Voting Their Fears

Only 535 people get to vote for president of the United States: the electors.On Monday, they did their job. When their votes are tallied, George W. Bush willbe announced as the winner. On November 2, the other 122 million of us just gavean advisory opinion. But what advice, exactly, did the rest of us get from thathalf or more of the electorate who voted for the President, even though he hadtanked the economy and led us into war based on lies?

On Election Day, before the counting was done, the media chorus was alreadysinging out the official answer: values. The voters' advice is to take us backto that ol' time morality. All those abortion-hating, gay-bashing, "moralvalues" conservatives gave George W. his victory.

The only problem is that it's not quite true.

The news told us ad nauseam that 22% of the voters chose "moralvalues" as their number one issue. But the real news is that this is ahistorically low number. It was 35% in 2000 and 40% in 1996. In the exit polls,when asked what one quality they wanted most in a president, only 8% chose"religious faith." Among those who called themselves "heavychurchgoers," Bush did no better in '04 than in '00. What about the statesthat passed gay-marriage bans, often cited as crucial for the Bush win? Theygave Bush 57.9% of their votes; the other states, totaled, gave him only 50.9%-- a 7 point margin for Bush. But four years ago, Bush's share in these samestates was 7.3 points higher than in the other states.

In a Pew poll taken just a few days after the election, voters were asked tochoose from a list of factors that influenced their votes. 27%, chose moralvalues; 22% chose Iraq. But when they were asked to name their most urgent issue(with no list to choose from), 27% named Iraq and only 9% moral values.

When a post-election New York Times-CBS News poll asked: "What do youthink is the most important problem facing this country?" -- only 5% choseeither moral values or abortion. Only 8% said yes to: "Should governmentofficials try to use the political system to turn their religious beliefs intolaw?" Eighty-five percent said no. (Ten years ago, 23% had answered yes tothe same question.) "Which worries you more, public officials who don't payenough attention to religion and religious leaders, or public officials who aretoo close to religion and religious leaders?" Thirty-five percent worriedabout not enough attention to religion; 51% worried about leaders paying toomuch attention.

And here's another little anomaly to take into consideration: Bush voters aremore liberal than the media would have us believe. Nearly half of them worrymost about public officials who are too close to religion. In the exit polls,about 22% of them favor gay marriage and 52% would legalize gay or lesbian civilunions. 25% of Bush voters want no restriction on a woman's right to choose;another 38% think abortion should be legal in most cases.

The often-quoted statistic about "moral values" begs the questionof how voters interpreted those key words in post-election polls. In a Zogbypoll, 68% of self-identified "liberals" said that "faith and/ormorals" were important in deciding their vote (14 points higher than"moderates"). When voters were asked to identify the single greatestmoral crisis facing America, one-third selected "materialism andgreed" and 31% chose poverty, while the combined total for abortion andsame-sex marriage was only 28%. In the Pew poll, only about 40% of those whosaid "moral values" influenced their vote named gay marriage orabortion as their highest concern. Pew pollster Andrew Kohut summed it up:"We did not see any indication that social conservative issues likeabortion, gay rights and stem cell research were anywhere near as important asthe economy and Iraq."

The Terror Vote

The economy and Iraq were indeed named by many voters as the most criticalissues in this election. But that hardly explains Bush's success. Those shouldhave been his weak spots. Kerry counted on strong support from middle-incomevoters, who saw jobs disappearing all around them and little real wage growthfor those who kept their jobs. Yet the Bush vote in the $30,000 to $75,000bracket was no lower than his overall vote, perhaps even a tad higher. Thosefolks were not voting their economic self-interest.

What about Iraq? In the Zogby poll, 42% of voters saw the war in Iraq as themost pressing moral issue affecting their choice for president -- almost twiceas many as those citing abortion and same-sex marriage. Even amongself-identified conservatives, 32% saw the Iraq war as the moral issue that mostinfluenced their vote, while only 21% named abortion and 19% same-sex marriage.

But Iraq meant different things to different people. And here, if anywhere,lies the key to understanding the election. In polls taken during the campaignseason (collated by the University of Maryland's Program on International PolicyAttitudes), 72% of Bush voters said Iraq either had weapons of mass destructionor a major program to develop them up to the March, 2003 invasion; only 26% ofKerry voters held that mistaken view. 75% of Bush voters believed SaddamHussein's government had a close connection with Al Qaeda; only 30% of Kerryvoters believed that error.

On election day, the exit polls asked: "Is the war in Iraq part of thewar on terrorism?" The 54% who said "yes" went for Bush by amargin of 4 to 1. The 43% who said "no" went for Kerry by 9 to 1. The19% of voters who named terrorism as their highest concern broke for Bush by 86%to 14%. (That's 8 points better than Bush did among voters who put "moralvalues" first.) Ninety percent of Bush voters said things are going well inIraq. Those who named Iraq rather than terrorism as their highest priority broke3 to 1 for Kerry. Eighty-two percent of Kerry voters said things are going badlyin Iraq.

