The Debatable Land

The Limits of Reaganism

At a recent debate, every single one of the candidates hoping to be the nest chairman of the Republican National Committee named Ronald Reagan as their favourite Republican president. In one sense this is hardly surprising, given the extent to which the Cult of Reagan - or more precisely, the Cult of the Idea of Reagan - has come to define the Republican party; still, Kevin Drum wonders why no-one dare stick their neck out and admit to admiring some other GOP luminary.

As Kevin notes, it is striking how many Republican presidents have been expelled from the Conservative canon. Eisenhower, Ford and George HW Bush are viewed with suspicion as "Republicans in Name Only," Nixon was a closet liberal too and, like Harding, a crook to boot. Teddy Roosevelt, for all that many Republicans admire his muscular brio, scarcely fits the modern conservative ideal and it remains, sadly, rather infra dig to admit an admiration for Calvin Coolidge. So Reagan it is and must be.

But the Cult of Reagan actually helps explain the mess the Republican movement finds itself in. It used to be that it was the left that specialised in writing dissenters out of the movement; these days, in America at least, that's become a conservative trait. The RNC debate was illuminating in this respect: in addition to passing the Reagan litmus tests candidates were asked how many guns they own. And that was more or less it. Tick those boxes and you're a proper Republican; waver on either question and you're subject to suspicion.

It's this sort of blinkered thinking, this elevation of ideology above the messy business of winning elections that has helped condemn the GOP to minority status. A two party system in a nation of 300m people demands that each party be a broad church. Reagan recognised this; his successors seem to have forgotten it.

Like Thatcherism in Britain, the Reagan revolution began as an internal insurgency that caught the party grandees by surprise. Neither was really supposed to win but desperate times demanded desperate measures. If external crisis and malaise helped them win the leadership against the odds, then subsequently they were fortunate in their enemies: Carter and Callaghan first, then Mondale and Foot. In each case, Thatcher and Reagan were looking to a revived future as their opponents seemed stuck in a dismal, best-forgotten past.

But it is an iron truth of politics that prolonged success sows the seeds of future downfall. Revolutions run out of steam. They cannot be permanent. More damagingly still, what begins as an unorthodox and surprisingly successful approach calcifies into a stubborn orthodoxy that brooks no dissent, even as times and circumstances change. The path to power is built upon compromise and flexibility: Thatcher always knew what she wanted to do, but she was also aware, in her early years, of how limited her room for manoevre was - not least because not everyone in her cabinet was on board. If progress was slower than she liked, it was also steadier than when, after 1987, she reigned supreme and hubris began to take its fatal grip. Similarly, Reagan was a vastly more adaptable President than current conservative folklore might have you believe.

In that sense, then. the troubles of Republicanism now and of the Tories in the last 15 years, were built upon their previous successes. The difficulty is that the second (or third) generation is rarely as talented or adaptable as the trailblazers who won power in the first place. Instead of finding fresh ideas and solutions, they inherit positions and prejudices that, because they worked once before, are assumed to be eternal truths rather than particular answers to particular problems at a particular time.

And because they're seen as eternal truths, any deviation from them is grounds for heresy. Thus, for instance, the Club for Growth would, it sometimes seems, rather see a Democrt in Congress than a "bad" Republican. Fair enough, they've got their wish and the GOP is a minority party in both houses of Congress. It's not all the Club for Growth's fault, of course, but the narrowness of their (fiscal) vision is parallelled by other forces within contemporary conservatism that have left the party older and whiter and more religious than America as a whole. In other words, the GOP is increasingly out of step with a changing America.

Witness, for instance, the party's hostility to gay marriage. That plays well with the base, but it's not something that's likely to endear it to the political future. It's a symbolic issue in some ways, but each year plenty of voters who agree with the GOP die while plenty more who don't are added to the electoral roll.

Style matters too. The Tory position on Europe in the 1990s (and on immigration and crime more recently) was more popular with the electorate than were Labour's policies, but the stridency and, to many, the ugly tone in which the Tories expressed themselves turned many voters off. Similarly, the GOP position on, say, immigration is not without its supporters but the manner in which a position is expressed matters almost as much as the position itself. And the GOP has seemed bitter and parochial - qualities with which the electorate is unlikely to wish to associate itself.

