities. The regulation and big-government policies of the 20th century Democrats were able to serve all these groups reasonably well. The problem arose through success: the Democrats harvested a massive crop of educated, liberal whites who signed on philosophically and politically with Civil Rights and the Great Society. They gave the Democrats a certain ascendancy until the economy began its slow decay in the 1970’s. This group is extensive today, representing perhaps 25% of Americans. They wear ties, they can drive to the ocean, and they’re politically active. So active, in fact that they are indisputably in charge of the Democratic Party in 2004, and the labor bosses of the 1950’s are nowhere to be found.

Lost in the middle of the Red-Blue Divide already is the labor bloc. No longer powerful enough to affect policy – free trade is king in both parties now, many have begun to question their individual allegiances. Combined with a general decrease in union membership and lower-middle-class permanent jobs, the erosion of unions and union loyalty has been a vicious circle politically: with fewer votes, labor can’t affect policy, without making policy, it can’t command loyalty. An unnerving number of workers and farmers voted for Bush in 2000, and even more in 2004; this third of the Democratic Party is being chipped away.

Until now, Blacks and Hispanics are a sure thing for Democrats, and the emergence of a vice-presidential possibility in Barak Obama certainly energizes minority voters. Each of these racial groups represents 13% of the U.S. population, and perhaps 10 million votes each, with some overlap. The word ‘monolith’ doesn’t even come close. Democrats of color have not deserted yet, but Bush has put Herculean efforts into attracting the Hispanic vote and putting Latinos in positions of power in the Republican Party. Here is the crux of the Democrats’ crisis: if they do not change their “hearts and minds” stances, they will ultimately lose minorities. As long as poverty and de facto segregation prevail, so will monolithic voting patterns. But as families establish themselves in the middle class, more and more of them realize how poorly the Democratic Party represents their interests as Americans, however well it may champion them as minorities. With the boundaries of liberalism reaching new frontiers thanks to science and post-Christian philosophy, the Democrats have a poor chance of keeping all their wings under one roof.

The labor wing of the Democratic Party has begun to crumble, and cracks are appearing in the foundation of the minority wing. Without these allies, the liberal elites at the helm have no chance of competing nationally or locally with the Democratic Party.

With a clear mandate, newfound political soil, and a shrinking opposition, the Republican Party – and its neoconservative branch in particular – is poised to usher in not only an American Century but also a Republican Century. While we must assume that something will happen to end this dominance in a few decades at most, the foreseeable future is Republican Red all the way.

Briefly, what will this mean for America and the world? A neoconservative, active foreign policy will, by fits and starts, promote democracy and free trade, and build a satellite system of states to replace the one lost by the demise of the Soviet Union. Look for America to move away from Europe politically, and look for the development of a bipolar economic and political system, with non-violent competition between the two economic centers for satellites and economic privileges.

At home, education will be stressed as Americans reach back in time to revive the American Dream (now known by liberals as the Horatio Alger myth). Science will push boundaries, but at a slower pace and with more hand-wringing and discussion.

The divide between liberals and conservatives will also deepen, and serious problems of representation will trouble our democracy as coastal liberals feel further and further left behind by a nation whose political as well as geographic center is in Kansas.

The realities will be somewhat softer than this description suggests; by Republican dominance, I mean something along the lines of 1800-1860 (the Democrats were so overwhelming that the Whig Party shriveled up and died), of 1860-1930 (only two Democrats were elected president, and these with the Republican vote split; Congress was generally Republican-controlled as well), or of 1930-1994, when Republicans had the House for only four years and the Senate for eight. Despite a very real level of dominance during each period, the two-party system was not at risk of collapse, nor were elections a foregone conclusion. Nor will it collapse in the future, nor will future elections be foregone. Democrats will compete on specific issues, but until they find a unifying philosophy and seam together a coherent bloc of voters, they will fail to lead America in the way that Republicans will.