Ian Boyne, Contributor
"If the Democrats fail to make George W. Bush a one-term American president, they might, after emerging from a cloud of defeat, come to understand how their lack of dexterity in handling religious and ethical issues handicapped them."
- Ian Boyne, Sunday Gleaner column
THE LIBERAL elite media in the United States were the biggest losers in the U.S. presidential elections on Tuesday. They completely underestimated the weight that moral and religious issues would play in the crucial Bush-Kerry contest. It is not just the Democrats as a political party who are out of step with the American soul the elite media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN are also out of sync.
The exit polls are unequivocal 22 per cent of voters said 'moral values' were their top priority in voting, followed by 19 per cent who said 'economy and jobs' and 15 per cent who said Iraq. On Wednesday, Bill Schneider of CNN said the issue in the election came down essentially to one question: "Do you attend church?" Of those who attend church services once a week, 64 per cent voted for George W. Bush. Sixty-two per cent of those who do not attend church voted Kerry. U.S. News and World Report, in an article on its website on Wednesday said, More than one in five of voters was identified as evangelical, with fully 75 per cent supporting Bush.
When we heard early in the day that record numbers of Americans had turned out to vote, many persons believed that the big turnout favoured the challenger Kerry. We were wrong Karl Rove had apparently delivered on his promise to pull out the 4,000,000 additional evangelical voters who did not vote in 2000.
BUSH'S APPEAL
I had written in a recent column that: "George W. Bush appeals to many ordinary Americans who are intensely religious and conservative and who believe that America has a special place in the world a mission given by God." I had correctly identified a major chink in the Democrats' armour: "Because the liberal and largely irreligious Democrats have a disdain for religion and do not understand it as well as they should, they underestimate Bush's appeal and have been rather inept in responding to that appeal. The Democrats, displaying the usual secular obsession with the material and the tangible, believe that Bush can seek to exploit religion as much as he wants, as long as people do not have good jobs, medicare and proper housing, education and social amenities, and are convinced that he is wasting money fighting an expensive and unnecessary war, they will vote him out.
"They are taking daredevil risks they might live to regret. People don't live by bread alone, as George Bush's favourite philosopher said early two thousand years ago." I was dead accurate.
By Tuesday night, commentators in big media were expressing amazement that George Bush had taken states which had lost many jobs. Besides, Bush's economic record has not been good. He has lost more jobs during his presidency than any other president since Herbert Hoover. He has chalked up a US$7.4 trillion debt, moving it from over US$4 trillion. And he has turned a US$236 billion surplus into a US$422 billion deficit. His social welfare policies have been a disaster. The Democrats hammered on these failures and promised that 'help is on the way', but that was not enough to convince the majority of voters.
Besides, Bush's Iraq war strategy was in shambles, not to mention the fact that he had no justification for launching such a war. The case against Bush was air-tight, overwhelming and conclusive. But as I said in my column last week, 'fear trumps reason'. Bush's politics of fear 'you can only be safe in my hands', in effect plus his appeal to the religiously conservative who have felt threatened by an increasingly influential liberal elite who has been exercising power in the courts finally won out.
The election on Tuesday was not just about politics. It was about the continuing culture war, and the evangelicals and fundamentalists scored a decisive victory. They helped deliver a record number of the popular votes for President Bush (nearly 3,500,000). They have sent an unmistakable, shattering and dumbfounding message to liberal America and its elites in the academy, media and the courts: "Enough is enough and we are going to take back America, a nation under God."
This election was not about the economy, stupid. It was not even, according to the exit polls, about the war in Iraq or terrorism. It was about moral values.
It will not be long before books will roll off the scholarly press dissecting just how a group of evangelicals, fundamentalists and conservative Christians (which includes Catholics) came together to push back a formidable presidential challenge from John Kerry, who was not wanting in money or expertise.
The rural voters resoundingly rejected the liberal democrats and so did the South. The balkanisation of America is there for all to see. The deep divisions in American society - because they are cultural and philosophical - cannot be fixed by politicians' vowing to work together for unity. The bitterness from this battle will be felt for a long time to come.
DEEP PREOCCUPATION
In an insightful piece in the May/June 2004 issue of the authoritative Columbia Journalism Review, 'Across the Great Divide: Why Don't Journalists get Religion? A Tenuous Bride to Believers', Gail Beckerman says insightfully, "Journalists, especially in an election year, frequently wonder what matters to Americans. Health care jobs, family values, war and peace are often cited. But running underneath these concerns, at a steady pace since the country's founding, is a deep preoccupation with the ethical, moral and existential issues with which religion grapples."
