GOP's party of the aspiring

12 November 2004

News item - Disturbed by reports that highly educated Americans voted for his opponent 55 percent to 44 percent, President Bush proposed today the "High School is Enough" Act.

"For too long, we've told our children that they need a college education to succeed," Bush said. "I'm proud to announce a new commitment by the federal government to keeping kids in high school - and only in high school."

The initiative, which provides extra funding for metal shop, auto repair and woodworking programs, also imposes new rules limiting SAT prep and advanced placement courses…

It's every blue state's fantasy, of course: the conceit - and let's be blunt here - that you had to be brainless to vote for Bush. Last spring, a frustrated John Kerry exclaimed, "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot!" After he did, one satirical publication ridiculed "America's backwards hicks [and] lunchpail-toting blockheads" for their support of the president. New maps appeared, dividing up the country into smart and dumb. It was easy to mock working-class Americans for voting in a guy who takes money out of their pockets to give tax cuts to the rich.

Here's an alternative view. Instead of stupidity, perhaps what we saw was optimism.

Imagine, if you would, America as a suburban world of tract houses. Some of the lawns around those homes are lush green. Others are little more than weeds or dirt.

The Democratic prescription? Let's give everyone Astroturf. All lawns would be equal. None would look particularly good; none would look particularly bad either.

Some people would be delighted. Others, particularly those with green lawns, might object.

And some of those with mere dirt for a lawn might also be upset. Rather than giving me Astroturf, they might ask, how about giving me water, seed and sun? Give me a chance to make my lawn lush and green.

In this election, as they have with past elections, Democrats focused on the downside of life. Working Americans were portrayed as frightened and on the edge, living paycheck to paycheck.

It made for a bleak world, and no doubt, if you believed that to be your lot in life, then you probably found attractive the Democratic remedies of government health care, higher minimum wages, tax transfers from the wealthy to the poor, increased affordable housing and the like.

But suppose that instead of seeing yourself as one of the 44.8 million without health insurance, you saw your future as one of the 249.9 million who has it? Suppose that rather than thinking yourself as one of the perpetually unemployed or as one of those making minimum wage, you believed it possible to become one of the 84 percent who make much more? Suppose that, instead of struggling to pay a landlord or merely hoping to live in subsidized housing, you wanted to become one of the two-thirds of Americans who own a home?

Suppose you believed it possible that you - or your children - could genuinely become rich?

I know. Many political scientists today have doubts about social mobility - the idea that one can readily change one's own social and economic class. Still, if times were tough for you, which would you prefer: the Democratic message that sees your world as constrained, or a Republican vision of a future without limits?

Why do the highly educated vote Democratic? Most of them have already made it; they've got theirs, if you will. But for those who have not succeeded, the GOP seems to have the edge on hopefulness. It's not clear to me how Democrats allowed themselves to get stuck in such a pessimistic rut, harping constantly on the downsides of life. Yes, one can easily caricature Republicans as the party of the rich. But what they've succeeded in doing is becoming not only the party of the rich, but also of those who aspire to become so.