Politics is character.
Kamala Harris continues to unroll her campaign, so far, without a hitch. She does so by providing a warm, and welcoming presence rather than a set of issues to run on. She extends Biden’s efficient and humane program of greater entitlements and a new Democratic Congress would restore both voting rights and abortion rights, both of which Biden supports. But what she mainly sells is her presence and so she takes credit for taking charge and propelling her campaign to a growing lead over Trump, all due credit to be mentioned for the experienced people she put in charge of the campaign. I am amazed at her political touch and so it is understandable that policies aren’t central. They aren’t necessary, however much it may be that pro abortion voters might be the difference in the November election.
The two parties say awful things about one another, but one set of slanders is true and the other is not. Kamala is not a Communist and Trump is indeed weird and selfish and an insurrectionist. The two sides also differ on their facts. Trump people say crime is up and the economy down when the statistics say the opposite on both issues. So how do people manage to say these very different things? The answer is that economics and crime are not the reasons that motivate the voters. They say these things because they claim these things regardless of fact because they are already invested in a candidate. So people saying pollsters that the economy is the main issue are covering up the real reason for supporting a candidate, just an excuse, a rationalization of an acceptable answer for the real reason, the sense that Kamala is, as she says, joyful, while Trump is mean and denigrating. What citizens think the candidates are is which they prefer, even if Trumpists don’t like to admit that they admire him for being a bad boy..
Look at the contemporary rhetoric. Kamala and other speakers at theDemocratic Convention invoke the idea of joy while Trump says that he has the right to insult his opponents because they have been mean to him. Both sides vilify the person of the other, Kamala said by Trump that she is a Communist when she is obviously a centrist Democrat, probably a bit to the right of Biden in that he is so full throated consistent in the New Deal and New Society agenda of increasing entitlements, while Kamala is slandering Trump by saying Trump is a danger to America, which seems true enough to me because he started an insurrection, however much Trump supporters swallowed that as perhaps a Democratic overemphasize. Nancy Pelosi, whose political antennae still remain best, thinks that Kamela will move to the center-- as if she were very far away. Harris was tough on crime when an Attorney General, but that was the fashion at the time and now presents herself as the one who protected crime victims. The Palestinian issue was marginalized at the Convention and claims that the American southern border is better or worse were batted about, but the only real issue, the one that can be decisive rather than an excuse, is abortion, and we will see if pro-abortionists show up.
Meanwhile, Trump has a nothing platform and disavows Project 2025 because it may offend people though it provides a good sense of what a second Trump term would be about. Trump does not emphasize that he would deport millions and millions of aliens and allow the military to police civilian protests and riots. Harrios doesn’t speak much of policy but most commentators think it would be a second Biden term, full of entitlements and taxing rich people and extending voting rights and the ever pressing abortion rights.
Consider other elections where there were issues. 1968 was about the Vietnam War. 1948 was about Communism and the price of farm goods. 1932 was about the Depression. But most campaigns are not about that. Eisenhower and Reagan were attractive personalities that no opponent could vanquish and so the hostage crisis in Iran did not do Carter in. Obama was a personality star as was Kennedy and Clinton (with the addition of “It's the economy stupid!”). But Bush and Dekakis were a tossup because neither seemed magnetic nor were Gore and Bush, and so the 2000 election was a toss up.
This view that many Presidential elections are about personality rather than issues is very different from the view of Paul Lazarsfield, the sociologist who pioneered serious survey research on voter behavior in 1940 who thought neither issues nor personality were important because voting was anchored in demographics, people voting their social class and family allegiances and such and so voting is reliable, an election decided at the margins rather than a change in cultural tastes. Major shifts, as when FDR won in 1932, were forecast by the cities having shifted to the Democratic Party in 1928. What remains of the Lazarsfeld idea is that voting is regional, the South and Mountain states Republican, though, more accurately, it is that rural areas are Republican while urban areas are Democratic. Salt Lake City is Democratic and the rest of Utah is Republican.
The issues or lack of them in an election can be unrelated to the consequences of which candidate wins when placed in office. Gore and Bush fought about nothing but it turned out that the Bush inauguration allowed Cheney and Rumsfeld to attack Iraq and if Hillary had been elected she would have been more hawkish on Syria, which Obama had been reluctant to attack. So it makes sense to rely on the traditions and sense of things of a party to determine which candidate to support regardless of personality and platform or issues contested in the campaign. Spectators can strain to read the tea leaves of how a President can deal with unforeseen events or even planned ones, as when Trump, pushed by the Federalist Society and by McConnell, appointed three Supreme Court Justices and overturned Roe v. Wade which was the most consequential act of Trump’s term aside from his insurrection.
