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Was Nov. 2 Realignment -- Or a Tilt? Political Parties Look for Answers

By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 28, 2004; Page A01

By any measure, President Bush and his fellow Republicans had a good night on Nov. 2.

Raise your hands if you call that a snappy, informative lead. 

OK, Who besides Karl and Karen?

The question now is whether the election results set the GOP up for a good decade -- or more.

Is that really the question?  I can think of a few more.  But now at least we’re getting snappy.  First rule of news writing, folks:  make it clever.  It doesn’t matter much if you have to wait a few lines before getting to the real news, which is called “burying the lead.”   J’accuse  – much of this excavation is done on purpose.   In the ad game, they try to "sell the sizzle, not the steak," and the same goes for newswriting. 

As some partisan operatives and political scientists see it, Bush's reelection victory and simultaneous Republican gains in the House and Senate suggest that an era of divided government and approximate parity between the major parties is giving way to an era of GOP dominance.

Now we’re getting started. Not with the news, but with the spin. 
Note the references to “some partisan operatives and political scientists.” (I’ve never been that great at diagramming sentences but is the adjective "partisan" meant to apply to the scholars too?)  This reporter is being more upfront than most, announcing in the third sentence who phoned in this story.  This presumably makes it OK to give the Bushies the keys to the Sunday front page.

By this light, the Republican advantage on the most important issues of the day -- the fight against terrorism, most of all -- and the party's uncontested control of the federal government leave it in a position to win long-term loyalty among key voter blocs and craft an enduring majority.

If so, 2004 would qualify as what academics call a "realignment election."

If not, it wouldn’t.  Don’t you just love what Calvin Trillin used to call “reversible raincoat sentences.”   Or as the Scarecrow used to say, some people go this way, and some people go that way.

Among a core of political analysts, nearly every presidential victory is scrutinized for evidence of an incipient realignment: a shift in voter allegiances from one party to the other in ways that can shape politics far into the future.

Among the vast majority of the American people, it’s not.  Come on, man, get to the point.

Most predictions of realignments over the years have proved premature, and there are plenty of skeptics this time.

Geddit?  The reporter wants you to know he thinks what he’s writing is bunk.

These people argue that Bush's relatively narrow victory and the Republican victories in Congress should be taken at face value -- a close election in a time of war that broke in favor of the incumbent party -- and nothing more.

The realignment debate underway since Nov. 2 is more than an academic parlor game.

But you just said that’s exactly what it was!

If Republicans have indeed seized the upper hand in national politics in a fundamental way, the implication for Democrats is that radical changes in their electoral strategies, and even issue positions, are needed to become competitive again. But if the 2004 election was essentially a coin toss that happened to go Bush's way, the opposition party can simply try a little harder and hope for better luck next time.

Calvin Trillin fans see above

"Something fundamental and significant happened in this election that creates an opportunity for" the Republicans to remake national politics over the long term, said Ken Mehlman, who managed Bush's reelection campaign and was tapped by the president after the election to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. "The Republican Party is in a stronger position today than at any time since the Great Depression."

Liberal political analyst Ruy Teixeira is among many analysts not buying it. Two years ago, he co-wrote a book predicting an emerging Democratic dominance of national politics. That certainly has not happened yet -- but neither has the opposite, he believes. The electorate this year "tilted, but it didn't tilt very much," Teixeira said.

Finally!  Ladies and gentlemen, the “partisan operatives” who brought you this story.  Here’s how this piece of reporting undoubtedly began.  Mr. Melhman, the first person quoted in this story, picked up the phone.  Then the reporter, seeking “balance”  called the first “liberal”  he could think of.

"If the war on terror is such a realigning issue, how come Bush only got 51 percent of the vote?" he asked. By Teixeira's lights, the president took advantage of the natural power of incumbency, which is accentuated in wartime, and gave scant emphasis to his second-term policy agenda on such issues as overhauling Social Security, which polls show leaves many voters uneasy. "It's hard to read [the results] in a serious way as a mandate for much of anything," Teixeira said.

Notice what’s missing from this story so far?  How about some actual reporting?   So far all we’ve had are quotes and set ups for quotes. 

The post-election realignment debate is in some ways an echo of the debate among political analysts during the campaign about whether independent-minded "swing voters" still hold the key to electoral success, or whether politics has entered a new phase that places a greater premium on "the base" -- building party loyalty, and ensuring that these activists vote in higher percentages than the opposition loyalists. Bush and Mehlman pursued a strategy that put an emphasis on expanding the base, and it paid off.

Or so Mr. Mehlman said when he got the reporter on the phone.  Truman Capote said about Kerouac  “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Sometimes what passes for reporting is more like stenography.

