ESL American Politics

Bush and Perot engage in distracted banter during Clinton's soliloquy.A student today was telling me about the recent awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Japanese scientists and a scientist from Purdue, and it led into a discussion of Indiana and how that state fits into American electoral politics.  This in turn devolved into a gross oversimplification of the whole American scene.

We discussed the geopolitical history of the United States from roughly the time of the French and Indian War up until the U.S. Civil War as defined roughly by maintaining the balance of power between northern states with interests in manufacturing and industry and southern states interested in agriculture.  When we discussed the westward expansion, I maintained that this distinction between southern "slave states" and northern "free states" was very much preserved, and forms the basis from which much of modern American geopolitics has come.

We skipped over the Gilded Age and mentioned the New Deal only in passing as primarily concerned with the size, scope, and responsibility of the government before moving on to the Reagan and post-Reagan years as primarily defined by incoherence (although future political historians may be able to overgeneralize about the present as I have here done about the past) since Reagan's Big Tent.  I made her look up the word "incoherent" in her electronic dictionary.

The idea that America owes its existence to two source cultures does a disservice to all the immigrant and local practices which helped shape the nation, but it is an idea that I think is mostly true (as much as I hate all that red state blue state pop anthropology bullshit).  

My student asked if religious makeup had anything to do with it as in Europe to which I replied that I didn't think so.  For the most part there are equal representations of the two major fighting factions of Christianity in both the northern and southern United States and their cohort states (Take your best guess whatever those might be, but I'd put Colorado in the north and Bleeding Kansas in the south.)  although there are decidedly few Baptist churches lining the Jersey shore, and white Unitarian chapels seem confined to New England.  

We used a modified political compass to overgeneralize about the last five Presidents.  Our political compass was three-dimensional and contained axes for domestic (progressive vs. conservative), foreign (aggressive vs. cooperative), and economic (emphasizing capitalism vs. emphasizing welfare).  Here's how each President scored based on only my opinion and Google-less recollection of hazy memories from secondary sources (I was four years old when Bush the Elder was elected.):

Ronald Reagan: Domestically I'd classify Reagan as moderate conservative since he didn't try to enact anything like a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage, but he did cut a hell of a lot of funding for social programs and he did actively pander to culture warriors.  But I don't think this was to do with any ideology other than small government austerity.  That is, I'm not sure if Reagan ever claimed Jesus was his buddy.  With foreign policy, Reagan was very aggressive, ultimately single-handedly defeating Stalin, and economically, he was very capitalist.

George Herbert Walker Bush: Personally my favorite ex-President, Bush the Elder is a model of the kind of decent, sane, totally-unskilled-politician-but-great-leader that we will be hard-pressed to ever see again.  Accordingly, he was undone by the enterprising weasels of Congress and his own mouth.  Bush signed the ADA, Clean Air Act, and Immigration Act of 1990, which makes him socially very progressive.  Bush was very cooperative, signing START I and organizing the coalition which fought the Gulf War.  Economically, he signed the NAFTA agreement and muddled through a recession, and was otherwise very capitalist.  That reads like a list of best post-World War II policies ever enacted.  Why did we vote Bush the Elder out of office instead of making him King?

Bill Clinton: Bill Clinton was progressive at home, and like a Gwar concert abroad.  Between micromanaging the affairs of almost all of the world's tiny, powerless countries, bombing the others, and creating new threats for the United States, the Clinton Administration sent American troops to more countries than the previous six Presidents combined (or so I'm told): Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Iraq...and those are just the countries we attacked directly.  The military's impressive, isn't it!?  Clinton's foreign policy basically gave birth to the Axis of Evil.  Bill Clinton was a textbook strong capitalist for 99% of Americans and strong on promoting welfare for the top 1%, so I'll average those to come up with the arbitrary label of capitalist.      

George Walker Bush: W was much closer to Reagan than to his own father politically.  Vying to never be out-Texased again, Bush the Younger tried to recreate Reagan's Big Tent.  He was socially very conservative, opposing strongly almost every item on the progressive agenda, even the United States Constitution.  Bush's very aggressive foreign policy was less about sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism and more about planting the forests of anti-Americanism.  Economically, Bush was a capitalist, but not as capitalist as his father.  (Bush the Younger was a better politician.)  

Barack Obama: Obama seems to have more in common with Bush the Elder than with Clinton.  He has been progressive on issues like healthcare, but HRC seems to have more in common with the status quo than ADA, Clean Air Act, and the 1990 Immigration Act did.  Obama so far has been less progressive than George H.W. Bush.  Put that in your bottle of pills and swallow it, Limbaugh!  Obama has been aggressive with foreign policy if one considers that he didn't just suddenly end the two wars he inherited, but there seem to be indications that Obama is attempting to prudently wrap up both Iraq and Afghanistan, although he has certainly escalated hostilities in the latter, so for now, I'll classify him as moderate aggressive on foreign policy.  Economically, he seems to be fairly textbook capitalist (despite the whole socialism meme), but it's still early, so I'll classify Obama as moderate capitalist.  

Here's a graph I just made in Paint, so forgive the low quality:

Some things worth noting before I conclude: (1) all the Presidents surveyed seem to be moderately or very much in favor of emphasizing the capital element of welfare capitalism.  It seems either that we've largely solved our welfare safety net issues and the future consists of minor alterations to that program, or the American public simply doesn't care; (2) Bush the Elder was a big outlier within the Republicans, but in a sample size of three, I'm not sure that means anything; (3) Obama seems to be a moderate version of Clinton, but it is still too early in his Presidency to define him; and (4) we have had no socially conservative President (read Christian) who hasn't also wanted to murder brown people for the greater good.  I find that a bit hypocritical.   

"America is a big messy country, and American politics is big and messy," I told my student.  She looked a bit puzzled: "But if Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger are the same party, and even the same family, how are they so different?  How are Clinton and Obama so different if they're the same party?"  I made her look up the word "incoherent" in her electronic dictionary.

Comments

[Joseph Cox]

You short sell the importance of religious differences to the different states. Catholicism and old-Protestant faiths (Unitarian and Episcopalian) are much more prominent in the North, while more vigorous new Protestant denominations (Pentocostals, Methodists and Baptists) dominate in the South. The politics in Old Christianity tend to be a lot more muted than New Christianity. HW Bush was Old Christian, while his son was New. Christian Evangelism and movement Conservativism have a lot in common. Conservatives used to be skeptical of big changes, now they seek their own big changes. I see that evangelical impulse in the hard right wing of the Republican part. They have slowly replaced all the quiet Northeastern Conservatives like Bush Sr.

[Christopher Carr]

That's a great point, Joe, and one that would have been worth mentioning to my student. Wise Blood was required summer reading for a reason, right? Perhaps I'll write a future ESL American Religion post.