I like Alex Massie and Daniel Larison's contributions to the whole "does the South hold American politics hostage" debate that Paul Waldman and Kevin Drum kicked off, largely because - as you might expect - I didn't find the original complaint particularly persuasive. Drum's suggestion that "most Southerners just flatly refuse to vote for anyone who comes from north of the Mason-Dixon Line" is a particularly self-defeating form of liberal condescension: It's the same line of identity-politics thinking that convinced certain Democrats that the way to win over the hawkish rubes out in the heartland was to nominate a veteran for President in '04, and have a lot of veterans at their convention, and talk a lot about "reporting for duty." Of course Southerners are somewhat more likely to vote for Southerners than non-Southerners, everything else being equal, and maybe they're somewhat more likely to vote for one of their own than a Californian or a New England Yankee would be. (It wouldn't be surprising if a region that's considerably more culturally particularist than the rest of America cared more about, well, cultural particularism in assessing Presidential candidates than the rest of the country does.) And sure, Waldman's probably right that John Edwards "can go to places where Clinton, and to an extent Obama, can't." But not that many places. Remember that Edwards ran for President in '04 in part because he was probably going to lose his N.C. Senate seat anyway, and he didn't do Kerry any good in the Carolinas in the general election. Indeed, you could argue that he owes his current prominence almost entirely to liberal identity politics: Had he hailed from Oregon, say, instead of tobacco country, there's little chance that Kerry would have picked him as a running mate in '04, and even less chance that he'd be considered one of the "big three" Democratic contenders this time around.
"Most Southerners just flatly refuse to vote for anyone who comes from north of the Mason-Dixon Line." Sure. Except that Southerners voted for Ronald Reagan over the Georgian Jimmy Carter; outside of the Border South, they voted for Bob Dole, a Kansan, over the Arkansas Bill Clinton; and I'm willing to bet they'd vote for Romney or McCain or even Giuliani, Noo Yawker though he is, over the drawling, folksy, down-home Edwards. To the extent that they hold American politics hostage, they do it the old-fashioned way - by voting for the candidates who share their views and values, and against the ones who don't.
It is the case, I think, that the South - perhaps for the same reason it produces better literature - produces more appealing politicians than other regions of the country, and as a result finds itself overrepresented on the national stage. If you were drawing up an ideal Republican candidate for President, for instance, he'd look like Tommy Thompson: The successful, Catholic governor of a Midwestern swing state. But Tommy Thompson is charmless and clumsy and going nowhere, whereas the far less accomplished Fred Thompson is smoother than smooth and rising to the top of the polls - and his Southern-ness, and poor Tommy Thompson's lack thereof, has at least something to do with it.
But it isn't Dixie's fault that her sons and daughters are just flat-out more charming than the rest of America. Don't hate the player ...
"Remember that Edwards ran for President in '04 in part because he was probably going to lose his N.C. Senate seat anyway"
That's dubious. Erskine Bowles lost a tight race to Richard Burr in 2004 (52-47). If Edwards had concentrated on retaining his seat and not run for president, he would have had the advantages both of incumbency and the formation of a 1-2 Democratic punch with the governor, Mike Easley, who won re-election that year by over 13 points.
You also wrote, "To the extent that they hold American politics hostage, they do it the old-fashioned way - by voting for the candidates who share their views and values, and against the ones who don't."
This ignores the significant effort made by conservatives, both from the South and from outside it, to claim the South as the home of the authentic Americans. As Tom Wolfe said of those out-of-touch souls who are not fortunate enough to have been born or raised in a red state, "They literally do not set foot in the United States. We live in New York in one of the two parenthesis states. They're usually called blue states--they're not blue states, the states on the coast. They're parenthesis states--the entire country lives in between." That little gem comes from Jonathan Chait's piece on red state snobbery from some time back.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060403&s=diarist040306
By the way, there's a line in I Am Charlotte Simmons where Wolfe even dismisses people in the South who live in bigger cities like Charlotte or Raleigh. Apparently you not only have to be from the South to count as authentically American in Wolfe's eyes, but a part of the South sufficiently rural to produce such doe-eyed maidens of virtue like Ms. Simmons.
Posted by Ashish George | June 22, 2007 12:58 AM