Another example? The Terri Schiavo affair: millions of Americans might have been conflicted as to what they felt in what was a horrid, ugly affair. But they knew they didn't like the spectacle of Congressional Republicans stomping all over the case in hob-nailed boots, abandoning any notion of Congressional restraint, let alone respect for States' Rights and due process. The party that says the other mob always want to interfere abandoned all pretence to principle to interfere itself. Voters can spot hypocrisy and while they may sometimes forgive it if its purusued with a modicum of subtlety or on grounds of expediency, more often they dislike it intensely when it seems a flagrant breach of promise or purpose.

Similarly, there's not too much wrong with wanting to cut taxes, but John McCain's tax plan was absurdly tilted towards the already-wealthy. Yes, the richest contribute an enormous percentage of federal income tax receipts, but "ordinary" working families - those struggling with increasing health insurance bills or rising college costs - could reasonably ask when exactly it was that the Republican party stopped caring about them.

Ironically, George W Bush seemed to recognise this. The talk of "compassionate conservatism" and of an "ownership society" (the latter entirely familiar to Britishers who remember the glory days of Thatcherism) was an effort to recast Republicanism in a fresher, more contemporary mold. Alas, neither really amounted to much, killed by the administration's carelessness, the swamping impact of 9/11 and Karl Rove's determination to bet the farm on militarism and wedge issues  - a strategy that could only move the GOP away from the centre-ground. Such a strategy is fine for winning elections, but less useful for governing. Apart from anything else, abandoning the centre gifts an opportunity to the opposition; just as importantly it's only sustainable in good times or when everything goes well. When the worm turns, you find yourself excluded from the centrist-mainstream. Suddenly politics can seem a lonely, scary place.

Thatcher found this out for herself and it took her party 15 years to recover; so too the GOP today. Comparisons between British and American politics are rarely exact of course, but in each case we see (or saw) a narrowing vision of what conservatism ought to be. Instead of an orchestra of conservatism you have a string quartet: still capable of pretty music, of course, but less versatile, less popular and with fewer tunes to play.

But, as I say, the Idea of Reagan has overtaken the Reaganite reality. Consequently Republicans seem to have misconstrued the premises upon which they based their decision to sanctify Reagan in the first-place. The god they worship is not the god who actually existed. The apparent simplicity of the GOP mantra - strong national defence, tax cuts and, er, that's it - becomes a liability when the party faces an intelligent, charismatic, adaptable opponent who seems better prepared to meet the complex challenges of a complex world right now, not the challenges that faced the United States nearly 30 years ago.

All of which is to say, presumptiously for a furriner perhaps, that the GOP has an awful lot of work to do before it's likely to be ready for government again. Of course, in time the Democrats may over-reach themselves too, but no-one should assume that will happen in just four or even eight years.

Because, you know, when the public tires of the old tunes, it's time to learn some new ones. And I rather doubt whether that old-time Reagan religion is going to be enough.

But you know what? I'd like to know what Messrs Douthat and Salam, among others, have to say on this.

UPDATE: Unseen by me, Mark Thompson was labouring in these same vineyards a couple of days ago.

Transatlantic Differences

There are times when it's good to be away from the hurly-burly of American politics. Doubly so when the subject of gay marriage comes up. Here, for instance, is a story it is hard to imagine happening in the United States: Nick Herbert, the Conservative party's Shadow Justice secretary has apparently become the second member of David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet, to enter into a civil partnership. It's hard to imagine too many senior gay Republicans feeling comfortable doing this, let alone doing so with the blessing of the party's leader and their constituency assosciation.

Then again, gay marriage in Britain has, generally speaking, been decoupled from religion. (Of course, some would say that everything else in Britain has been, so why not marriage too). Now maybe American conservatives (of one degree of religiosity or another) are correct that this sort of thing heralds the end of everything, but if so it's striking how relaxed their British counterparts, for the most part, are about this imminent descent to Sodom.

Best bits? The story of Herbert's marriage was broken by the Sunday Telegraph's diary column. That is to say it's gossip, not news. Better still? Herbert worked for the British Field Sports Society (ie, the fox-hunting and grouse-shooting lobby) for six years before entering parliament. Culturally at least, that organisation is to the Tory party rather what the the National Rifle Association is to the GOP.

