I read the most fascinating political anecdote yesterday. The late Patrick Caddell, in 1968 a Democratic volunteer, later pollster and strategist to George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, went door-to-door canvassing voters for the Party. Who's your political preference?, Pat would ask. "Wallace or Kennedy" so many answered. Caddell was stunned at the number. As was I when I read it.
What would explain that? George Wallace and Bobby Kennedy were polar opposites on race, with Vietnam, the only two political issues in 1968. Caddell explained it as alienation. Isn't that the explanation of Trump voters? "Sanders or Trump" was the choice of a famous many in 2016.
I don't buy it. I don't buy alienation as the explanation for Sanders or Trump. American White men are not "alienated" from power elites, American White men are (and always have been) the privileged minority in America. They don't want to share any of that power, is what it is (and always has been). Not with women, not with Blacks, not with Latinx, not with (recent) immigrants, not with those who speak a different language.
Americans are insufficiently committed to democracy. That is the explanation to me. It is not that they are not educated in it. They are. They each took a civics class. They each grew up in a society with examples of The Responsible Electorate all around them. It’s that they’re not all-in with that democratic compromise bullshit, that separation of powers crap. They want an America “run more like a business.” They want their strong man! Not all Americans and not all of the time but this, or these, tendencies are always there.
Political violence, mob rule, authoritarianism, anti-democracy--these are as American as apple pie. Both Wallace and Robert Kennedy were targets of assassination. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John F. Kennedy were assassinated. Andrew Jackson (more than once) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt survived point-blank attempts and Trump supporters were going to try to assassinate Hillary Clinton on her way to inauguration if Putin had been unsuccessful in stealing the 2016 election for Trump.
This country was born in violent political revolution. Forty years after its first presidential election the New Republic elected a violent, slave-owning populist whose White male mob supporters nearly wrecked the White House on his inauguration. Thirty-one years after that we had a Civil War. In 1935 an authoritarian populist was poised to challenge FDR in the 1936 election when he was assassinated. Wallace and his supporters were violent in 1968 and, disquietingly, RFK had a touch of the mob in his following. In 1992 a populist millionaire businessman ran as a third party candidate and got 18.9% of the vote.
And so on. “Wallace or Kennedy” surprised me, but should not have. Sanders or Trump. Insufficient committment to democracy. Violence is politics by other means. Anti-democratic tendencies, a fondness for The Authoritarian Personality. The title of the 1950 book on the American political personality by the great German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno. Americans do well on the F-scale. Always have.
What would explain that? George Wallace and Bobby Kennedy were polar opposites on race, with Vietnam, the only two political issues in 1968. Caddell explained it as alienation. Isn't that the explanation of Trump voters? "Sanders or Trump" was the choice of a famous many in 2016.
I don't buy it. I don't buy alienation as the explanation for Sanders or Trump. American White men are not "alienated" from power elites, American White men are (and always have been) the privileged minority in America. They don't want to share any of that power, is what it is (and always has been). Not with women, not with Blacks, not with Latinx, not with (recent) immigrants, not with those who speak a different language.
Americans are insufficiently committed to democracy. That is the explanation to me. It is not that they are not educated in it. They are. They each took a civics class. They each grew up in a society with examples of The Responsible Electorate all around them. It’s that they’re not all-in with that democratic compromise bullshit, that separation of powers crap. They want an America “run more like a business.” They want their strong man! Not all Americans and not all of the time but this, or these, tendencies are always there.
Political violence, mob rule, authoritarianism, anti-democracy--these are as American as apple pie. Both Wallace and Robert Kennedy were targets of assassination. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John F. Kennedy were assassinated. Andrew Jackson (more than once) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt survived point-blank attempts and Trump supporters were going to try to assassinate Hillary Clinton on her way to inauguration if Putin had been unsuccessful in stealing the 2016 election for Trump.
This country was born in violent political revolution. Forty years after its first presidential election the New Republic elected a violent, slave-owning populist whose White male mob supporters nearly wrecked the White House on his inauguration. Thirty-one years after that we had a Civil War. In 1935 an authoritarian populist was poised to challenge FDR in the 1936 election when he was assassinated. Wallace and his supporters were violent in 1968 and, disquietingly, RFK had a touch of the mob in his following. In 1992 a populist millionaire businessman ran as a third party candidate and got 18.9% of the vote.
And so on. “Wallace or Kennedy” surprised me, but should not have. Sanders or Trump. Insufficient committment to democracy. Violence is politics by other means. Anti-democratic tendencies, a fondness for The Authoritarian Personality. The title of the 1950 book on the American political personality by the great German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno. Americans do well on the F-scale. Always have.
