Has political centre in N. America moved right?

Do elections tell us anything significant about national character? Earlier this month two British journalists came to the sobering conclusion that, in the U.S. at least, they do.

"Some 41 per cent of American voters identify themselves as conservative," claims John Micklethwaite, U.S. editor of The Economist — a figure he says points to a deeper rightward shift in American culture and politics.

Micklethwaite and an Economist colleague, Adrian Wooldridge, have just published a book with the double-entendre title of The Right Nation. At a recent Carnegie Institute panel in New York they claimed that the Republican victory in the 2000 U.S. presidential election consolidated what was already a pronounced decline in the influence of progressive "liberals" who have dominated American domestic and foreign policy for decades.

Of course, the 2000 election was so close that it took the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the final victor. Democrat Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000.

But the Economist journalists say the photo-finish results were misleading. The "new" Republicans who came to power were able to govern as if they had a majority simply because they could rely on a dynamic intellectual culture that had already won the battle of ideas in Washington.

And, more significantly, the two journalists claim it will make no difference if President George Bush loses in November to John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic challenger. The rightward trend, they say, has effectively become institutionalized.

The conservative instinct of the American electorate, in other words, has now become part of the U.S. national character.

This won't be welcome news to those who believe a Bush defeat at the polls will halt the ambitious American agenda of unilateralism overseas and restraints on government activism at home.

There's little doubt that conservatives now have the upper hand in America's intellectual battles. Some 200 right-wing think-tanks now thrive in the U.S., along with 1,500 Christian broadcast channels, effectively combining the religious and cultural political activism that has coloured American politics. In contrast, the "left" is grasping for vital, new ideas.

"The Right is not necessarily winning on every front, but it is making the political weather now in the way that the Left did in the 1960s," the Economist journalists write.

The American right has been making this argument for years, ever since Ronald Reagan's 1981 victory. Karl Rove, Bush's campaign strategist, has boasted that the 2000 election represented the start of a permanent Republican era.

Yet, there's no evidence that Americans in significant numbers support the classic right-wing agenda. A majority, for instance, continue to tell pollsters they back the United Nations.

A fierce debate is, in fact, underway about the future of American conservatism. One side of that debate is captured by those who argue, as one recent scholarly article put it, that the neo-conservative "moment" has passed.

According to this argument, which also happens to be advanced by the side that predicts political embarrassment for Bush & Co. next November (so it may be wish-fulfilling), the shattering of the neo-con attempt to remake the world in the name of democracy — and national security — has left millions of ordinary Americans wondering whether their government knows what it is doing.

Nevertheless, neo-cons are only one thread of American conservatism. And their eclipse may only suggest that more traditional aspects of conservative thought — such as isolationism and protectionism — are coming to the fore.

Large segments of the increasingly powerful Latino electorate in the U.S., for example, support the traditional "family values" philosophy of the current Republican leadership.

There's a similar trend among new and second-generation immigrants in Canada who, according to the polls leading up to this week's election, were attracted to Stephen Harper's brand of conservatism, which has borrowed heavily from new conservative thinking in the U.S.

Although election results don't tell us everything about national character, they may be indicators of far more than just momentary voter anger.

A Bush defeat in the U.S. next fall might suggest there is less to the supposed Fire And Ice differences between Canada and the U.S. than meets the eye. Those Canadians who pride themselves on being small-l liberal may have more in common with large segments of American opinion than they assumed.

But as the authors of The Right Nation suggest, the new right has been able to successfully hold the new centre ground of American politics because its opponents have grown too intellectually stale to offer a better alternative.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen Handelman usually appears every second Tuesday.

Do elections tell us anything significant about national character? Earlier this month two British journalists came to the sobering conclusion that, in the U.S. at least, they do. "Some 41 per cent of American voters identify themselves as conservative,"

So America having this percentage of people identifying as conservative = "sobering". Got it.

a figure he says points to a deeper rightward shift in American culture and politics.

Strictly speaking I don't think such a figure could possibly do that. "Shift" implies a change of some sort. Is 41 percent a significant increase in the number who would identify as conservative? We're not told.

My guess: slightly. Perhaps 10 years ago the number was 37 percent. Oooh what a shift. "Sobering"!

Let's hope.

The conservative instinct of the American electorate, in other words, has now become part of the U.S. national character.

When wasn't it? Outside of the author's wishful thinking, I mean?

This won't be welcome news to those who believe a Bush defeat at the polls will halt the ambitious American agenda of unilateralism overseas and restraints on government activism at home.

I understand the unilateralism part here but not the government activism part. What's he talking about? A "conservative" shift in American politics will likely mean more (not less) "government activism at home"?

What's he defining as "government activism", lowering taxes?

Ah yes, if there are 200 (mostly tiny) right-wing think-tanks and 1,500 Christian broadcast channels (<-this I doubt by the way, unless I'm misunderstanding the definition of a "Christian broadcast channel"...) that automatically means the right is in charge. Just count the number of think-tanks, that's how you measure who's in charge. The right has 200 whereas the left only has... wait, we're not told how many. Could it be... more? We're just not told. As for the Christian broadcast channels (which I still don't understand how there can be 1500) by viewership and access it's safe to say that (combined w/Fox news) is only one drop in an ocean filled with ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc.....

In contrast, the "left" is grasping for vital, new ideas.

No argument there.

Those Canadians who pride themselves on being small-l liberal may have more in common with large segments of American opinion than they assumed.

I can't parse this without knowing what a "small-l liberal" is in Canadian context. I know that liberal in Europe = what we call conservative (more or less). I'd been assuming that Canada was like Europe in that regard but in light of this sentence, that must be wrong.

Fair enough.

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