Extraordinary popular delusions and the Madness of Crowds
I confess to having a very bad feeling about this election, and it flows pricipally from John Kerry’s supporters not giving a fig about John Kerry. The only thing they care about — or in many cases even know about — Kerry is that he is a Democrat, and that he is not George Bush.
Such a collective spasm of ardent, unthinking support of Kerry for no good reason, in a time or war, is a mania. It has roots in the denial of the reality of the war against Islamofascism, made possible by the lack of a serious attack in three years and the vile Mainstream Media’s near-seditious attacks on a country at war. It has emerged pretty much the way that Peggy Noonan described on July 15 of this year:
Recently I wrote a column on a particular anxiety I’ve been feeling regarding the coming election and the prospects of President Bush. I stated that some voters may be feeling or come to feel that history has simply become too dramatic the past few years, and one way out of the drama might be to change presidents, and hire Mr. Kerry to, in effect, make things more boring and force history to calm down…..
[Y]ou may decide that Mr. Kerry, by jumbling things and murking them up and speaking French will, by his very presence, tend to calm things down because–well, because he doesn’t really seem deeply wedded to any particular principle, or even to long-term strategic thinking in the national interest. And the world can tell, and a good portion of the world will like him all the better for these flaws. And so will some voters.
In Charles Mackay’s book, which forms the title of this piece, people get hurt by manias when they are the last guy holding the tulip bulb after the bubble bursts and prices plummet. If those in denial prevail in this election, even though we falter, the enemy will not falter, and we’re going to get hit with a lot worse than tulip bulbs. The cost of victory will become that much greater — in treasure, but more importantly in blood.
UPDATE
EJ Dionne says that people like me are missing the point of the election, that the feelings are rational which casue 37% of Dems versus 27% of Reps to see this as the “most important election” of their lives:
Anyone else who buys into the notion that the passions Bush has unleashed are primarily the product of unreasoning prejudices misses the central dynamic of this year’s election.
The fervent opposition to President Bush is rational, and its intensity is a direct response to Bush’s own efforts to discredit all opposition to his policies. Criticism of Bush comes not simply from the far left or from fans of Michael Moore movies, but also from political moderates, including Republicans, who see Bush’s fiscal, social and foreign policies as decidedly immoderate. The passion comes from a conviction that the president would prefer to use the fear of terrorism and cast his opponent as a dangerous appeaser rather than risk the loss of power.
In the Newsweek poll Dionne cites as the basis of his statistics, it is fair to note that, despite the intensity reported, Bush wins 48/46. The real turnout will tell the tale next week.