My anticipation about the interview with Harris on CNN a few days ago was in line with my idea that the election was about personality and so I thought that it would not be of substance because Harris also understands that the election is about personality rather than issues even if I think it is the very serious issue about the fate of American democracy. That was telegraphed by Harris bringing along Walz to kill some of the time and that Harris has never been willing to discuss policy issues. That is what happened. She was forceful as a presence but when asked about policy said she had not changed her values pointing out her consistency in prosecuting drug lords, while leaving open which policies in the Biden Administration she might change because of changing circumstances. She is a wily and also sincere proponent of her views while Trump and Vance stumble from one self-inflicted wound to the next, Trump messing up a visit to Arlington and Vance doubling down on disparaging women who did not give birth to children. The two are what they seem and so is Kamala: smart and forceful without being offensive..After the interview, some commentators nitpicked about Harris having said she changed her mind about fracking back in 2020 because she had only said that she supported Biden’s own pro-fracking policy. But other commentators said she had appeared strong, and seemed like a Commander In Chief. The presence is more important than the issues or a flip flop.
Republicans will be in a pickle once they are no longer under the sway of the cult of the Trump personality. For so long they have been watered down in their principles of big business and traditional values. They accepted the New Deal and civil rights. They were just the go slow party, moderating Democratic initiatives while remaining responsible in foreign policy. There were some other attempts otherwise. The Republicans took over the South from 1972 (Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”) but never became pro-segregationist. Marco Rubio envisioned Hispanikcs shifting to Republican but couldn't manage the Party to support immigration reform that might have allowed Hispankics to overwhelmingly go Republican. What is the issue they can champion when, after all, theirs is the party against the government and so can’t support governmental action in many areas? That is, I hope, the quandary they will face in 2025. Maybe old Republicans were too tame, just dealing with thin edges, and that is why they turned to Trfum; who seemed to mean business. A revivified Republican Party would need a distinct program after abortion is settled and they become internationalists again, whatever their longstanding instinct to isolationism, but I don't know what it would be.
The fact of the Jan. 6th insurrection also makes the two parties asymmetric. Democrats may differ on how central the matter is, but that is compatible with Democratic policies and presentations, while Republicans who are troubled by Trump nut are in favor of lower taxes and law and order but uncertain about Trump on Jan. 6th are in dissonance and they can resolve it by saying it wasn’t much of an insurrection or just a peaceful protest that got out of hand and so concentrate on the real policy issues. I wonder whether Republican discomfort about Trump may lead them not to vote or just swallow their distaste for him.
Politics is about character and not just personality but never more so than in the present Presidential contest. It is rarely if ever dispassionately evaluating the issues and deciding which policy, even oif mistaken, makes sense. It means engaging everything you understand, including your passions, and your hatred won experience about how the world works, to select a candidate who does not at least repel your values. Voting is a way of your own self engaging in the wide world with no penalties for you personally, even if people will excuse their behavior on other grounds, as saying the poor economy is the reason to be attracted to Trump's malicious own character and hiding who you will vote for when pollsters ask.
Politics is about character because campaigns reveal what a person’s character is rather than what people say their character is.Evangelicals say that Trump may be a flawed instrument who is still delivering the word of God, especially about abortion. But the question is whether such a flawed instrument could be delivering the word of God and whether what thinking about him says about your own character. Reflect on that. Mean spirited people can not be excused because they like one of his policies. mThey betray the idea that only the meanspirited can assam power, that politics is an ungodly calling rather than available to the virtuous even if Evangelicals insist that personal righteousness is required for religious leadership. Politics is very dark, not a vehicle of joy.
There Is a deeper and more general issue about how politics are formed by character. My mother in law was of high character and very perspicacious. During the rioting of inner city youth every summer in the sixties and the seventies she suggested that the government should give the poor air conditioners so that they could stay home rather than roam the streets to beat the heat and get into trouble. She wasn’t blaming anyone, just trying to address a problem . The way to be practical is to find humane solutions to the way the world works and so their own character is to blame for problems. Politicians, on the other hand, are in the blame game. They have to be outraged at the silly, venal and misguided views of their opponents. They also find fault with the populace they despise. So some Democrats blame the big capitalists as the source of all evils, from fracking and weather pollution to excess credit card fees. And wafers. Republicans regard softish Democrats not allowing the free enterprise system to wend its way to prosperity even if some people suffer from creative destruction of old buildings and family farms. Republicans also tend to think the poor are to be blamed for themselves because they are too lazy to hold a job. Democrats, for their part, are less likely to blame the poor and look at the circumstances of the poor, which are low birth weights, poor nutrition and poor schools as the culprit. Those are the causes and people who arrive at them are based not on sociological research but on their life experiences which lead them to blame or even not to blame. So people in their politics are expressing their deepest feelings and views of the way the world works and so their own characters are to blame, are to be judged for their sentiments and morals, on who they vote for. An election is an expression of character even if democracy does not bring you up on charges for whom you vote. Only your own conscience does that.