Noted Here and There ...

by Cliopatria

4th of July celebrations last week had economists Brad Delong and Tyler Cowan playing the parlor game of alternate history. Eugene Volokh, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson joined the discussion. Not being historians, they didn't mind playing out a very long string. If all British North America had remained a part of the Empire, they suggest, slavery might have ended earlier here than it did and maybe there would have been no World War I or World War II. Jefferson added a poignant note:"We might have been a free and great people together ...." Nonetheless, on balance, Delong, Cowan, and Volokh did manage to come down in favor of the American Revolution. The Founding Fathers and Mothers can rest easy now.

Over at Rebunk, Tom Bruscino has a fine essay about the celebration of the 4th of July in Bristol, Rhode Island, which has the oldest Independence Day celebration traditions in the United States. If you are not reading Rebunk, you should be.

The new Common-Place offers a cornucopia of goodies: B. Scott Crawford, who posts occasionally at HNN, discusses the use of John Singleton Copley's art in the classroom, Richard Bell writes about researching suicide in American history, Stephen Mihm surveys campaigns against counterfeit money, Mia Bay reviews Edward P. Jones, The Known World, and, ah-h-h, Andrew Epstein, cough, says, gag:"History Took Hold Of My Throat"!

If you survived that last one, don't miss Scott McLemee's article for the Chronicle of Higher Education on the National Endowment for the Arts' report on the fairly dramatic decline in reading in the United States. The story is covered less adequately in the Washington Post. The decline in reading appears to affect all age groups, ethnicities, and social classes. At Critical Mass, Erin O'Connor hosts lively discussions of the findings here and here.

Finally, Reid McKee at Moteworthy and David Beito at Liberty and Power report a scandal in Mississippi Democratic Party politics. The state Insurance Commissioner and the Secretary of State apparently sought a white person to take over as chairman of the state's Democratic Party. Via a link Beito and McKee provide, you can hear the Insurance Commissioner acknowledging in a radio interview that they intended to select a white person to chair the committee and an African American to be its vice chair. I am less inclined than McKee and Beito (and my colleague, Jonathan Dresner, in comments at Liberty and Power) to be outraged by this. I suggested to Beito that there is nothing any more insidious going on here than what you used to find in ticket balancing in New York's Democratic Party. The logic was that if you had an Irish candidate for Governor, an Italian and a Jew would be nominated for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. It isn't pretty. It isn't any longer legal to operate openly that way. But the reality is that, if the Democratic Party cannot make inroads into the Republican monopoly of white male voters in the deep South, it will continue to be a minority party for years to come. As recently as 20 years ago, Georgia's congressional delegation was made up exclusively of white male Democrats. In the 1990s, white male Democrats disappeared altogether from Georgia's congressional delegation. That's progress, of course, for African American and female representation, but the trade-off was a congressional delegation that was heavily white, male, and Republican. The question really is, do you want a competitive two party system in the deep South?

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Richard Henry Morgan - 7/12/2004

France poses an interesting analogue. Even given the radicalism of the French Revolution, France didn't end slavery in the colonies when it ended it in France proper, but only when it lost St Domingue -- and then promptly reinstated slavery when it regained it.

Given the economic opportunities to the Empire derived from American slavery, I think it a bit sanguine to think that slavery would have ended sooner had Britain retained America. I'm not sure of the usefulness of generalizing from British experience elsewhere in the Empire, to the larger question of America.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/12/2004

This being the case, I will expect to have your entire empathy when I attempt and fail at historical logic.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/12/2004

I'll have to think about the difference between a culture and an ethnicity with regard to Southerners. It seems to me that "regional culture" is a much better category for Southern Whites than is "ethnicity" but it would depend on the precise definition. There certainly is a tribal aspect to "Southernism" that defies simple regionalism.

This is one of those cases where the anthropological and sociological language breaks down. The vestigial/nascent nationalism complicates things, too.

My advisor, Albert Craig, once wrote "At times history is so illogical that only tautologies are completely true." The South Is, and (White) Southerners Are, and that may be all we can meaningfully say about them.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/12/2004

Regarding Oscar's p. s., if "Southern whites" aren't a distinctive ethnic group, we'll have to do a lot of rewriting of what Yankees have said about us. More seriously, this is a particular example of what I think is more generally true: that Northern social constructions have been pluralistic for quite some time and that, by comparison, Southern dualistic constructions have appeared backward or quaint. As Hispanic populations are increasingly important in the South, the old black/ white dualisms are less persuasive down here. But, in states like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, they are still powerful realities. Georgia will hold its primary elections in the next 10 days. For the first time _ever_, African Americans will cast the majority of votes in the state's Democratic primary. That isn't necessarily a function of a healthy and competative two party system.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/12/2004

Yeah, I do, at least at the "nominee" stage. Nominees should restrict themselves to selecting their campaign staff, which does not include the party apparatus itself.

And, in a further demonstration of my irredeemable idealism, I actually think that elected officials should distance themselves from party apparatus, not entwine themselves with it: having been elected, they have a responsibility to all their constituents, even the ones who voted against them. And the number of party-line votes in state and national bodies is almost as disgusting as the incumbency reelection rate and the gerrymandering which goes along with it.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/11/2004

David, If ideology trumps race, how do you explain why African Americans are almost monolithically Democrats? Conservative values are too prevalent among African Americans to explain that. It's ethnic group identity, isn't it? Isn't there a deep suspicion that Powell, Rice, et al, are turncoats, not to be trusted.