On one level this is trivial stuff, but it's a reminder that the Republican party is increasingly out of step with its sister conservative parties around the world. That's not, in itself, necessarily a terrible thing but it ought to be borne in mind next time someone suggests that there are wholly applicable lessons to be drawn from Britain/Canada/Australia/Wherever. (You mean, pieces like this one? Er, yeah.) The fun lies in the differences, not the similarities - even if pundits are necessarily drawn to finding the latter and smoothing over the former.

The Kennedy Difference

John Judis:

I think it would have made most sense for Barack Obama to have appointed Caroline Kennedy a delegate to the United Nations in the manner of Shirley Temple Black or William F. Buckley. But I am not going berserk as my colleagues seem to be over the prospect that she will be appointed senator. The reason has to do, I suspect, with my understanding of political dynasties. There is a difference between the Kennedy dynasty and, say, the Biden, Clinton, or Bush dynasties. And the difference is that many Americans feel they owe the Kennedy family something for their service.

Can this really be true?

Kennedy Reveals All

So Caroline Kennedy is kind enough to explain why she thinks she should be appointed the next Senator from New York:

"I come at this as a mother, as a lawyer, as an author as an education advocate and from a family that really has spent generations in public service," she began, in response to a question about why she's running, saying this is "a time when nobody can afford to sit out."

Personally I'd be wary of trading upon her grandfather's public-service career, but then again perhaps she liked the old bastard. Clearly, however, she's decided that there's no point ignoring the dynastic/entitlement issue and has chosen, instead, to double down on it.

Name That Child

Turns out there is a list of approved hipster baby-names. (I assume there's a comparable British list somewhere?) James Poulos lists his favourites but unfairly targets Magnus for opprobrium. Nothing wrong with Magnus,  it being a fine, sturdy old Norse-Scots name. On the other hand, it probably sounds daft in Americaland.

Anyway, the best hipster infant names are clearly: Elvis, Dashiell, Orson, Dixie, Matilda and Iris.

And the worst: Kai, Roman, August, Atticus, Kingston, Dexter, Lennon, Mamie, Pearl and Sullivan (sorry Andrew!).

Bonus: Piper is one of the names on the list! Just as well this didn't come out during the election isn't it? Might have undermined Sarah Palin's claims to be representing "Real America". On the other hand: who knew there were hipsters in Wasilla?

Added bonus: Delilah makes the list. Why not Jezebel?

New York Dynasty

So it's official: Caroline Kennedy does want to be the next Senator from New York. A shocking development. I mean it's not as though the departing Senator traded on a famous name to snare the seat herself, is it?

Got vs Gotten

I knew someone would call me out on this. And sure enough, commenting on this post, faithful reader Sam G writes:

First paragraph: "gotten"? O tempora, O Mores indeed.

To which I say: hooey. To begin with, there's much to be said for the vigour of American English. Plus, as you know, gotten is merely an ancient form that, though out of fashion in the old country, was preserved in the new world. As is so often the case, we turn to the Sage of Baltimore for guidance. Here's Mencken:

Whatever the true cause of the substitution of the preterite for the perfect participle, it seems to be a tendency inherent in English, and during the age of Elizabeth it showed itself even in the most formal speech. An examination of any play of Shakespeare’s will show many such forms as “I have wrote.” “I am mistook” and “he has rode.” In several cases this transfer for the preterite has survived. “I have stood,” for example, is now perfectly correct English, but before 1550 the form was “I have stonden.” To hold and to sit belong to the same class; their original perfect participles were not held and sat, but holden and sitten. These survived the movement toward the formalization of the language which began with the eighteenth century, but scores of other such misplaced preterites were driven out. One of the last to go was wrote, which persisted until near the end of the century. Paradoxically enough, the very purists who performed the purging showed a preference for got (though not forgot), and it survives in correct English today in the preterite-present form, as in “I have got,” whereas in American, both vulgar and polite, the elder and more regular gotten is often used. In the polite speech gotten indicates a distinction between a completed action and a continuing action—between obtaining and possessing. “I have gotten what I came for” is correct, and so is “I have got a house.” In the vulgar speech much the same distinction exists, but the perfect becomes a sort of simple tense by the elision of have. Thus the two sentences change to “I gotten what I come for” and “I got a house,” the latter being understood, not as past, but as present.

