Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The new Jesse scale
Back when I was an undergrad, a professor I had referred to the "Jesse scale" of American politics, which was that basically all major American political figures lay on the left-right spectrum somewhere between Jesse Jackson, on the left, to Jesse Helms, on the right. I guess those days are over, now that Helms is looking like a swing voter:
Quoted from Atrios. To be perfectly clear, I don't think Jesse's less conservative than he used to be, just that the Republicans in the White House and in Congress are so conservative they would have fallen off the scale in the 1980s or early 1990s.
FYI, from a certain perspective, popular in the study of American politics, statement's like Jesse's criticism of Bush are crucial pieces of info for the electorate. If you are a middle of the road voter (the kind who decides elections), you don't learn much when you hear that liberals oppose a conservative policy. What else is new? You can't easily tell what, as a moderate, you would think if you bothered to do the research (and that's not going to happen, of course).
On the other hand, if a true conservative criticizes a policy as too conservative, even for him, that's another matter. You can be pretty sure that the policy would offend your moderate sensibilities even more. The information content of a conservative's criticism of conservatives is much higher, from the perspective of mostly uninformed voters.
Of course, this is part of the reason why the Bush people go into character assasination mode when a former insider criticizes the administration. Because if the public ever realizes that few serious people on the right buy the administrations stories, it won't even be close in November.
"I would not have voted for [President Bush's] tax cut, based on what I know. . . . There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit. . . . Too often presidents do things that don't end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won't tell them their actions stink on ice."
Former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), in a recent interview with Business North Carolina magazine.
Quoted from Atrios. To be perfectly clear, I don't think Jesse's less conservative than he used to be, just that the Republicans in the White House and in Congress are so conservative they would have fallen off the scale in the 1980s or early 1990s.
FYI, from a certain perspective, popular in the study of American politics, statement's like Jesse's criticism of Bush are crucial pieces of info for the electorate. If you are a middle of the road voter (the kind who decides elections), you don't learn much when you hear that liberals oppose a conservative policy. What else is new? You can't easily tell what, as a moderate, you would think if you bothered to do the research (and that's not going to happen, of course).
On the other hand, if a true conservative criticizes a policy as too conservative, even for him, that's another matter. You can be pretty sure that the policy would offend your moderate sensibilities even more. The information content of a conservative's criticism of conservatives is much higher, from the perspective of mostly uninformed voters.
Of course, this is part of the reason why the Bush people go into character assasination mode when a former insider criticizes the administration. Because if the public ever realizes that few serious people on the right buy the administrations stories, it won't even be close in November.
