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11/04/2004:

"Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values Provides Bush a Majority"

by Todd S. Purdum
t was not a landslide, or a re-alignment, or even a seismic shock. But it was decisive, and it is impossible to read President Bush's re-election with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet that this is a center-right country - divided yes, but with an undisputed majority united behind his leadership.

Surveys of voters leaving the polls found that a majority believed the national economy was not so good, that tax cuts had done nothing to help it and that the war in Iraq had jeopardized national security. But fully one-fifth of voters said they cared most about "moral values" - as many as cared about terrorism and the economy - and 8 in 10 of them chose Mr. Bush.

In other words, while Mr. Bush remains a polarizing figure on both coasts and in big cities, he has proved himself a galvanizing one in the broad geographic and political center of the country. He increased his share of the vote among women, Hispanics, older voters and even city dwellers significantly from 2000, made slight gains among Catholics and Jews and turned what was then a 500,000-popular-vote defeat into a 3.6 million-popular-vote victory on Tuesday.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well even aside from the very real possibility that the books were cooked, this analysis is nonsense. 'Moral values' now. Really? In times of fear America retreats into this insular 'moral values' bit, as if US foreign policy has no place in the moral equation, and all of us wicked Easterners and big-city slickers are bereft of 'morals.' This was a campaign of fear, and uninformed people were manipulated into the illusion that Bush and the Republicans are going to make us safe. America's narrow-mindedness and mean-spiritedness are on full display and moral values have nothing to do with it. Nostaligia, yes. For simpler days when gays were quiet in the closet and abortions were performed on 'bad girls' in back allies. Some kind of 50's retro throwback is what we're seeing here, the incredible smallness Americans are capable of when they perceive a threat. It is so pathetic that this country has such weak powers of self-reflection, and knows itself so little. It turns all that high-flown patriotic rhetoric into pure poison. This is the most dangerous nation the world has ever known, and so many of its people have fled into some soft-lens hallucination of porch swings and apple pies cooling on the windowsill. This is the alternative to taking responsibility for what we have become as a result of all the realities we repress. Is that a tortured black body hanging off the big tree in the backyard?
The self-indulgent self-serving mythologies of 'America.' I wish I could say 'spare me,' but really we deserve to be spared nothing.