This election was the first in which exit polls showed equal numbers of self-identified Republicans and Democrats -- both at 37 percent -- erasing what had been a decades-long advantage for Democrats, 4 percent in 2000. In addition to the House and Senate gains, Bush received a higher raw vote total than any candidate in history (Kerry's total was second highest) and was the first presidential candidate to break the 50 percent barrier since 1988. On a percentage basis, he improved on his 2000 performance in 48 states.

Most significantly, in the view of people who suspect a realignment, exit polls showed Bush cutting into Democratic advantages with some historically Democratic groups -- especially Hispanics, who gave Bush 42 percent of their votes, compared with 35 percent in 2000.

However, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) was able to stay competitive by increasing Democratic voter turnout. And exit polls showed that self  -identified independents favored the Democrat -- by dramatic margins in some of the most important battleground states. In Florida and Ohio, for instance, Kerry won independents by 18 points and 19 points, respectively.

"I'm not seeing that enduring majority," said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "The Republicans have won a series of close elections, but independents are not with them. I just don't see how you can have a realignment if you have swing voters turning against you."

Larry M. Bartels of Princeton University agreed, saying that Bush's victory was less likely to have been evidence of a new realignment than the "last gasp" of an old one that long ago sent the South and culturally conservative whites into the GOP column.

Among political scholars, there is an entire academic sub-specialty focusing on the arguments about realignments. The concept developed to describe long-term shifts, such as the labor-driven, urban-dominated coalition that Franklin D. Roosevelt assembled during the New Deal, and that helped Democrats dominate national politics for several decades. More recently, the dramatic migration of Southern states from being solidly Democratic to being overwhelmingly Republican in presidential and most congressional elections is an oft-cited example of realignment.

I’m sorry.  I fell asleep.

A preeminent scholar of realignment is Walter Dean Burnham at the University of Texas at Austin, the author 33 years ago of "Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics." He was out of the office and did not return messages during the week before Thanksgiving, but he recently told the Weekly Standard magazine that long-term trends favoring Republicans among culturally conservative and hawkish voters came to full flower in 2004. He predicted: "If Republicans keep playing the religious card along with the terrorism card, this could last a long time."

What?  Am I still dreaming?  They couldn’t reach the source they wanted to quote so they cut and pasted a quote from a competitor?  This has got to be a first.

Yale political scientist David R. Mayhew two years ago wrote a book calling the entire notion of realignments a fiction, at least at the presidential level. In the 15 presidential elections since World War II, he noted, the incumbent party has kept power eight times and lost it seven times. "You can't get any closer to a coin toss than this," he said. "At the presidential level, the traits of the candidates are so important that they blot out party identification."

Now we’re back to the “this whole story is hokum” theme.  Why did this reporter even bother writing it?  Could it be because it’s a holiday weekend,  he didn’t have to do much original thinking, and editors like stories about big ideas and conflict?

But some Democrats said it would be complacent for their party to simply wait for better candidates or better luck. "Republicans are going to do everything they can to maximize their current position of ascendancy, and they have a lot of levers with which to do that," said Howard Wolfson, a former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Actually, it’s better candidates who always revive political parties.  Look at Reagan, Clinton and Bush.   (Godspeed, Barack Obama)

The GOP aim, Wolfson said, appears to be to use programs to build new constituencies. Social Security is an example. The program helped create generations of voters loyal to Democrats. Bush's plans to transform Social Security with individual investment accounts may weaken the program overall, he said, but may attract a generation of younger and more affluent voters to the GOP.

Mark Gersh, a leading elections analyst with the Democratic-supporting National Committee for an Effective Congress, said he does not believe a realignment has occurred, but he does fear that the results highlight serious structural problems for Democrats. In addition to the higher number of Republican-leaning states -- a major GOP advantage in the Senate -- the Democrats are getting trounced in the outer suburbs of metropolitan regions. While these areas still produce relatively few votes, they are the fastest-growing areas of the country. A Los Angeles Times analysis found that Bush won 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties.

"If the Democrats don't do well" in places and with groups "that are growing faster than others," said Gersh, "they are going to be in trouble."

Finally, something that makes sense.  A real theory with real facts to support it.  I used to work with Mr. Gersh, and he’s one of the smartest people in politics.  Burying the lead is one thing, but hiding it in the last paragraph is highway robbery.  And ending a story with a quote is pretty darn lazy.

Annotated Archives

Annotated Archives/Published  Punditry

OK, I was wrong about Kerry picking Max Cleland as his running mate, but I started a buzz, and instead of having the #2 spot at the convention Max went third. Big deal. I was still the first to discover the special bond between Kerry and Cleland. Watch this space.

