« Reportage | Main | Metro Policy » Fifteen Years 'Till His Liver Exploded05 Jan 2008 01:14 pm Michael Barone observes that "Every 16 years--in 1976, 1992 and now in 2008--American voters have seemed less interested in experience and credentials and more interested in a new face unconnected to the current political establishment" and then goes on to wonder "What can explain this 16-year itch?" I'll endorse the Nyhan hypothesis: it's random chance. This is an extreme example, but a strikingly large quantity of political journalism seems focused on this kind of silly analytical error. Comments (29)
Postulate #2: 16 years is roughly the incubation time for power to corrupt absolutely, as measured by American voting cycles. 
Yes, Michael, the election of George W. Bush in 2000 was all about experience and credentials. You're so right. "I'm not from the Washington establishment" has been a reliable applause line for any political candidate at any time for decades. It's not like you only hear it once every 16 years.
Nice NOFX reference in the title.
Matt is right in noting the silliness of Barone's analysis. I wonder why Americans wanted changed in 1972. Maybe Vietnam had something to do with it. 1976? Watergate. 1992? It was the economy, stupid. And now? It's Bush. Barack Obama can thank his lucky stars that Bush has been such a crashing disaster as president. Bush has set the stage for the rise of an inspiring orator who can sell the idea of change. His inability to inspire combined with his ability to screw up puts someone like Obama in an excellent position. People seem especially skeptical of technocratic reformers like HRC these days, and it's because Bush's behavior has discredited the entire political system and--in a sense--radicalized a new cohort of voters. Thanks, George.
How did Barone miss 1960? If it invalidated his "analysis" it'd make sense, but JFK fits his "analysis"! Does he not even know what happened in 1960?
How about this little tidbit: With the exception of the 1968 and 1976 elections, the party that won the White House seems to have an indirect relationship to the decade: 00, 04, 08: Republican 60, 64: Democratic 80, 84, 88: Republican Like the 16-year argument in this post, this is, I'm sure, random chance. Then again, the country does seem to identify itself, in large part, by "decades."
What exactly were Reagan's experience and credentials for that matter? His experience playing roles in WWII movies and sci-fi movies that featured missile defenses?
It doesn't even rise to the level of random chance, since there isn't even an accidental pattern to discern. Bill Clinton had been assigned the Democratic convention keynote address in 1988 and was considered the designated next star waiting in the wings. (The address we all recall as a miserable, long-winded bomb.) I can see "new face", but I don't understand at all how he merits the label "unconnected to the current political establishment." I suppose you could say it represents the culminating changing of the guard to the "new Democrat" movement that had been growing for some time. But in that case, you would also have to include Reagan's 1980 election, which represented the final success of the outsider conservative movement that had been growing since Goldwater. And there goes the 16 year itch. You're right about the sillyness of this kind of political (and economic) journalism, in which superstitious soothsayers reach for deep historical patterns by magical induction from absurdly small samples. It goes right up there with the inane statistics style of sports journalism, apparently aimed at the moronically deranged compulsive gamblers in the audience. Things like this: "No Bengals team has ever beaten a division rival by double figures following a bye week occurring during a year whose last two digits sum to a prime number."
It's not the years, it's the events and the people involved with them. Years don't exist in a separate analytical category from the events that occur within them. It's the events, the concerns that go along with them, and the laws that affect voter participation that affect who votes and how they vote.
Barack Obama can thank his lucky stars that Bush has been such a crashing disaster as president Good comment overall, Unreal Veal, but this line is too narrow. The Democratic Party owes every advantage it's got to Bush -- it's done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve its almost certain '08 sweep.
So he's saying that America went for experience and credentials vs. "new face" in 1980????? (as well as, someone already noted, 2000). I, however, have discerned an actual pattern. America goes for a rich white guy every four years.
I at least give credit to Barone for pointing out the "limited credentials" of Hillary Clinton running as the "experience" candidate. I'm still stunned by the fact that so many people can seriously associate Hillary Clinton with some image of "more experienced". (And the 'health care' initiative -- how much deep experience did it take to conjoin an initiative planned in Jackson Hole by the 5 biggest insurers and HMO conglomerates, which then goes on to prompt a revolt by the slightly smaller and medium sized insurance companies? And later to be portrayed inaccurately as some sort of government / business fight versus a giant business / slightly less giant business fight?) It's absolute nonsense except in the sense that vast numbers of people can fervently believe all sorts of silly things, such as that John McCain is some sort of independent, rebellious "maverick", or that Colin Powell for a time represented the absolute height of moderate bipartisan national security wisdom. If HRC weren't running, the presence of so many Bill Clinton advisers on Obama's team would probably have the media designating him as the establishment candidate who represented experience (versus of course the dangerous crazy angry Bolshevik John Edwards). Who knows, perhaps in the punditry world they view Joe Lieberman as automatically "experienced" on foreign policy because he continually espouses ravingly loony militaristic opinions -- which, apparently in U.S. establishment politics, automatically guarantees you a position on the "serious" & "experienced" scale.
To Barone, having been governor of California or Texas, with no political experience prior to those stints, counts as "experienced and credentialed", while having been governor of Arkansas or Georgia means you are a neophyte insurgent outsider. Or maybe the difference is simply that the "experienced, credentialed" governors were Republicans, while the ostensible rookies were Democrats. Mark Schmitt had a good piece about Barone a couple of weeks ago; short version: Barone is a total Republican hack.