Case closed.

Delaying Detroit's Death

Now as it happens, American cars are, generally speaking, much better than they used to be. And Ford and GM have demonstrated that, in europe at least, they know how to build small cars capable of doing more than 20 miles to the gallon. Even in the United States, the Big Three have greatly improved reliability, build-quality and, at least in some of their plants, productivity. The best American cars really aren't all that different, or poorer than their Japanese rivals. But though Detroit has responded to Japanese quality, carbuyers haven't updated their perceptions. Hence this mock-ad:

Harsh? Only partially. But this is a sentiment shared by millions of car-owners. The perception that GM and Ford and Chrysler build crappy cars is just another obstacle to recovery. And of course it's a perception that, even if out of date, is predicated upon the bitter memories of the crap cars they really did build. Turns out it takes a while for that perception to fade. One more reason why you shouldn't crap on your own brand. So the current crisis, driven by poor management and stupid unions, is also built upon the junk they spent years selling to gullible consumers taken in by the faux-patriotism of "Buying American".

Chicago Hardball

More from the Blagojevich indictment:

[I]ntercepted phone conversations between ROD BLAGOJEVICH and others indicate that ROD BLAGOJEVICH is contemplating rescinding his commitment of state funds to benefit Children's Memorial Hospital because Hospital Executive 1 has not made a recent campaign contribution to ROD BLAGOJEVICH.

Really, if you're not entertained by this then you probably need to rethink your interest in politics.

A Scandal in Springfield

Sometimes it's useful to remember that, despite everything, British politics is, on the whole, markedly less corrupt than politics elsewhere. That, of course, explains why so many of our scandals are disappointingly third or fourth rate. They do things differently in America. Today' entertainment comes courtesy of Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, who has been arrested on charges of, inter alia, conspiring to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. Great stuff:

Federal prosecutors have investigated Blagojevich's administration for at least three years. The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The FBI affidavit alleges that Blagojevich also sought promises of campaign cash, as well as a cabinet post or ambassadorship in exchange for his Senate choice. Blagojevich is accused of saying on November 3 that if he is not going to get anything of value for the open seat, then he would appoint himself to the post.

"I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain," the affidavit quotes the governor as saying.

He noted becoming a U.S. senator might remake his image for a possible presidential run in 2016, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit quotes Blagojevich telling an adviser later that day that a Senate seat "is a [expletive] valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." In a conversation with Harris on November 4, the day of the election, Blagojevich is alleged to have compared his situation to that of a sports agent shopping a potential free agent to the highest bidder. On November 5, Blagojevich allegedly told an adviser, "I've got this thing and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it....

The charges also state that in a conversation with Harris on November 11, Blagojevich said he knew that President-elect Obama wanted a specific candidate for the open Senate seat but added "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them."

Whole indictment here. Balgojevixh, of course, was elected on a "reforming" platform after his predecessor, George Ryan, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment on racketeering charges. That made Ryan the third Illinois governor in 35 years to go to gaol. 

As so often, however, the scandal is just as much a matter of what's legal as what's not. I don't really understand why Governors have the power to select Senators anyway. What's wrong with having a by-election? That ought not to be beyond the wit of man, even in Florida. As it is, the current system is an invitation to corruption and, of course, nepotism. Look, for instance, at the whispers that Caroline Kennedy should, for reasons unknown, be rewarded with Hillary Clinton's old seat in New York. Look too, at how Joe Biden's seat is being kept warm for his son Beau. At the very least, none of this is change you can believe in.

It's all rather reminiscent of Irish politics, where seats in parliament are inherited and the whole system is cheerfully corrupt. But no-one in Ireland considers the Dail the world's :greatest deliberative body". And it's one thing for the Senate to be shielded - notionally at least - from the turbulence of public opinion, quite another for it to be selected in this fashion.

I assume, and hope readers will correct me if I'm wrong, that the gubernatorial power to select a replacement Senator is a hangover from the days when the Senate was indirectly-elected. That is, from the time when state legislatures selected the lucky fellow chosen to go to Washington and bring back the pork. But that was then and this is now and there's no really good reason - is there?  -why you can't have a special election to fill these positions.

