Bostonian, where did you pull this quote by John Kerry about “losing to this dummy”? Are you paraphrasing or did he actually make such a statement? Furthermore, I kind of doubt there were too many swing voters who voted against John Kerry based on the U.N. Oil for Food program. Even if the election were held today, I can’t imagine that swinging a single Kerry voter to Bush.

CadillaqJaq describes an approach that might be very wise indeed, depending on what makes you “like” or “dislike” a candidate. Elitists value raw intellect and give no consideration to experience and personal character. (Witness John Kerry’s stupefaction at “losing to this dummy.” Witness the Left’s obsession with Bush’s supposedly lower intellect. Witness the Left’s obsession with its own supposed intellectual superiority.)

More ordinary people pay quite a lot of attention to personal character, not always based on accurate information, of course, but that’s life. They notice inconsistencies, unacknowledged course changes, and other patterns. Humans are built to do this: to assess each other. It is not a purely rational, cerebral-cortex, left-brain activity, though, so the Left tends to discount it–at their peril.

There are probably millions of Americans who believe John Kerry to be a lifelong traitor (fairly or not–your opinion!). There are millions of Americans who assessed the two candidates and concluded that Bush is a much more honest man and that he means what he says, and says what he means. There are millions of Americans who learned about the Oil for Food scandal despite the media near-blackout, and who reckoned that as a death knell for John Kerry’s foreign policy. And I’ll bet that most of those people might not be able to put into words exactly what guided their decisions, but that doesn’t make their decisions invalid.

And I agree with the cynacism of fearing that voters only vote for whom they like most – like homecoming royalty. But a question that might be worthy of consideration, is there something based in the philosophical underpinnings of each party that tends to attract more likeable candidates than the other (exceptions would, of course, exist. Think likeable GWB v. unlikeable Tom Delay). I don’t know the answer, but following Brooks’ and Reding’s commentary, it may be more likely that conservatives can better communicate likeability because they aren’t nuancing themselves to death over the intricate details of bureaucratic functions.

It is telling that conservatives freely quote long speeches by their opposition, to make sure everyone hears what the Democratic party is saying.

From my unscientific case study, southern voters seem to be the most guilty of this kind of voting, and they obviously came to the decision that Laura Bush would make a better prom queen than would Teresa Heinz Kerry. On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of politically illiterate Northeasterns who voted against Bush primarily because of his irrelevant verbal gaffes and/or the fact that he occasionally wears a cowboy hat. Whatever the case, I see the current political alignment as being less about any sort of serious conservative triumph than of a horrific corruption of early 21st century democracy that is fast making the system illegitimate. Even in the era where everyone believes “this was the most important election of their lifetime,” I fear that the number of people who have a basic understanding of real-world issues is on the decline.

Small gaffe. Not as bad as some I’ve made on Brin’s forum… :P

By contrast, there are only two main groups of Republicans….the social conservatives and the economic conservatives. Clearly, the “Left Behind” series crowd has a fiercely different (and often conflicting) agenda with Wall Street yuppies and business barons, but thus far have been willing to hear only the message they want to from the theocrats/plutocrats they repeatedly elect. The danger the Republican Party faces is never being able to deliver for the social conservatives. It’s unclear how long they’ll be able to get mileage over this gay marriage bait-and-switch, but if they don’t get Roe vs. Wade undone in the next four years, what will be the incentive for the large percent of one-issue abortion voters to pull the lever for Bill Frist in 2008?

The current alignment of social and economic conservatives is presently an overwhelming force and the GOP deserves props for its ability to manipulate its way to a majority with shrill rhetoric about “family values” coming from the mouths of professional adulterers and pathological divorcers. I don’t expect the Republicans are going to be the American equivalent to the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan this century, however. Ideologues from all sides of the political spectrum considered the 2004 election to be the most important of their lifetime. That’s some pretty high expectations to live up to, and I’m not convinced the Bush administration and conservatism’s current elected leaders have the capacity to satisfy the expectations of 51% of them indefinitely. Still, if the GOP is able to control its message and its constituency to two main groups (essentially the exact opposite of what David Brooks and Jay Reding say is going on), they stand a good chance of having a run of a couple decades or so.