Are you shocked  to discover that the Republican National Committee, among others,  circulates boilerplate language for bogus letters to the editor? Neither was I. But that doesn't mean I can't write a witty, sardonic column about it. And get quoted in the online journalism review too.

I thought, though, that hooking people up to MRI scanners and showing them political spots was going too far.

Beware the wrath of Elvis fans!  I went to Graceland. Was bored. Wrote about it. Got some lovely hate mail, some of which was printable. Did that stop me from commenting on popular culture? More to the point, does Hollywood care what  I think about their idea to turn the presidential campaign into a reality TV show?

The Washington Post called it "career arson" when I first wrote about how greedy consultants are harming democracy. It's not the cost of campaigns that's out of control, it's the mark-up. I also wrote for the Post about how to manipulate the media by telling the truth (sort of), using as an example how George W. Bush hornswaggled the press on the campaign trail.

More recently, for the alternative press website alternet.org, I looked at the California recall election and saw a lot of consultants laughing all the way to the bank.

As Fiorello LaGuardia used to say, when I make a mistake, it's a beaut. First I wrote about how boring the field of candidates was in the New York City mayoral primary on the day that one of them, Fernando Ferrer, broke out the pack and started soaring in the polls. (That was September 8th, by the way. A few days later, my article was even more out of date.)

Then I confidently predicted victory for my old friend, Mark Green over that ridiculous Michael  Bloomberg.

And with my usual starry-eyed optimism I quoted my favorite Robert Kennedy speech and wrote approvingly of his daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's race for Governor. Oh well, at least I was right that Andrew Cuomo was going to fail miserably in his primary campaign against Carl McCall.
My first published punditry was in the  Christian Science Monitor, a fine newspaper you’d enjoy  reading, if you don’t do so already. We all need a Mother Church to keep us on the straight and narrow—or at least, away from the sex and scandal beat.

I had just been in a high-level strategy session with a politician and his team of consultants and was struck by how many agendas were competing for attention in the room. Any similarity between dialogue in this article and conversation that took place in that meeting is strictly…oh forget it.

More recently in the Monitor, I wondered if Ralph Nader—the one I first heard 25 years ago—would approve of what Ralph Nader is doing now.

I also looked for something positive to say about the election debacle in Florida. My conclusion?  It's better  than being obsessed with Elian Gonzalez!

Earlier in the election, I deconstructed the deconstruction of campaign ads that newspapers think readers find fascinating. The media watchdog I bop with a rolled-up newspaper happens to be the same Adam Clymer who so riled George W. Bush—sorry, Adam, didn't mean to pile on.

Speaking of piling on, I've waited 20 years to make my Watergate dreams come true. My collection of Watergate memorabilia would frighten you. It certainly alarmed my companions during my dinner with the lawyers from the Senate Watergate Committee.

Then there was my Monitor column exposing the phenomenon of media masochism and proposing a hard-headed solution to the media’s unchecked power. Hint: the answer has something to do with Regis Philben.
Still, there are always pockets of political light and interest in any election  season. I wrote in the NY Daily News a piece comparing Hillary Clinton to Bobby Kennedy. Hillary comes out ahead on points, but Robert Kennedy remains my hero.

I wonder, though, if even RFK could have resisted the allure of focus groups. I wrote a Monitor column about what goes on behind the one-way mirror at focus groups and another in which I blew the lid off the "consultants’ protection act" which keeps the cost of political advertising artificially high. I’ve also written for the Monitor about my experience almost being a spin doctor for Michael Milken and how the spin doctors blew it at CNN.

They say that Washington is full of people who came to do good, and stayed to do well. That was tolerable up to a point, but I've seen how politics has become a big business like anything else, and just as subject  to manipulation and greed.

Do you want to know more secrets? Ask me in print or on the air…or send me an email.

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And  now for something completely different: Not my usual political punditry or savage satire... instead, an article my wife and I wrote for the Washington Post travel section that answers the question, "Can a 40-something couple, with three year old, have a rock and roll holiday in London?"

Unpublished Punditry

Why are these pieces "unpublished?" Good question. If you like, I'll give you the names of the editors who chose not to print these essays and you can ask them yourself.
That's the breaks of the punditry game. I don't mind. And thanks to this website, I can have the last laugh. (Note to editors: If you see something you like here, I'll be happy to take it off the shelf and polish it up for your readers. Two for one special on Thursdays.)
The first piece was written in reaction to a front page story in the New York Times about why two of Al Gore's top consultants weren't talking to each other. Who cares? Well I do, and here's why. The second column is a fantasy about what would happen if we fired all the flacks, closed the press offices and stopped trying to get "good press." Could the results possibly by any worse? The third is a last minute attempt to stop American Express from turning Central Park into a private club. It didn't work.