Bush supporters saw Iraq (armed with WMD) and terrorism as a single problembeing well managed by the President. (Exactly the same number who saw Iraq aspart of the war on terrorism also believed the U.S. to be safer now than fouryears ago.) Kerry supporters separated the two wars and saw Iraq as spinning outof control.

When you add up the numbers, Bush's slim electoral margin didn't come frommoral-values voters. It came from people who worried first and foremost aboutterrorism. They supported the Iraq war because they saw both Saddam Hussein'sregime and the current Iraqi resistance as part of the global terrorist threat.And they believed Bush to be the only candidate who could handle that threat. AsNew York Times columnist Paul Krugman put it: "Without the fadingbut still potent aura of 9/11, when the nation was ready to rally around anyleader, [Bush] wouldn't have won at all."

University of Virginia political scientist Paul Freedman noted the strongcorrelation between views on terrorism and voter choice. Those who said theytrusted only Bush to handle terrorism voted nearly 100% for him. Those whotrusted only Kerry gave 97% of their votes to him. In a state-by-state analysiscomparing the Bush vote in '00 and '04, Freedman found that it was the jump inthe number of voters who cared about terrorism, not moral values, that made thedifference.

The post-election Times-CBS poll told the same story. It asked for the twomost important issues in deciding how people voted. Factors relating to war,terrorism, and national security were named more than twice as often as moraland religious issues. Asked to name the most important problem facing thiscountry, 36% identified issues relating to war and terrorism; only 4% chose"moral values" and 1% abortion. Asked, "How much confidence doyou have that George W. Bush will make the right decisions when it comes toprotecting the country from terrorist attack?", 73% said they had "alot or some" confidence -- roughly the same level of confidence that votershad expressed throughout the campaign. In poll after poll, Bush's support fellbelow 50% on every issue except his ability to deal with the "war onterrorism."

Summarizing its own poll, the Times concluded that "the outcomeof the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr.Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks rather than any kindof broad affirmation of his policies." Democratic political analyst StanleyGreenberg agreed: "The No. 1 reason for voting (or considering voting) forBush [was] response to 9/11." It was the terror threat, so cleverly wieldedby the Bush administration, that gave the President a slim increase over hisvote in the 2000 election. If there had been no 9/11, no perceived ongoingterrorist threat, no widespread belief that Iraq equals terrorism, it seemsquite likely that John Kerry would be choosing his cabinet now.

That's not to say the "values-vote" story is completely wrong.There are indeed millions of Christian social conservatives out there who dofear God and sin above all else. They voted for Bush because they think of himas one of them. But there are many millions more, professing all sorts ofreligion or none at all, who fear terrorism above all. They voted for Bushbecause they were convinced that he would do the right thing in fighting theterrorist threat. Stanley Greenberg and James Carville got it right: "Thepresident was able to keep the election centered on safety (the terroristthreat) and values, rather than on Iraq and the stagnant economy. Bush askedpeople to vote their beliefs and feelings, rather than to judge his performanceor ideas for the future."

Desperate for Moral Certainty

Perhaps the mainstream media generally overlooked this point because theirstory line has to be simple enough to compress into a headline or a soundbite.In the rush to find a single decisive factor, they forgot that no electionhinges on a single political group or issue. A candidate wins by mobilizing anetwork of voters tied together in all sorts of complex ways. The bestcandidates don't just find that network. They create it. On this one point, Bushmust be given high marks. His campaign skillfully spun a web, not of politicalopinion, but of beliefs and feelings.

He had been doing it since September 11, 2001. From the moment he declaredwar on terrorists, Bush preached a powerful official story: 9/11 proves thatevil really exists. We know it's out there and we know it's pure evil, becauseit attacked the pure innocents (that's us) for no good reason. Who can now doubtthe chasm separating good and evil? Who can now doubt that the only way to dealwith evil is to destroy it before it destroys us?

For conservatives, this proved the silver lining in the dark tragedy. Foryears they had been terrified by postmodern relativism, the idea that good andevil are nothing but subjective ideas we make up in our heads. That was the realterror they felt they were fighting -- long before 9/11. And they had goodreason to fear that it was a losing battle. The "war on terrorism"gave them a new code word for their crusade against moral terror, a new bannerto fight under, and new hope that they might somehow win in the end.

After 9/11, good old moral certainty was back -- or so it seemed.Conservatives could once again insist that there was only one moral code in ourworld, as eternally true as 2 + 2 = 4. When Bush's people raised the specter ofthe brutal dictator Saddam wielding weapons of mass destruction, who could doubtthat it was our sacred duty to go to war against such absolute evil?