With the discrediting of meta-narratives, ideology and the grand story, there has been the rise of what sociologists and political scientists have called 'identity politics' - issues to do with race, gender and sexuality. These are the critical issues of the 21st century. These are the issues over which the culture wars are being fought.
As I had written last week, "The Kerry campaign, I still maintain, has hurt itself by not cleverly and astutely addressing the concerns of the religious community. Many secular commentators do not realise the power Bush wields through the support he receives from evangelicals and fundamentalists."
Kerry's support for partial-birth abortion and his failure to take the strong stand against gay marriage was bound to trip him up. Kerry's own Catholic bishops were telling church members to vote according to the church's teachings and, therefore, not to support someone who does not stand with Rome on the abortion issue and who is soft on gay marriage. Bush has vowed to go to the court to get a constitutional amendment to protect traditional man-woman marriage.
Remember also, the struggle earlier over having the name of God in the American pledge; the ruling against the judge who displayed the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and the struggle to put religion back in public schools. The liberals have been trying feverishly to expunge every influence of religion from the public square, totally misrepresenting, in my view, the founding fathers' original intention between the separation of church and state. Now they are paying dearly.
The Republicans were able to mobilise over 1.2 million volunteers to work the field and pull out the voters. They were not short of energetic, passionate and diligent workers who were convinced they were engaged in an epic struggle of good vs evil, God vs Satan. And they knew time was not on their side. They have watched an increasingly activist Supreme Court make decisions which are the very opposite of the values they hold dear. They did not want to take the chance of John Kerry's appointing up to three new Supreme Court justices to make more liberal decisions and perhaps to institutionalise gay marriage and abortion.
The liberal Democrats could never match the force of either the numbers or the energy among the Republican Party workers. What many did not realise is just how many Christians were involved in the mobilisation of voters and the network which they had developed to cut the power of the liberals. This is a culture war - spiritual warfare in the language of the evangelicals. Groups such as Christian Voice, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, the Freedom Council, the American Coalition of Traditional Values, American Values and the better-known Christian Coalition, worked to sell George Bush as the modern-day Nehemiah, who was rebuilding the walls of modern Jerusalem, God's chosen 'city on a hill'.
FORCE OF VALUES
That on the same day of the elections, 11 states which gave the opportunity to vote on the issue of gay marriage saw a resounding, massive rejection showed the power of these groups and the effectiveness of their lobbying. More significantly, it shows the force of the values which have defined the American nation, the most religious of all the industrialised countries (defying Peter Berger's famous Secularisation Thesis).
I predict that the ideological attacks against Christians will deepen in the months and years to come, and that the scorn, cynicism and disdain usually exhibited by the secularists who control power in the big media, the academy and Hollywood will intensify. The liberals are deeply bitter and bellicose over this humiliating defeat.
While big media reinforced the secular intelligentsia, ordinary Americans were being influenced by the proliferation of talk radio, dominated by such right-wingers as Imus and Rush Limbaugh. The talk show hosts spew a lot of hate, venom, and chauvinism. It strikes a responsive chord with many.
Do not believe that the Republicans' exploitation of Americans' fear and sense of insecurity over terrorism did not play a major part in Bush's reelection. That the Bush campaign successfully caricatured Kerry as a hopeless flip-flopper who could not be trusted to be a tough, resolute Commander-in-Chief connected with many frightened voters. That terrorist fool bin Laden did not help with his last-minute intervention. The Bush administration's sleight-of-hand in talking of bringing God-given freedom to millions of Iraqis, rather than the original justification of the war weapons of mass destruction, the alleged connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, was gullibly bought by many. In an election campaign, truth is the first casualty.
I believe, however, that George Bush, in his second term, will be constrained to be more moderate in international relations. He will be forced to reconcile with his European allies and will show greater respect for the United Nations. If Reagan could have moderated in his second term and he was a big ideologue, too so can George Bush. Despite his clear mandate, geopolitical realities as well as domestic economic and other issues will force him to be less adventurous in his second term. Or perhaps that is just a wish from a member of the international community who shares a sense of loss that we have to endure four more years of George W. Bush.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com or infocus@gleanerjm.com.