It's pretty funny that he sees a "pattern" that has only held in two cases (he explicitly excludes 1960, and while things are headed in that direction in '08 the election isn't over yet). If trend-spotting is this easy, I have a better one: 1896: McKinley Noticing a pattern here? Yes, every 16 years America elects a president who presides over a war and dies (or, in Wilson's case, is incapacitated) in office. I'm still trying to figure out how Hoover avoided this curse--maybe his focus on harming the economy left him with no time to get into a war and then die. The election of Jimmy Carter broke this pattern, and Bill Clinton also avoided it. Unfortunately American politics moves in cycles, and if Obama wins the election it will signal the beginning of a new Progressive Era. So we can expect Obama to follow in the footsteps of the president whose election ushered in the original Progressive Era: William McKinley. So look for Obama to invade Cuba before being assassinated by a Polish-American anarchist.
I agree with Unreal Veal. It's pretty obvious that Barone the GOP hack doesn't want to discuss the unspoken commonality - disenchantment with the GOP, either born of its incompetence, indifference to growing social problems, ethical squalor, or some combination thereof. Memo to Mike: if your party behaves like a collection of villainous malefactors or a bunch of know-nothing jackasses, the elctorate tends to want change. This counts as serious political analysis by one of Our Serious Conservative Thinkers? Jesus.
"Mark Schmitt had a good piece about Barone a couple of weeks ago; short version: Barone is a total Republican hack." "The Democratic Party owes every advantage it's got to Bush -- it's done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve its almost certain '08 sweep." "...we can expect Obama to follow in the footsteps of the president whose election ushered in the original Progressive Era: William McKinley. So look for Obama to invade Cuba before being assassinated by a Polish-American anarchist..." It is a weirdly American thing to focus on decades. Most non-American historians (i.e. the majority) think about broad-based change and movements. Think of the annaliste school. It is the strange province of Americans to think that history revolves around decadanal demarcations. Think about this: "The 60s", as we understand them, really didn't begin until 1964-65. Why? VIETNAM. It's the events, people.
If Barone has a remotely plausible thesis here, it's something like this: In the absence of outside stimuli, scandals, wars, strong personalities, generational shifts, demographic shifts, and technological change, the electorate changes governments periodically with a time scale of 16 years. To support this claim, he uses two or three data points and makes no attempt to deal with competing effects. Fascinating. By the way, Matt, I think you should adopt NOFX the way Whiskey Fire adopted Guided by Voices.
I don't know whether to commend or condemn Barone for omitting reference to 2000. I suppose he could be commended if this omissions signals his acknowledgment that Bush wasn't actually chosen by voters (aside from 5 on the USSC), but somehow I think that's unlikely...
Dear The Atlantic, Please fix your HTTP error 500 problem so comments don't get double and triple posted all the time. Love,
Plus, Bill Clinton in 1992 was hardly unconnected to the "political establishment." He had been laying the groundwork for a run for years, and had all kinds of IOUs he could call in. Perhaps what Barone means to see is Clinton wasn't nationally famous. Also, how does counting back to 1976 justify use of the phrase "every sixteen years?" I was under the deep impression the county's political history stretched back to the 1790s. Finally, shouldn't he wait and see who wins before formulating his theory? It's going to look especially absurd if Clinton or McCain should prevail. Barone is the personification of inanity.
Only Barone can talk about unexperienced candidates and then leave out the most unexperienced in Eisenhower.
The Democratic Party owes every advantage it's got to Bush -- it's done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve its almost certain '08 sweep. The party has done a little more than nothing--not being batshit insane ought to count for something . . .
"It is a weirdly American thing to focus on decades. Most non-American historians (i.e. the majority) think about broad-based change and movements. Think of the annaliste school. It is the strange province of Americans to think that history revolves around decadanal demarcations. Think about this: "The 60s", as we understand them, really didn't begin until 1964-65. Why? VIETNAM. It's the events, people.
Fuckin' Boomers. It's all their fault. Well, not completely, but mostly. Part of it is also probably due to the rise of modern popular culture as a cultural demarcator, which simply wasn't possible before the introduction of television into every home (the Moon Landing, JFK's assassination, Chicago 1968, etc.) and the combination of both the spread of record players and a generational divide in music tastes. The boomers' parents had movies and such, which helped to usher in the modern pop culture contours, but it was still being built technologically. I think it is fair to say that previous generations (at least up until the end of the 19th-century/early 20th-century) had little physically manifested popular culture outside of (dime store) novels that can really tell us much about those times.
The Democratic Party owes every advantage it's got to Bush -- it's done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve its almost certain '08 sweep. Don't discount the power in doing nothing. Sure, I would have liked a good cleansing round of hearings on the various actions of this Administration. I would have loved for Congress to have had to guts to just say no to funding operations in Iraq, come veto or filibuster. If Cheney had been a realistic possibility as the next President, it would have been a patriotic duty to impeach his okole while he was still VP. However, the Democratic leaders on the Hill realized that their majority was slim, and decided to keep their appointment calendars clear for the '08 elections.
When I was a kid, it was observed that, since 1840, presidents elected in years ending in zero tended to die in office. Fortunately for Reagan (and Dubya), John Hinckley's bad aim seems to have removed that jinx forever. Hey, that makes as much sense as Barone.
In contrast to Barone's fatuities- Ann Coulter's non-transgender cousin Laura Ingraham has actually been making valid and interesting points lately on FOX. It's like she decided she couldn't continue in the great tradition of Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, and the dung heap of other third-string Rush progeny. Unlike say O'Reilly she's actually not a pasty-faced, hapless Lothario idiot.
1976: Post-Watergate It seems that Americans need to be reminded every sixteen years that Republicans suck dick.
Don't forget 1960 - Kennedy after 8 years of Ike.
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Heads in the Sand
Postulate #2: 16 years is roughly the incubation time for power to corrupt absolutely, as measured by American voting cycles.
Posted by Sam Hutcheson | January 5, 2008 1:25 PM