Posted on 10/28/2004 7:14:04 AM PDT by dead
One particularly overlooked group will keep the White House Republican next week, writes Peter Hartcher.
On the face of it, it seems ridiculous that George Bush should have any chance of re-election next week. He is the first president to oversee a net loss of jobs in the US economy since the Great Depression. He has led his country into the most controversial war since Vietnam.
Yet he has an excellent chance of winning four more years. The polls are confused, signalling a close contest. At one extreme, Bush has a 7 percentage point lead, according to the Fox News poll; at the other John Kerry has a 3 percentage point advantage, according to the Associated Press-Ipsos survey.
How does one of Washington's leading professional political analysts interpret the data? "I have no idea who is going to win this election," Charlie Cook, publisher of The Cook Political Report, confessed forlornly to his clients this week. "I really don't."
The betting shops are more emphatic. The punters on the Iowa Electronic Market, an accurate predictor of the outcome since its inception, covering the last four presidential elections, are pricing Bush as the favourite with odds of 60:40. What is Bush's secret? With such a poor record, how can he still be in the race, much less the favourite?
The first point to make is that while John Kerry has sought to fight much of the election campaign on the economy, it is not the dominant issue. There is something else preoccupying the American mind: "Nobody asked Abraham Lincoln what the unemployment rate was in 1864, as the Union forces marched to victory in the Civil War," quips Walter Russell Mead, one of America's foremost analysts of foreign policy.
The dominant theme of this presidential election, the first since September 11, 2001, is national security. The No. 1 issue of importance to voters is the Iraq war, according to Gallup, and the No. 2 issue is the threat of terrorism. So the two top issues in the minds of the American voter are both national security matters, and here we begin to unravel the mystery of Bush's political resilience.
When the US is at war, there is a powerful group of Americans, overlooked in American politics most of the time, whose feelings are stirred, whose resolve is stiffened, and whose intensity forces itself to the centre of national political life.
It's a group that constitutes the hardy core of the American folk, and it was introduced by the novelist and ex-Marine James Webb in these terms: "This people gave our country great things, including its most definitive culture. It is imbued with a unique and unforgiving code of personal honour less ritualised but every bit as powerful as the samurai code."
"This people", wrote Webb to his fellow Americans, "are all around you, even though you probably don't know it". They are the Scots-Irish. They arrived in America in the 18th century in small boats to find existing English settlements, and so pushed on inland to occupy the harsh mountain wilderness along the Appalachians. They fought the Indians, then they fought the British. From the beginning, they formed the core of the American fighting forces.
In his new book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Webb explains that the heavily Scots-Irish people of West Virginia, who make up only 0.6 per cent of the national population, ranked first, second or third in military casualty rates in every US war of the 20th century.
They reshaped American politics by taking hegemony from the aristocratic English-Americans and starting the populist movement.
And, surveying an ancestral Virginia graveyard, Webb, a former senior official in the Reagan Pentagon, writes that they are his people: "The slurs stick to me, standing on these graves. Rednecks. Trailer-park trash. Racists. Cannon fodder. My ancestors. My people. Me."
The first president to emerge from the backwoods ferment of America's Scots-Irish was Andrew Jackson, 1829-37, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and the man who brutally purged the native tribes of America from their east coast homes and forced them westward.
His contemporaries described him as fighting mad. His people, he said, were the "farmers, mechanics and labourers". And it's in his honour that Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations has named the strong populist strand in American attitudes to war Jacksonianism.
Mead describes Jacksonian America as a "community of political feeling" and "in many ways the most important in American politics". Understanding these people, whom he estimates to be 30 to 40 per cent of the US electorate, is central to understanding how America behaves in times of war or crisis.
While the academic debates about US foreign policy are conducted on a rarified understanding of the distinctions between realism and idealism, Mead says Jacksonians are concerned with a code of honour, unacknowledged but real. Its elements are self-reliance, equality, individualism, a certain recklessness with credit he calls financial esprit, and the crowning quality, courage.
They are the gun lovers of contemporary America, and the founders of the Bible belt.
