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January 25, 2004
It's not Kosher
Imagine that how you felt about the war is Position A. And how you feel about postwar reconstruction is Position B.
The mainstream media focus relentlessly on Position A and just assumes everyone more or less feels the same about Position B.
But what if the reverse is true. What if an overwhelming majority of Americans supported the war to some degree but have great reservations about postwar reconstruction.
I was talking to an older relative when I first clued in to this possibility. He told me he supported the war, but didn't see any reason why we should be hanging around, risking American lives, to help out our enemies. This opinion is a bit appalling -- humanitarianism is the CW and this kind of xenophobic anti-foreign opinion is seen as either some extremist opinion or relic of days past.
But I'm prepared to believe that it's not. And that candidates who supported the war but voted against the $87 billion price tag for reconstruction will find that there is a silent majority that feels the same way.
It's not as if it hasn't happened before. Before the 2002 governor's election in Georgia, you'd have been laughed out of the offices of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution if you'd said the confederate flag controversy was about to boot Roy Barnes out of office.
But many of my rural Georgia friends were warning that exactly that was going on. Atlanta media elites on both sides of the political spectrum just couldn't believe that controversy over the confederate flag could be the deciding factor in the election. I looked at the raw election data a few months later and pretty easily concluded that the flag had made a huge difference.
So I guess what I'm saying is watch out. The CW may not be wrong, but it may be measuring something totally irrelevent because editors, pundits and bloggers have decided that something else is off the table when really it could be the deciding factor.
Posted by Chris at January 25, 2004 07:48 PM
Comments
Excellent, if slightly creepy point. It would explain a lot why Bush seems to be running to the left of Kucinich on Iraq, abandoning Iraq by July 1rst regardless of the consequences.
Posted by: Jon at January 25, 2004 08:54 PM
You know, being an Edards fan I assume he voted against the $87,000,000,000 for the right(er) reason. I didn't support the March invasion, but did support the $87 billion. Though I could justify voting against it on the grounds that Bush would just tack it on to the deficit, and maybe if congress said no he'd be forced to take it out of the tax cut. Edwards only explanation I've heard is that he didn't want to give the president a "blank check", which I fit into my rationale, but as long as he doesn't talk about it too much he could easily let voters who feel as you described (pro-war anti reconstruction) assume he's with them. It's good strategy, but it feels dirty (if they are trying to do that).
Back when the public was uspporting the war, did they believe it was going to be cheap, or did they really really just not care?
Posted by: Wes at January 25, 2004 09:51 PM
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz all thought we'd have a greatly reduced force in Iraq by now, and that things would be going swimmingly. They aren't, and I doubt we're going to be out of there by July. I don't think it's going to be the deciding factor in November. But it is going to be a running sore on Bush's backside.
Posted by: Paul at January 25, 2004 10:25 PM
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