Bush 2016!

Seriously. Well, not impossibly. Perhaps. Weirder things may have happened*.

Yup, Jeb Bush is apparently considering running for Mel Martinez's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. I imagine Jeb would win handily. These days I think people forget that Jeb was the Bush who was supposed to be President. One of the hinge moments in recent American political history is election night 1994** when George W won the Texas gubernatorial race and Jeb lost his race to become governor of Florida. By just 63,000 votes. If memory serves, Bill Minutaglio writes in First Son (still, in my view, the best book about Dubya's pre-White House life) that W was furious that Poppy and Barbara Bush were more saddened by Jeb's defeat than elated by W's victory. "Why can't you be happy for me for once" snapped W (or words to that effect). Perhaps his parents could see what the future might hold?

Because there's not too much doubt, I think, that Jeb, not George, would have been The Guy,  had they both won in 1994. And I think Jeb would have beaten Al Gore too  - certainly it wouldn't have come down to Florida. And you'd have a very different Republican party today. In fact, you might not have a President Obama either, since Jeb might not hav mismanaged affairs so completely as to make Obama's highly improbable candidacy a gamble worth backing.

Speaking to Politico last month, he said conservatives should “do the math of the new demographics of the United States,” explaining that the Republican Party “can’t be anti-Hispanic, anti-young person — anti many things — and be surprised when we don’t win elections.”

That's true. It's not enough for a conservative revival, but it's a start. Of course, Jeb's future prospects - even if he had the ambition  - are murdered by his surname. That's not his fault, of course, but it makes you wonder what he really thinks about his brother.

*Not really. Then again I didn't see Sarah Palin coming, nor the notion of Clinton as SecState.

**Not, as originally written, 2004. Thanks CF!

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and readers. In celebration, I offer this Culture11 piece on why Thanksgiving is comfortably the most civilised holiday of them all. Then again, the competition ain't stiff, is it?

The Best Little Brisket in Texas

One thing I'd like to do next summer (if, that is, we have a summer) is devote some time to doing some proper BBQ. No surprise, then, that I was a sucker for Calvin Trillin's New Yorker piece on the small Lexington BBQ-joint hailed by Texas Monthly as the home of the Best BBQ in the Lone Star state.

As a longtime editor, though, he knew a Cinderella story when he saw one. It wasn’t just that Snow’s had been unknown to a Texas barbecue fancy that is notably mobile. Snow’s proprietor, Kerry Bexley, was a former rodeo clown who worked as a blending-facility operator at a coal mine. Snow’s pit master, Tootsie Tomanetz, was a woman in her early seventies who worked as the custodian of the middle school in Giddings, Texas—the Lee County seat, eighteen miles to the south. After five years of operating Snow’s, both of them still had their day jobs. Also, Snow’s was open only on Saturday mornings, from eight until the meat ran out.

...In the weeks after the Texas Monthly feature was published, Snow’s went from serving three hundred pounds of meat every Saturday to serving more than a thousand pounds. At eight in the morning—six or seven hours after Miss Tootsie had arrived to begin tending the pits—there was already a line of customers, some of whom had left home before dawn. Bexley said that one Saturday morning, when there were ninety people waiting outside, a local resident asked permission to gather signatures along the line for a petition, only to return a few minutes later with the information that there wasn’t one person there from Lee County. Some locals expressed irritation at being shut out of their own barbecue joint. At times, Bexley and Miss Tootsie felt overwhelmed. There were moments, they say, when they wished that the tasters from Texas Monthly had never shown up. Then Bexley added three brisket pits, Miss Tootsie got some help, Snow’s for a time quit taking pre-orders by phone except for locals, and the amount of meat prepared every Saturday levelled off to about eight hundred pounds....

This, folks, is some of the stuff that makes America great. It's the puppyish enthusiasm combined with a manic quest for perfection that's responsible for much of what is wonderful and, fairness demands one acknowledge, some of what is more troublesome about that great, sprawling, messy land.

