White House campaign being fought out in a US divided over God, guns and gays

Irish Independent ^ | Rupert Cornwell in Washington

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IT IS a tale of two issues, two states, and two men who may well square off in this autumn's Presidential election. It is also a story which perfectly illustrates the faultline that runs not only through American politics, but American society and American life as well.

This week, the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - home to Senator John Kerry, favourite to win the Democratic nomination - ruled that the state must become the first in the US to allow full same-sex marriages.

At about the same moment, defence lawyers in the Texas of George W. Bush won a last ditch stay of execution for the borderline insane Scott Louis Panetti, who had been due to be put to death today for two murders, committed 12 years ago.

Whether Mr Panetti is spared will now be decided by the Texas courts within the next 60 days, though the precedents are not in his favour. In Massachusetts, opponents of gay marriage may yet prevail, if they can persuade the state's parliament to amend the Massachusetts' constitution to define marriage as an institution exclusively between people of the opposite sex.

But such provisos are beside the point. The two affairs illustrate perfectly the labels which each party is already trying to attach to the candidate of the other. Mr Kerry, who is out to prove he is no soggy and ineffectual "Massachusetts liberal," must have winced as he learned of a court decision, confirming every public stereotype of his state - as a nest of arrogant liberals, determined to subvert everything that made America great.

Then there is the Texas model of America, very much in the ascendant these days. This is frontier America, with anything-goes business (as in Enron), where bad guys (like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden) are to be hunted down like common outlaws, and where - as the Panetti case may show - justice tends not to bother with facts which get in the way of simple views of right and wrong.

In strict party political terms, it should be said, neither state quite measures up to its image. Whisper it not, but since 1990, the governor of liberal Massachusetts has been a Republican, while a majority of the Texas delegation to the House of Representatives is Democrat.

But even so, these exceptions prove the rule. Massachusetts Republicans tend to be broadminded and socially inclusive souls, while old-stock white Democrats in Texas are a threatened species, mostly indistinguishable from Republicans, propped up by fading Confederate memories and the vanishing legacies of political titans like Lyndon Johnson. In the culture wars which truly dictate modern American politics, the two states are polar opposites. The US is a country divided - but not so much on conventional lines between Republicans and Democrats, between economic supply-siders and fiscal conservatives, or between those who favour universal health care and those who do not. The real cleavage is over values. It pits the secular against the religious, the "old fashioned virtues" of small town America against the wicked ways of the big cities, and the belief that central government is a friend against the conviction that it is an unremitting foe.

"God, guns and gays," is how one analyst sums up these so-called 'wedge issues' that cross conventional party lines. Mr Kerry supports gay rights and gun controls (though he has slaughtered his fair share of wild life in the name of sport.) George W. Bush wears his religion on his sleeve; but if the Massachusetts senator's Catholicism plays a guiding role in his life, he gives little hint of it. Given however the deliberations over the fate of Mr Panetti (not to mention the interests of alliteration) another 'G' might be injected into the contrast between Texas and Massachusetts: the gallows.

Unlike Mr Bush, who as governor of Texas presided over more than 150 executions, Mr Kerry generally opposes capital punishment. In Texas, the death penalty, carried out even on the semi-sane and the under-aged, has become a minor industry. Massachusetts has executed no-one since 1947, and formally abolished the practice in 1975. The personalities of the last two presidents have only fuelled the cultural schism. The draft-dodging, womanising, eternally slippery Bill Clinton embodied everything conservatives hated most. The born-again Christian George Bush, with his cowboy swagger and callow smirk, is a mirror-image demon figure for the Left.

The struggle between the two camps is visible everywhere - from the frequent Supreme Court arguments over state's rights (the linear descendant of the founding fathers' debate over federalism) to the merest glance at the map.

At one level it is the historical split between North and South; why else do political pundits ask whether a quintessential elitist Northerner like John Forbes Kerry can win votes in Dixie. Or study the astonishing voting geography of Election 2000, showing the East and West Coasts and the big cities in Democratic blue and all the rest in bright Republican red.