Or so it seemed -- before those disturbing shades of moral gray startedcreeping back into the mainstream picture frame, just as the electoral campaignheated up. The President, sworn to fight for purity and goodness, had sent us towar for reasons that turned out to be false. Was he intentionally lying, or justdeceived by faulty intelligence? Who could know for sure? The vice-president'scorporation was making huge profits by overcharging us for its services in Iraq.Was Cheney pulling the strings on the public purse for his private profit, orwas he as clueless as he claimed? Decent American kids were sadisticallybrutalizing prisoners. Were they just a few "bad apples," or was themilitary system rotten? Corporations with close ties to Bush & Co. weregetting caught with their scandal-ridden pants down nearly every day. Were theyjust a few bad apples, or was our economic system rotten? The whole world seemedto oppose the war. Were they seeing things more clearly, or just jealous of ourpower?

In the presidential debates, John Kerry tried to play on the doubt that layat the heart of such growing questions. When he said: "You can be certainand be wrong," his supporters cheered the pungent soundbite. But the blowglanced off Bush like a pebble off an elephant. Bush just kept playing hiswinning card: the fear of moral relativism. The moral terrors of socialconservatives and the fears of Muslim terrorism converged in the desire to havea leader embodying moral certainty. ("Marriage is between a man and awoman." "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.")And all with the undoubted blessing of the God who will "continue to blessAmerica" (as Bush always puts it), because "God is neverneutral."

Bush had no need to tout conservative economic, social, and moral positionsdirectly. All he had to do was paint Kerry as a wavering"flip-flopper," unfit to lead at a time when nothing but rock-solidfirmness and certainty could protect a nation under siege. This put Kerry on thedefensive, forcing him to respond to these charges every day, leaving him littletime to put forward his own proactive agenda. Every Kerry retort just confirmedthat the election was a referendum on the virtues of strength, firmness,certainty, absolute moral dualism.

Bush effectively presented himself as a man of moral absolutes, who knew evilwhen he saw it and had an unwavering determination to destroy it. Throw in agenerous dose of America's millennial mission to bring freedom to the world, andhe had an unbeatable recipe. Voters could step into the booth and cast theirvote for unwavering moral standards and predictable continuity with the past.They could vote against the uncertainty of a rapidly changing world offering toomany choices and no fixed rules. They could vote against a world that seems,like many of their lives, to be spinning out of control.

That's why, as Bill Clinton (the savviest Democrat of them all) once told hisparty, the American people would rather have a leader who is strong and wrongthan weak and right. Well, not all the American people. Just enough to elect apresident. John Kerry, despite his long conversations with Clinton, neverlearned that lesson. So we all learned it, the hardest way.

What's an Opposition to Do?

How could this have been avoided? Linguistics professor George Lakoffsuggests that the Democrats, and all those who stand opposed to the Bush regime,should counter the GOP's "strict father" values with an appeal to"nurturing mother" values. In this election, though, Lakoff's approachprobably would not have helped. Bush won because so many voters wanted thatstrict father, a man who could take charge and enforce the rules withoutcompromise. A nurturing candidate, who encourages sensitive, independentchoice-making, will have a tough time getting elected in today's USA.

If the anti-Bush forces want to compete for the role of strict father andwin, they will have to find some new evils that frighten and outrage enoughvoters to put them over the top. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it back in the1930s by attacking the "economic royalists" -- the wealthy few whoowned most of the nation's assets -- as well as the Nazis. But he had the uniqueadvantage of a decade-long depression and an electoral system that didn'trequire nearly as much cash as today. Now, Democrats can hardly build theirhopes for success on attacking the corporate hand that feeds them (unless theyassure our modern "royalists" that their campaign rhetoric will neverbe translated into real policy).

Perhaps, though, the opposition should admit that it can never outdo theRepublicans in the "strict father" game. Perhaps we just have toaccept this reactionary trend as an inevitable backlash against long-termchanges that are equally inevitable. We are moving toward a world where peoplehold strong moral values but recognize them as choices and respect the right ofothers to make different choices. The old-fashioned world of black-and-whitemoral certainty is doomed. It's just taking a very long time passing. Think howlong it took for feudalism, or monarchy, or state religions, or slavery todisappear. Think how many people suffered in the process, both those who wereoppressed by these lingering institutions and those who couldn't bear to seethem go. Maybe that's what we all must suffer through now. Maybe the best we cando is ward off the most outrageous excesses, buffer the pain, and try our bestto understand what's going on.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University ofColorado at Boulder and author of AmericanNonviolence: The History of an Idea (Orbis). You can e-mail him at chernus@colorado.edu. Copyright C2004 Ira Chernus. Courtesy, TomDispatch.com