Red States-Blue States and the Politics of Simplicity (article)

We enter an election year in 2008. What could be more entertaining? There is any number of candidates to choose from on either side of the aisle, and everyone already has their secret hope as to who the winner should be. This essay will explore the unconscious impulses that prompt the citizens to choose their candidate. As we know, in psychoanalysis we have no reason to believe the choice will be either conscious or rational.

On the Republican side we have the likable and good Mormon ex-governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney; the ex-mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani; and the ex-naval aviator and former POW, John McCain. The Democrats are offering up Harvard Law School graduate, Senator Barack Obama; successful lawyer, Senator John Edwards; and former First Lady, Senator Hillary Clinton. There is no better way to predict the eventual winner than to glance back at the recent past and to assess how the nation acted during elections. Yet it is likely that not a single candidate has hired a psychoanalyst to help explore the unconscious motives of the voter.

Twenty of the last twenty-eight years have seen a Republican in the White House. In 1980, Reagan won in an electoral vote landslide by defeating Jimmy Carter, who was mired in the Iran hostage crisis. Carter was a meticulous hardworking graduate of the Naval Academy who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Reagan, on the other hand, was a relaxed and handsome actor/politician who was showing signs of early Alzheimer’s even before he was elected in 1980. Reagan is credited with restoring confidence in America, creating an economic boom, and defeating Communism. He was the first candidate to effectively manage the media by having a single talking point each day and rarely if ever wavering from that script. He was extremely likable, comfortable, and even simpleminded in his political approach. Yet he was easily reelected to a second term in 1984 by defeating former Vice President Walter

Page 52

Mondale.

Fast forward sixteen years to the 2000 election with Democratic candidate Vice President Al Gore versus Republican candidate Texas Governor George W. Bush. One was articulate and well-educated while the other often struggled to complete a sentence. Bush won with impressive simplicity of message. In 2004, he went on to defeat Yale graduate and outspoken antiwar activist Senator John Kerry. Bush’s hardheaded simplicity is best displayed by looking at the Iraq War. He has spent nearly a trillion dollars on a war that has cost the Iraqis the loss of more than 500,000 innocent lives. Yet Bush remains virtually immune to input from any source, even his own Iraq Study Group.

The lesson we may take from this brief view of our recent political election history is that the body politic tends to choose the simpler of the two candidates. Reagan or Carter? Choose Reagan. Reagan or Mondale? Choose Reagan. Bush or Gore? Choose Bush. Bush versus Kerry? Choose Bush.

Another example of the dumbing down of American politics can be seen in the emergence of the so-called “red state-blue state” metaphor in recent years. Does anyone really think that an entire state can be described and then dismissed based upon a single ideology? Apparently so. I think the appeal of this metaphor gives the body politic a simple take on things. It has a nice way of polarizing the mind and keeping things simple. Are you from a conservative state or a liberal state? Well if you’re a New Yorker, you are liberal. If you are a Texan, you are conservative. And don’t you forget it!

It is relatively easy to understand the appeal of the simple. It has been said that since the 1950s we have been immersed in the electronic revolution which has in turn produced the information revolution. The French postmodern thinker Jean Baudrillard has written about this most persuasively in The Illusion of the End (1992). He suggests that things have been coming at us too fast and too frequently and that the result is what he calls “the end of history.” According to postmodern theory, history came to a crashing halt around 1980. Coincidentally, that was when Reagan was first elected President.

So, as the “end of history” occurred in 1980, we saw simultaneously the beginning of the “politics of the simpleminded.” Baudrillard points out that the massive amount of information that comes at us daily makes it impossible to think about anything with any depth. The electronic and information revolutions have created a psychological crisis in the electorate. We are all so dizzy, dumbfounded, and confused about life in general that our number one need is to simplify. This is what many unconsciously seek in our candidates, as was the case with Chance the gardener in Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There, released as a film in 1979. Peter Sellers was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the simpleminded gardener who could neither read nor write but somehow rose to be an advisor to the president.

Let us not forget the film Forrest Gump which came out in 1994. Forrest was this endearing simpleton who captured America’s heart. For the life of me I could never fathom what his astounding appeal was based on. Tom Hanks may be a superb actor, but the real appeal and popularity of the film may be rooted in the public’s need for simplification in a world that has become too fast and too confusing to grasp.

The current war we are fighting in Iraq can be described as a clash of eras with the past world bumping up against the modem. There is no doubt that many jihadists in the Middle East appear to resist modernity. I think our body politic hints at the same tendency with its choice of simpleminded politicians who promise a clearer and less confusing vision of the way things are.

My hypothesis is that the body politic is unconsciously in a crisis of anxiety and confusion thanks to an information explosion that has gone on for the last fifty years. The question in this essay is, What can we predict based upon this state of mind? I predict that the electorate will tend toward a simple candidate who will present a very clear and easy to understand message. He or she need not be well-educated or highly intelligent because that will only add to our confusion. Reagan won a landslide by acting like Chance the gardener and sticking to a single talking point every day, no matter what the media asked him. As Chance told us, “First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” We will not elect Harvard-educated Barack Obama or the lawyerly Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. We will vote in someone like Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or John McCain. These are the ones who hold up a

Page 53

simple message. Just like Reagan and just like Bush.

These are strange times we live in. Times when we need great thinkers to solve complex problems but times when we choose simple men to calm us down. Men like Chance the gardener, who in the final scene of the film is shown walking on water on a lake near the White House. He seems lighter than air and stupider than sin. Welcome to the 2008 presidential election and the politics of the simpleminded.

Page 54