The Hillbilly Vote

The day after the Presidential election Matt Yglesias spotted this map that shows the counties across the country which swung towards John McCain this year. As you can see, there aren't that many of them. But what's interesting is where they are:

Matt quipped that, "You can see why John McCain’s principled stand against higher taxes on the wealthy would have a special resonance in this region. Liberals who thought race had something to do with those appeals should be ashamed of themselves."  Andrew Sullivan agreed with Matt: "Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose."

Now, clearly, it would be absurd to pretend - and I do not so pretend - that race had nothing to do with this. But I think this map rather more interesting than that. For that matter, I think the nature of the Appalachian and "Highland" vote is more interesting than this map might initially suggest. 

What the map shows is that McCain did better than Bush in south-western West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. (One ought to remember that the map is also distorting: some of these counties had only five or six thousand voters, so the number of people required to turn the map red is not always large.) Still, as I say, doubtless some of this is attributable to racial prejudice, but it seems a stretch and, indeed, a simplification to suppose that this is the only factor at play. That is, one ought to be wary of presuming that race is the only reason a county might buck the national trend and swing towards Obama. 

Ignorance is, I think, a more likely explanation. I think it's worth observing that Obama didn't really campaign in any of these areas.(Marc Ambinder had a useful chart revealing where each campaign was spending their money). As George Packer observes, Obama did as well as John Kerry had in culturally conservative, pretty rural south-eastern Ohio and in parts of rural Pennsylvania. These placesaren't exactly the same as Tennessee and Kentucky of course, but nor are they vastly different. What I'd suggest, however, is that just as Obama was able to overcome a considerable degree of scepticism in Appalachian PA and OH so he might have been able to in KY and TN had he needed to campaign fiercely in those states.

Packer cites a pair of articles written by the New York Times'  Michael Sokolove who returned to his home town of Levittown, PA to take the political temperature in a key swing state. In the second he observed that:

Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and aNational Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined.

“I have to admit, his race made my decision harder,” he said. “I was brought up that way. And I don’t like his name. I’ll admit to that, too.”

...A lot of people in Levittown needed the five months between the primary election and Tuesday to get used to a new idea. After Mrs. Clinton’s defeat, followed by a financial crisis that shook Americans to the core, they came to terms. If Mr. Obama’s race had been a factor, they eventually had to weigh it against other concerns. “For a long time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was black, if you know what I mean,” Mr. Sinitski, the heating and air-conditioning technician, told me. “I’m not proud of that, but I was raised to think that there aren’t good black people out there. I could see that he was highly intelligent, and that matters to me, but my instinct was still to go with the white guy.”

Now perhaps white voters in Appalachia would have remained immune to Obama's charms had he campaigned in Kentucky and Tennessee and so on, but I can't help but feel that at least some of them might have reconsidered their votes had they had been barraged, as voters in PA and OH were, by pro-Obama messages. (This isn't a criticism of the Obama campaign since, rightly, it needed to devote its energies to winnable states.) 

Arkansas is, as ever, a slightly different case. The swing to McCain there may also include a Hillary factor. Indeed, according to exit polls nearly 30% of Democrats who voted for Hillary in the Arkansas primary voted for McCain in the general election. Racism? Who knows? Sour grapes? Almost certainly.

Furthermore, it's worth considering the possibility that some conservative voters were more enamoured of John McCain than they were of George W Bush. By that I mean only that some voters may have found McCain's personal story more persuasive, or even inspiring, than they did Bush's. That is to say, some voters may have been especially impressed by McCain's military service (and that of his forefathers) and that those voters may have been located, to a dispropotionate extent, in the south.

Though the percentage of Americans who are veterans is, broadly speaking, fairly consistent across the states, the south is, according census data from 2000, the only part of America in which the number of veterans as a percentage of the overall population is increasing. More importantly, I would suggest, some research suggests that as many as 75% of folk living in rural areas are likely to know someone who has served in Iraq - a figure that, if accurate, is, I warrant, rather higher than would be the case in urban areas. Equally, the Center for Rural Stregies estimates that the death-rate amongst military personnel is almost twice as high for those from counties of fewer than 50,000 people than it is from the most populous counties across America.

