NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
DAWN IN AMERICA:
THOUGHTS ON THE NOVEMBER ELECTION
By Laurie Meunier
Graves
“At a time when
corporations abandon their employee benefits, globalization depresses wages,
and individuals are compelled to shoulder more and more risk, the last thing
Americans need is a government that tells them—as it told their countrymen
in New Orleans last year—they’re on their own.”
—Harold Meyerson,
from the Washington Post
On November 7, on
the evening of Election Day, my daughter, my husband, and I had set
ourselves up in the living room. We were prepared for a long night as we
watched the election returns, and we had Chinese food, plenty of tea, and
chocolate eclairs to sustain us. Throughout the evening, we switched from
CNN to PBS to ABC and then back to CNN again. To say that we were nervous
was an understatement. For months, pundits had been predicting a Democratic
sweep in the November elections, but to us it was anything but a foregone
conclusion. Six years of President Bush and his administration have taught
us to never, never underestimate their ability to stay in power. While it is
true they have messed up so many things—the war in Iraq, the national
budget, the response to Hurricane Katrina—they somehow always seemed to land
on their feet. Advised by Karl Rove, a man whose last name has become an
adjective (as in “Rovian”), this administration brought spin to such a high
level that to many it didn’t even seem like spin. It seemed like reality.
The war in Iraq? A cakewalk. The deficit? Deficits don’t matter. Tax cuts
for the rich? Trickle down, trickle down. In 2004, team Bush had convinced a
majority that their alternative reality was the true one. Would they pull it
off again in 2006?
As we gulped down
fried rice, chicken fingers, and egg rolls, we listened to the commentary.
Mark Shields optimistically suggested President Bush might be a dead duck,
not a lame duck. Andrew Sullivan asserted this was not an election but an
intervention. Voter turnout was high, not just in key states but throughout
the country, and it was because of Iraq, the economy, and corruption, which
had reached gargantuan proportions during the Bush administration.
Evangelicals cared about the environment, poverty, and social issues. Yes,
yes, all well and good. But what would the results be?
Our first clue
came from southern Indiana in its 8th District, where Brad
Ellsworth, a Democrat, defeated Republican incumbent John Hostettler. CNN
dubbed this a pickup vote for the Democrats, one of the fifteen they would
need to take the House. That this vote came from the heartland and came so
early in the evening gave us hope. Waiting, waiting, we drank more tea and
ate our eclairs.
And miraculously,
a Democratic wave did indeed sweep the country. Not a tsunami, as the
pundits are fond of saying, but a wave nonetheless, big enough to give the
Republicans “a thumping,” as President Bush would put it the next day. By
11:00 P.M. on election night, Wolf Blitzer predicted that the Democrats
would take the House and that Nancy Pelosi would take charge as Madam
Speaker, the first female to do so. The Senate was still in question, but
the sweetness of the House victory more than made up for this uncertainty.
It had happened. Karl Rove had not prevailed, and suddenly he seemed as
deflated as Joseph McCarthy when confronted with Joseph Welch’s “Have you no
sense of decency?” The power of bullies, based on intimidation and fear,
might be potent, but it is also precarious, capable of being ripped away in
an instant. I suspect deep down, most bullies know this, which is why they
fight so hard and so viciously.
Despite myself, I felt sorry for some of the losers as I
watched them give their concession speeches, for Dennis Hastert and Rick
Santorum. It can’t be easy to be gracious in defeat, and most of them were.
Nevertheless, my
sympathy for the losers wasn’t strong enough to dampen the feeling of
elation I felt when I finally went to bed. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid
said there was a “wind of change in the air,” and I couldn’t agree with him
more. Reid’s metaphor was perfect, and for the first time in a long while, I
felt as though I could breathe.
After the
election, there was the usual media folderol—the analysis, the finger
wagging, the advice, the predictions—all of which I enjoyed immensely. An
editorial in the New York Times proclaimed the November election “an
angry shout of repudiation.” That might be true, but I hope it’s more a case
of America finally coming to its senses. After six years, we are seeing the
fruit of the Republicans’ labor, the results of where their policies led
this country. To name just a few—there is the widening disparity between the
rich and the poor, the growing number of those without health insurance,
and, of course, the mother of all failures, the war in Iraq. No doubt some
Republicans were perfectly sincere and thought they were charting the proper
course for the United States. However, here it is important to emphasize the
difference between theories that might not sound too bad as sound bites—the
ownership society, choice in health care, tax cuts for the wealthy,
democracy in Iraq—and the consequences of those ideas when they are put in
practice. It is not enough for something to sound good in theory. It is not
enough to have good intentions. What are the results? What are the
consequences? To quote the historian Jacques Barzun, “What practical effects
will occur from believing and acting on [a] proposition?” Over the past six
years, we have seen the “practical effects” of Republican rule, and they
have not been good for either the country or the world. And voters from both
sides of the political spectrum agreed.
If this sounds
like a bow to William James and Pragmatism, that’s because it is. (Readers
will recall that William James, brother to the writer Henry James, was a
nineteenth-century psychologist and philosopher.) I can think of no better
way to test the soundness of an idea than to study its consequences, and I
wish leaders of both parties would embrace “James’s conception of truth as a
pointer to utility…”
When we look to
the past, we can see how FDR’s New Deal policies lifted the United States
out of the Great Depression and were responsible for the explosion of the
middle class. We can see how Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system
helped connect America. We can see how Clinton’s financial prudence helped
produce a budget surplus. Individualism has its place—hard work and personal
responsibility do matter and certain freedoms are essential—but the past
proves that we are stronger when we pull together, when we pool our
resources, which in this country are so abundant that there are more than
enough for everyone.
When we focus on
the present and look around the world, from Sweden to Canada to Sierra
Leone, we see that what was true in the past is true today. If we study the
quality of life in different countries, then we have ample evidence in favor
of a strong, competent government that provides social services and a safety
net. Society has become too complex for most people to struggle alone with,
and maybe in fact it always was. It’s just that now we finally have the
technology to relieve much of human suffering. All we need is the will to do
so, and it hardly seems as though there is any room for argument.
Except of course
there is. But this past November, at least for now, the Democrats have won
the argument. Now, it is up to them to persuade the country that their
policies are good for all Americans—for white evangelicals who live in the
heartland, for wealthy suburban parents, for African Americans, for
Hispanics, for everyone. After all, the whole country, the rich included,
benefits from a strong middle class, from a thriving, vibrant working class,
from health care for all, from affordable higher education, from alternative
energy, from policies that the Democrats promote. And if some Democratic
policies don’t work as well as others (we might want to rethink NAFTA), then
I hope they have the flexibility and the wisdom to change them. Most of all,
I hope they can take their cue from William James and embark on an era of
Pragmatism, where, as Jacques Barzun put it, “the universe is pluralistic
and open; it is not a ready-made order but one in the making as the sciences
and the arts go deeper and deeper into the physical and psychic realities.”
Then it would
indeed be dawn in America.
Laurie Meunier Graves, along with her husband Clif Graves, is the publisher
of Wolf Moon Journal. She writes essays and reviews and spends a
great deal of time wrestling with words. That is, editing.