From this code of honour come the rules for the American political conduct of warfare. Once Jacksonian honour is engaged, America will fight ferociously, tirelessly and without restraint. "For the first Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force," writes Mead. "The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either 'on' or 'off'.
"To engage in a limited war is one of the costliest political decisions an American president can make. Neither Truman [Korean War] nor Johnson [Vietnam] survived it."
Jacksonians voted Democrat until Nixon, then moved to become solidly Republican. This is the group that is keeping Bush competitive in the election, despite the 1100 American war dead in Iraq and the $US150 billion in costs. This is the group that Kerry courts when, despite a lifetime as an advocate of gun control, he goes shooting for the cameras during the election campaign. And this is the group that Kerry tries to appease when he tries to out-macho Bush with his tough talk about killing terrorists and waging war.
And this is the group that explains the phenomenon that the Lowy Institute's Michael Fullilove captured in the title of a new paper on the US election: Bush is from Mars, Kerry is from Mars too.
The fighting-mad Jackson, says Mead, is alive and well in American political life in this time of war.
And while we're at it, let's hear it for all the "dumb" Scandis who tirelessly plowed the Great Plains and wanted nothing more out life than bicker with their holier-than-thou pastors and drink very hot coffee out of saucers!
Of course when the time came, they also kicked rear and took names in every war.
I agree. Regardless of the author's thoughts, I am honored by Webb's descriptions of the Scots-Irish. I'm from Virginia and know from my genealogical studies that my family was a significant part of the quiet Americans who built this great country into what it is today. John Kerry will never understand it.
Ah’m shore nuff proud to be ah hillbilly. Lak mah Granpa tol me, stan tall, be proud of
who ye ar, work hard, have faith in God an allus do tha rite thang!
Shucks, his telling me that shore has served me good!
Like most Leftists, this dumb klunk can't see the forest for the trees.
The answer is right before him. In fact, it's embedded in his own words:
"He has led his country into the most controversial war since Vietnam."
Here's the answer, but don't expect this Hartcher moron to comprehend it: The "controversy" is a creation of the Radical Left Propaganda Machine--especially the "Mainstream Newsmedia"--and the American people see right through it.
The Leftist Leaders know that the entire "controversy" was manufactured for political purposes, but this is beyond the comprehension of the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who follow them.
As Rush observed, if President Bush were a Leftist Democrat and had done exactly the same thing, his approach to the War on Terror, including Iraq, would be hailed as brilliant and right on track by the Leftist "Mainstream Newsmedia".
He's right. The so-called "journalists" would be singing his praises and campaigning for his re-election (as enthusiastically as they are now campaigning for the election of John Kerry).
All this "controversy" is nothing more than political propaganda, designed to elect a Lunatic Fringe Radical Leftist Democrat to the presidency of the U.S. and to advance their long-term goal, i.e to replace the U.S. Republic with a totalitarian Marxist oligarchy.
The American people see it for exactly what it is--political propaganda, nothing more.
Some people--the nitwit who wrote this article, for example--lack the wit to see propaganda for what it is.
Fortunately for the world, the average American is smarter than that.
The dominant theme of this presidential election, the first since September 11, 2001, is national security. The No. 1 issue of importance to voters is the Iraq war, according to Gallup, and the No. 2 issue is the threat of terrorism.
There's a difference?
Exactly what's wrong with hillbillies? I consider it an honor to have ancestors on both sides from Virginia, Carolina and Tennessee.
But our roots run deep.
You are mistaken, in the sense this man's ideas are dead on target regarding the spirit of this group of people. Need proof? Look here:
America's Founding Secret: What the Scottish Enlightenment Taught Our Founding Fathers
and here:
So, true, the intent of the article can be seen as not so good; but look deeper, and he trumpets some truth. These two books trumpet some political history truths too many overlook (esp. us Freepers).
>>Bush is from Mars, Kerry is from Uranus.
I think technically Kerry is from one of the MOONS of Uranus!
Those backwoods the author mentions also "fermented" up one Abraham Lincoln.