Then, I go to tell you how good your post was, and find Nicholas MacDonald giving me the other side – showing me how liberals see themselves. And conservatives should endeavor to understand liberals.

If Congress read these pieces, they might actually find ways to agree on some things, and not spend their hours demagoguing each other.

Liberalism’s problem is that it is letting itself be defined into a caricature by it’s opponents, precisely because there IS so much squabbling among liberals to define what a liberal is today. I could ask every liberal I know what it means to be a liberal, and I’d get a different answer from everyone. My father would probably say something about respecting individual liberties and maintaining a well-regulated, strong economy- a very Clintonian answer. My sister would discuss diversity and caring for the poorer elements of society- a typical liberal Christian populist. My grandfather, were he still coherent, would probably talk about the rights of the working man and getting fair wages and treatment- a good old-line union socialist. The liberal spectrum includes a massive diversity of opinion- ranging from rabidly pro-tech democratic Transhumanists and west-coast techies to back-to-nature Gaian environmentalists, from religious Christians, Jews, and Buddhists to staunch atheists, from academic relativists to screaming absolutists (which oddly enough can often be found in the same person ;) ), from classical liberal-libertarians and Christian populists to fanatical socialists and Communists, capitalists, Keynesians, modernists, romantics, and a partridge in a pear tree…

I’d also say that there is a tremendous intellectual heritage and range among both centrist liberals and leftists these days as well. Many democrats and center-liberals are greatly influenced by classical libertarianism and utilitarianism. Economics runs the gamut from Marx to Keynes to Hayek (honestly, America is the only country in the world where he’s considered a conservative economist). On the far left, postmodernism and critical theory, while I’m not a big fan of either, are deeply influential, while the integral post-constructivism supported by Jurgen Habermas, Ken Wilber, and Don Beck is starting to catch on among many American liberals, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who have become supporters of integral theory. There is constant, rousing debate in truly liberal publications like The New Republic (and The Nation is sometimes worth reading as well).

At the heart of what I’d call true liberalism, however, is the idea of pragmatism. Attempts at building a better society come not though doctrinal purity. By default, D’Souza is mistaken- Liberal ends cannot come from failed socialist means, but they will never come from outmoded conservative means either. Liberal ends always come from liberal means- if we’re talking about actual liberals.

I don’t think most liberals believe in some sort of human perfection that can spring into being overnight. I think that we believe in human improvability through social and technological progress, with the exception of reactionary romantics on the far left (David Brin has been writing a great series of essays on this subject lately, check them out at http://davidbrin.blogspot.com). Setbacks happen, experiments fail- but they do not mean we return to the failures of yesterday, they mean that we return to the drawing board.

The problem with the “false liberalism” we’re seeing today is that these “faux-liberals” haven’t gone back to the drawing board- they’re continuing to pound away at the same ideas and systems that haven’t worked. Real liberals don’t do this- but they don’t turn in their badges and follow Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom into neoconservative la-la land either.

Bill Clinton- real liberal. Though he calls himself a “conservative”, I’d say Andrew Sullivan is more of a real liberal (same goes for Fareed Zakaria, and most of the staff of The New Republic). Thomas Friedman is a real liberal. David Brin is a real liberal. Robert Reich is a real liberal. I’d say Al Gore is too, for the most part, as is John Kerry, though you could debate me on that (if I were in the mood). I don’t know if Hillary Clinton makes the cut, or if she’s just cynically triangulating, but I’d be willing to bet on that. The integral post-constructivists I mentioned- yeah, they’re real liberals too.

And, to be perfectly honest, I see a lot of diversity in the GOP as well, but I’m worried that it’s coming at the expense of a major part of the party that is being silenced, and it seems the party could be marching straight into the same sort of boondoggles that broke the back of the Democratic party in the 70′s. I hope for your sake that it isn’t true, and I hope for mine that it is.