I'm Voting For The Guy Even Though I Don't Like Him

I'm referring, it might surprise you to learn, to John Edwards. After the vice-presidential debate, Mickey Kaus floated a theory that in fact had occurred to me instantaneously upon hearing some of Edwards' remarks:

Alert reader S.H. clues me in on the obvious purpose of Edwards' creepy 'congratulations on your gay daughter' ploy: it was "a very thinly disguised way of letting Reagan Democrats (and other conservative-leaning members of the electorate) know that Cheney has a lesbian daughter." In other words, a cynical, premeditated appeal to prejudice. You can say it's an appeal to prejudice that's justly deserved, because it turns the Republicans' bigotry against them. But that assumes opposition to gay marriage is now the same thing as general prejudice against gays. Edwards was playing to the latter, uglier sentiment. It's still creepy. ... Just his cold confidence that he could pull the trick off without seeming evil (indeed, while pretending to be friendly) is creepy. ...

When Edwards spoke about Cheney's gay daughter, there was something to the slight emphasis he put on the word "gay" that immediately set off alarms for me. Up until that point, in all of Cheney's public appearances, there's either been an enforced radio silence concerning his daughter's homosexuality, or else it's been couched in euphemistic language. Edwards intent in praising Cheney's love of his gay daughter was twofold: 1) it was tantamount to saying, "Hey voters in southern Ohio and Missouri. This guy's daughter is a faggot." 2) it was an attempt to remind blue-staters about how tolerant the Democrats are [even though Kerry won't come out and say that he's actually secular and has no problem with gay marriage--ed.] [Because he doesn't have the balls to take a principled stand and lose--F.]

Edwards' surreptitiously hateful comments about Mary Cheney are a synechdoche for his approach to the vice-presidential debate and to campaigning in general: rather than construct a case for his election through evidentiary presentation, data interpretation, etc., Edwards attempts to persuade voters by direct appeal to passion and sentimentality.* As Edwards proved here, such appeal is at least as easily aimed at base and malicious biases as at loftier ideals.

Who else campaigns this way? The clothes-less emperor, of course. And so does Zell Miller. So did Bill Clinton. So did Jimmy Carter. So did George Wallace. So did Strom Thurmond. Edwards adds a rosy complexion and perfect teeth to the cancerous, venom-engorged lesion that is the Southern style of American politics. (Pace, Insta-wonder. This is what Jacksonianism means if it means anything at all---this and not isolationist hawkishness.) Even if you don't take the view, as I do, that humanity is utterly lacking an inherent moral compass, but still acknowledge (how could you fail to) the enormous potential of humans to commit unspeakable atrocity against one another, then you'll surely recognize how repugnant and dangerous is the sort of demagoguery by which men like Bush and Edwards get elected. There's a reason why the Karl Rove school of campaigning is so successful.

Say what you will about Cheney or about Kerry, (and I readily admit that they too engage in demagoguery), they at least leave open the possibility of factual rebuttal of their arguments. Bush and Edwards, by contrast, make cases that are assessable not rationally, but only meta-ethically. Jacksonianism, if it must be called that (and the non-southerner Richard Nixon was a master of the style) is a blight on our politics. To borrow a line, America can do better.

*David Hume argues rather convincingly in the Treatise on Human Nature that the only means by which moral persuasion can occur is by appeal to passion. But even if Hume is right, I don't think it justifies Edwards' methodology. Consider the contrast with Kerry's presentation. Kerry offers a set of data, D, that purports to be an incomplete summary and interpretation of the failures of the Bush administration. Voters are left to reinterpret D for themselves, specifically, to discern which propositions contained within D are true and which are not. If a voter comes to the conclusion that one or more data points, of which he was previously unaware or uncertain, proves that some ethical commitment of his is in conflict with Bush administration policy, then the voter might very well be dissuaded from voting for Bush. Kerry would have appealed to the voter's passion to persuade him morally, but only by allowing the voter to rationally clarify his own moral system and its relation to Bush policy. That's legitimate moral persuasion. Illegitimate persuasion is the Republicans' attempt, sadly piggybacked by John Edwards, to influence voters based on an arbitrary prejudice against homosexuals. Reason acts neither as a clarifying nor amplifying force, nor, indeed at all. Pure passion, unguided by reason, is the target of such a campaign. [It speaks well of liberals, but also helps explain why they so often lose, that they are unwilling to conduct their politics in such a fashion, and that they do indeed reject the support of bigots.--ed.]