Massachusetts, grouped tight around Boston, the self styled "hub of the universe" with its intellectual conceit, its Brahmin caste of high public servants, and its great seats of learning like Harvard and MIT, falls irretrievably into the first category. Over the last eight Presidential elections it has been the most solidly Democratic state other than Rhode Island. Back in the Nixon landslide year of 1972, Massachusetts was the only state in the land carried by that arch-liberal George McGovern.

By contrast, the Presidential politics of Texas are bulls-blood red. No Democrat has had a sniff of victory there since the days of LBJ. Even with the independent Ross Perot to split the anti-Republican vote, George Bush senior and Bob Dole both carried the state against Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996.

Thus the battlelines for election 2004 are drawn. Will Republicans succeed in persuading a majority that Massachusetts liberalism is the political equivalent of cyanide? Or will the Democrats manage to brand Mr Bush as a reckless and ignorant Texas cowboy? Cliches both - but also shorthand for an America politically and culturally divided almost exactly in two.

[TheBigB]

while a majority of the Texas delegation to the House of Representatives is Democrat.

Not for much longer.

[JohnnyZ]

Not for much longer.

Not at all -- it's 16-16 now that Ralph Hall has switched!

[alwaysconservative]

Then there is the Texas model of America, very much in the ascendant these days. This is frontier America, with anything-goes business (as in Enron), where bad guys (like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden) are to be hunted down like common outlaws, and where - as the Panetti case may show - justice tends not to bother with facts which get in the way of simple views of right and wrong.

Interesting prism some of these Europeans use in viewing our world. The author must not have seen this information (that I got in an email a few days ago):

Enron and the White House?

This is an interesting bit of information that you don't hear much about in the media ---

a. Enron's chairman did meet with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.

b.. Enron gave $420,000 to the president's party over three years.

c.. It donated $100,000 to the president's inauguration festivities.

d.. The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.

e. The corporation had access to the administration at its highest levels and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it.

f.. The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction. Scandalous!!

g.. BUT . . . the president under whom all this happened WASN'T George W. Bush.

h.. SURPRISE . . . . . . . . . It was Bill Clinton!

One would think that they would check little things called "facts" when spewing about the "swaggering cowboy" with a "smirk".

[longtermmemmory]

Some liberal writer had to write something and he must have been paying attention to howard Dean.

What a nutcase, this is just proof that europeal leftits are ignorant to world affairs.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/enron.htm

[alwaysconservative]

Awww! You're raining on my parade. I noticed, though, what "independent" sources Snopes used in supporting its position. Instead of Slate and the Hartford Courant/Courier, for example, he/they could have just used actual FEC records, which DO differ from what Snopes reported (those show that President Bush's strength in campaign money came mostly from the small [under $500] donations, and the big money went almost all for Gore [Bing, Soros, the Progressive Insurance guys, celebs]). I've not seen Snopes to be particularly friendly to the right in its sourcing.

[Eva]

The mention of the Clinton/Enron relationship reminds me:

I think that the reason that Bush Ok'd the pre-911 intelligence investigation is because Tenet assured him that any fault will lead back to the Clinton administration and that Tenet can draw the lines and connect the dots for the willfully blind Democrats.

[Destructor]

It's real simple Dim-ocrats! Keep your damned noses out of my business, and don't mess with my Constitutional Rights!!!

[alwaysconservative]

That is an excellent and astute point! And while many FReepers have advocated dumping Tenet (yeah, me too on occasion), he is a direct link back to the last administration and what actions were taken even before President Bush took office. For that alone, he is useful exactly where he is, as a reminder of what happens when Democrats eviscerate our intelligence community and our defenses. Tenet's defense leaked a lot of air out of Kerry's credibility by showing what happens when you repeatedly gut the intel/defense budget like the Dems.

[Eva]

Yeah, the stupid Democrats made a mistake when they tried to pin the war on "bad intelligence". Tenet knows where any mistakes were made and will lay the blame right back at the feet of the Democrats. I just hope that they don't impose a gag order on the proceedings.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Awww! You're raining on my parade.

Yeah, sorry about that. I actually was about to send it on via email myself. Unfortunately, I have this thing about truth. 8-)

Anyway, there's PLENTY of genuine dirt on the Clintons, and plenty enough reason to support our current President, without having to resort to untruth, or even colored, misleading facts, such as this is.