That doesn't make small town and rural America any more "real" than big city America. All it suggests is that, given the nature of small towns, the impact of military casualties is more widely, and even keenly, felt in small towns than it is in big cities. The chances of either knowing or, for sure, knowing someone who knows the dead kid's family, are vastly greater. Two, or perhaps three, degrees of separation. In such circumstances I don't find it hard to imagine vters being swayed by McCain's military heroism even if, on the merits, some of those voters might find themselves more in line with Obama's policy positions. This is, of course, guesswork on my part and I may be entirely wrong. Nonetheless, the point is that communities that send a disproportionate number of their sons off to war ought not automatically to be considered racist if they buck the national trend and endorse the decorated war veteran. And that applies even if some of them are racist.

And that brings me to a second map. This one is taken from the most recent census and shows the concentration of folk who, when asked about their ethnicity, answered "American":

 

As you can see, there's a considerable overlap with the counties that defied the national swing and endorsed McCain more heavily than they had Bush. It's true that the "American-Americans" only represent about 7% of the total population, but clearly they're more numerous in WV, KY, TN and AL in particular (with significant pockets in SC, GA and elsewhere).  This is, as you'll recognise for sure, the heartland of the Scots and Scots-Irish immigration to the US. And all - or at least most - of that was a long time ago. Senator Jim Webb will tell you that these are the people who built America in its early days and that they've been overlooked ever since. That's bred, he would say, a distrust of government promises (indeed, rightly or not, a scepticism towards government full-stop) and in time, I would suggest, a grievance against those who would define themselves (or permit themselves to be defined) as hyphenated-Americans.

This is America, they may say, and we are Americans. No more, no less. We don't look back or east or south so why in hell's name should you? The attitude is, I think, that once you're a United States citizen you should drop you hyphen. That's to say, I think many of these voters would have been suspicious of JFK's catholicism or, had he ever run, Mario Cumo's Italianism. There can be, for sure, and perhaps always is a certain ugliness to this but I wonder if Barry O'Bama or Jose Obama might have had almost as tough a time in these districts as did Barack Hussein Obama. For sure - and perhaps all this undermines some of what I've written here - there's a degree of racial prejudice at work here, but I also wonder - and this, I admit is somewhat speculative - if there isn't also at least something of a backlash against the idea of identity and hyphenatated politics entirely. (Easier, of course, for white folk in rural areas to rail against all of that. I don't defend this attitude, I merely wonder about it's putative existence and how widespread it may be.)

Some of this is, I suspect, a feature of a certain white working-class sense of self-pity and victimhood. Perhaps that is an unjustified sense, but I suspect it exists and that rather than simply or only condemn it one might ask if everything is as simple as lines and squares and colours on a map might make on think. That's all.

And, yes, to reiterate, I do think there's a racial element at work. I just wonder if that's the only thing.

Is it 'cos he is black?

Like Clive Davis, I don't much mind that Peter Hitchens has some fun with the more extravagant claims being made for an Obama presidency. But then there's this:

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street* – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world...

And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

Well! Let's just observe that I doubt Hitchens - Christopher's brother - would have written this dreary, bilious tripe had Barack Obama been white. I suppose we should be happy that the descent into the third world will be "long" and slow."

I wasn't in Washington on election night. Then again I didn't need to be to know that Hitchens is talking rot here. The immigrants - legal and less legal - in my old neighbourhood don't, you know, have any desire to reduce the United States to third world status. What would be the point of leaving the third world, if that were the case? On the contrary, it's precisely the idea of America that draws them from El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Albania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Korea and so on. They celebrated Obama's victory because a) they'd Democrats and b) for multi-coloured, polyglot America his election confirms the possibilities of the American Dream.

It's fashionable, of course, to deny the existence of any such dream but the mere fact that not everyone can, even with hard work and good fortune, make it does not invalidate the wider, more general point. After all, the existence of President Barack Hussein Obama rather makes the case for you. So the joyous street parties on U St and in Mount Pleasant were celebrating the idea of America, not saluting its imminent demise. This is not a difficult point to grasp.

Also, one has to admire Mr Hitchens' ability to determine someone's citizenship just by the colour of their skin. Then again, I guess h thinks the only "real" Americans are white and Christian and that Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips, is another casualty of this election season.

*Actually, it's 16th St that runs north from the White House and to the extent that there's a frontier between black and white Washington, it's moved east to 10th St or so now. But why quibble?