Modern thought and the modern world from Economic and Political Theory to the invention of the steam engine, the Railroad and the ironclad ship all came from the Scottish Lowlands.
SO9
It's a group that constitutes the hardy core of the American folk, and it was introduced by the novelist and ex-Marine James Webb in these terms: "This people gave our country great things, including its most definitive culture. It is imbued with a unique and unforgiving code of personal honour less ritualised but every bit as powerful as the samurai code."....From this code of honour come the rules for the American political conduct of warfare. Once Jacksonian honour is engaged, America will fight ferociously, tirelessly and without restraint. "For the first Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force," writes Mead. "The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either 'on' or 'off'.
Damn straight.
The terrorists started this bloody war, and they are going to pay with their own blood till decimated beyond ability to regroup. The 'peace' crowd can take a hike. We're not allowing them to repeat the events of Vietnam. We will win because we have to win.
He merely repeats the accurate and insightful analysis of other people, then misinterprets and miscontrues their insights in an attempt to validate his own erronous and condescending theory.
His overall point is quite different from that of the people he cites to support it.
"This is the group that is keeping Bush competitive in the election,"
Not quite, McFly. The media is keeping this race artificially close, and it ain't Bush they're propping up.
We ain't from West Viginia, we're Kentuckians. The only think I'm liberal about is the amount of shine I poor from a Jug.
Were Ridings, Roarks, Gilberts, Whites, Joneses and a good dollop of Cherokee thrown in. We're from Pineville, Harlan, Kenvir and Black Mountain. My Grandad was a coal miner and he carried a blued S&W 38-44 with walnut grips on Monday through Saturday. On Sunday he carried a nickle plated 38-44 with ivory grips; it was his Sunday-Go-To meetin' Pistol. He took no crap. His dad was a trapper and he took no crap.
We've since moved on. Into the automotive factories, and later as Doctors and yes, rocket scientists. We know who we are and what we ain't
We don't hold with no crap. We don't hold with no person or party tryin' to steal our country or constitution. The day will come when the b@st@rds that are try to corrupt and overthrow this country will pay the the price.
That goes for so-called Americans and their terrorist allies.
Me an most of my kin can hit a man-sized target at 600 yard with an '03, M1, M14 (or other good rifle) with iron sights - we don't need no telescopic sights either.
I generally don't like violence and would prefer to be left alone. But I'll tell you one d@mn thing. Don't f*&k with this country 'cause I'd love to come getcha and so would my kin.
Most of the kranked up lefties, socialists, liberals and their limp-wristed followers have no idea who we are and how many we number. They better pray to the Almighty (that's a laugh) they never give us cause to find out. I can garuantee you that if they do give cause they won't live to regret it.
I'm tired of the crap and corruption that they have brought upon this country in the last forty years. I see it as time for a reckonin'.
Most of my kin will vote BUSH, so will I. And so must you if you care for this country at all. My family blood has been spent at the Alamo, Vicksburg, Petersburg, New Guinea, Muesse-Argonne, and the Hurtgen Forest and by G*d it will be spilt again whenever this country needs it.
Sorry for this rant but I've had about enough of the "honorable" lyin' opposition and their crap.
Had my say.
I have no doubt there's some truth to what he says about the scot immigrants(frankly, my ancestry is English and Norwegian but I'm just an AMERICAN period). But the TONE of the piece was off kilter. Is it just that he's a bad writer? I think not.
The snide 'we know everything about these Bush voters' attitude is just a set-up for more America-bashing. Thank God Australia still has the warrior spirit as well. We need them as an ally.
(I might have to look for the books you posted, thanks!)
Besides that.... they have enough common sense to figure out how to exist and stay alive in adverse conditions which is a lot more than you can say about the "intelligentsia" who would shrivel up and die before they figured out how to dirty their hands in the endeavor.
You're welcome. Coming from a pulik sckool edukation, I have found these two volumes surprisingly illuminating ...
strip away the condescension and this article is pretty much dead on the money.
of course, if you strip away the condescension, you are left with a fair amount of citation and precious little of the article's author's own words
Thanks for the ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.