The scary land of the new — every 16 years?
We predicted a while back that we could see some really novel and dumb initiatives in politics as the boomers (at last, thank God!) began to fade from prominence, trailing their own old, worn-out, and often dumb initiatives in their wake. Michael Barone has created a conceptual framework for this thought
In 1992 voters elected a 46-year-old Arkansas governor as president, and in the spring of that year, if the polls are to be believed, they were ready to elect a Texas billionaire whose governmental experience included serving as a junior naval officer and running a firm that provided computer services to local welfare departments. In 1976 voters elected a one-term former governor of Georgia who’d served as a state senator and a naval officer.
The metrically minded will see a common thread. Every 16 years–in 1976, 1992 and now in 2008–American voters have seemed less interested in experience and credentials and more interested in a new face unconnected to the current political establishment. What can explain this 16-year itch?
The first explanation is that voters are responding to public policy failures. The insiders have screwed up; let’s take a chance on an outsider. This fits 1976 very well. The foreign and defense policy experts of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations gave us Vietnam. Richard Nixon gave us Watergate, and his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him. Nixon also gave us a juiced-up economy in time for the 1972 campaign, which resulted in inflation and stagnant economic growth–stagflation–in the ensuing years.
But public policy failure doesn’t fit 1992 or 2008 as closely. Yes, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton campaigned against “the worst economic recession” since the 1930s. But in fact the economy was growing throughout 1992, and the recession of 1990-91 was one of the mildest ever recorded. During the preceding four years the Soviet Union collapsed, and the U.S. and its allies won a crushing victory in the Gulf War.
Perhaps voters were upset about the tax increase that the Democratic Congress and George H.W. Bush, despite his “read my lips” pledge, colluded in. But the result was the election of a Democratic president and Congress who predictably raised taxes again…
For the past 14 years, voters have been almost precisely evenly divided between the two parties. Mr. Clinton was re-elected with 49% of the vote, Mr. Bush with 51%. For six years we had a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, a situation that changed in 2000 when Mr. Bush was elected by the narrowest of margins. For six years we had a Republican president and a Republican Congress (except for 18 months when Jim Jeffords gave Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority), a situation that was ended when voters chose, by a small but decisive margin, a Democratic Congress. We hear complaints from voters on all sides now about earmarks, pork-barrel spending and the scandals that resulted in part from longstanding one-party control.
Again the pattern: Voters make pretty much the same decisions time and again for 14 years. Then in the 16th year decide they are disgusted with the results.
Why 16 years? Political scientists like to come up with generalizations about voting behavior for all time. The problem is that we don’t have the same electorate over time. Political scientists have developed rules for predicting presidential elections based on macroeconomic trends at a time when most voters remembered the trauma of the Great Depression. Most voters today don’t and those rules no longer work.
One such rule predicted that Al Gore would get 56% of the vote in 2000, which was 8% off. Your barber or hairdresser could have come closer.My thought is that, over a period of 16 years, there is enough turnover in the electorate to stimulate an itch that produces a willingness to take a chance on something new…
The median-age voter in 1992 was born around 1947 (the same year as Dan Quayle and Hillary Clinton, one year after Messrs. Clinton and Bush, one year before Mr. Gore). These voters came of age in the culture wars of the 1960s. They experienced stagflation and gas lines of the 1970s, and the prosperity and foreign policy successes of the 1980s. Mr. Clinton persuaded these voters to take a chance on change by promising not to radically alter policy. They rebuked him when he tried to break that promise, then for 14 years remained closely divided along culture lines as if the ’60s never ended.
The median-age voter in 2008 was born around 1963, so he or she missed out on the culture wars of the ’60s, and on the economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s. These voters have experienced low-inflation economic growth something like 95% of their adult lives–something true of no other generation in history. They are weary of the cultural polarization of our politics, relatively unconcerned about the downside risks of big government programs, and largely unaware of America’s historic foreign policy successes. They are ready, it seems, to take a chance on an outside-the-system candidate.
The idea of the “new”, whatever its universal appeal to youth, has always been a captivating concept for Americans, who have for generations naively embraced the future while they ignorantly shucked off the past. Well, maybe it’s time to throw out the old shibboleths and bring in some new ones. Maybe the new ones will work better. Maybe.
January 6th, 2008 at 1:10 am
I think it is simpler than that. How many of the candidates really represent our interests?
GHWB lied to our faces about taxes. Perot was a flake but he got my vote. Nobody lies to me with impunity.
Compassionate conservative? GWB is a liberal democrat with an R after his name. I pulled the lever for him twice, because his opposition was worse. Gore is a hypocritical phony, and he came within 500 votes of being president. Kerry is a traitor; a man who met with our enemy without authorization while a serving officer of the US military.
As always, I will pull the lever for the guy least harmful to my interests. “None of the above” would win in a landslide in pretty near every election.