David T. Beito - 7/11/2004

We pretty much agree but picking Rice as veep could not be legitimately consdiered tokenism, though, as you note, some may make that charge.

Putting a black woman a heartbeat away from the presidency would be the complete opposite of tokenism. It is her conservative views that would doom her with black voters, not her race.

Robert KC Johnson - 7/11/2004

Dems certainly have engaged in coded appeals to race, as well--though with less frequency lately. Gore's use of the Willie Horton image didn't help him at all among Dems.

Agree with you completely that if Bush nominated Rice, it wouldn't make much of a difference with black voters, partly because it would come across as tokenism. I think that's the real problem for the MS Dems--their simply naming whites to top party positions won't help them get white votes, because most white voters in the state disagree with the party's message.

David T. Beito - 7/11/2004

At bottom, the Texas redistricting had more to do with an old fashioned scramble for votes rather than race IMHO. The GOP made common cause with black congressmen to gerrymander those districts because it knows that the voters in those districts will vote Democratic no matter what it does. If those voters had been equally loyal white Democrats, I suspect it would have done the same thing e.g. confine them to safe Democratic districts thus strengthening GOP incumbants.

The GOP has run conservative black candidates in several southern and border states, including Alabama and Maryland, and they don't get black votes. Just recently, one of the longest serving blacks in the legislature has defected to the GOP in a heavily black district. If he doesn't go down in flames, I may reconsider my position.

As to coded appeals to race, the Democrats have also cleverly played that game. Kennedy ran a clever campaign in 1960 that kept such hard-core racists as Jim Eastland and Richard Russell in his camp. Carter widely publicized a picture of one of his primary opponents posing with a black man. He knew that voters would understand!

It was Al Gore, after all, who gave us the revolving Door/Willie Horton ad and Bill Clinton made a highly publicized special trip back to Arkansas during the primaries just to sign the order frying Rickie Ray Rector in the electric chair, a mentally retarded black man.

I am not arguing that race doesn't matter today only that on the whole, however, ideology now trumps race. Again, lets assume that George Bush picked Condeleeza Rice to be his veep. I would bet you dollars to donuts that it would have little effect on the black vote.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/11/2004

I suspect that it moves both ways. Do you object to a titular spokesman for his party (a nominee for president or for governor) naming someone with whom she or he is compatible as her or his choice to direct the DNC or the state party?

Oscar Chamberlain - 7/11/2004

That comment caused me to reflect on antebellum political parties.

Even in that hey-day of convention organization in the 19th century, parties tended not to be bottom-up organizations.

The core of power for most purposes was at the state level. The national party was a coalition of state parties.

The relationship between state and local (usually county) party conventions was sometimes difficult. Certainly the state-level leaders could not be dictators over the local conventions, but local political leaders followed the state leadership on most issues. In particular they supported the state and national-level ticket. (The signs breakdown of discipline in that area in the late 1840s and early 1850s foreshadowed the party reallignment that soon followed.)

However, state and local party organizations could and did go separate ways when local concerns over specific issues outweighed party loyalty.

PS Concerning the Mississippi Democratic leadership, I understand the quandery but I dislike the means. However, Ralph's comparison to ethnic ticket balancing does raise a question: are southern whites a distinct ethnic group?

Jonathan Dresner - 7/11/2004

Who said anything about meetings? We've had reliable postal service in this country for over two centuries; public-access cable for televised statements. And, now, the internet, web and e-mail, as platforms for information sharing and vote collection.

Why shouldn't a party take its direction mostly from its membership?

Robert KC Johnson - 7/11/2004

I think that Tom DeLay would disagree with the statement that "politics today are primarily driven by ideological factors not skin color"--the Texas redistricting was designed not only to maximize GOP representation, but to wipe out white Democratic congressmen, so that the face of the Texas Democracy would be entirely Hispanic or black. Despite the example of JC Watts or a few unsuccessful GOP candidates in GA, the southern Republican Party was built on coded appeals to race, and since the strategy has worked, there's no reason for the GOP to drop it now.

As for the Democrats' need to address economic issues to win in the South--what have they been doing for the last 40 years? This certainly was LBJ's strategy, and that, to varying degrees, of every Dem nominee since 1964. Polling suggests that many lower-income southern whites base their votes on cultural factors rather than economic ones. So too, of course, do lots of upper-middle-class suburbanites in states like Illinois or New Jersey--one reason why these states have shifted from evenly divided to strongly Dem in presidential elections. It might be--as Kerry hinted earlier in the campaign, but then quickly backed away from--that the Dems should admit that they can't obtain majorities in most Southern states without adopting positions that would alienate too many votes elsewhere. But they certainly cvan't be faulted for not stressing economic issues enough in the South.

David T. Beito - 7/11/2004

Jonathan is exactly right. Politics today are primarily driven by ideological factors not skin color. Hence, the GOP in Mississippi could pick a conservative black as chair and the Democratics could pick a liberal white, and the resulting voter alignments would probably be about the same.

A case in point in the national level is Kerry/Bush. Kerry has a lily white staff and has appointed an over 40 white guy while Dubya has appointed blacks to power postions in his cabinet. Come November, however, it won't make any difference.

This kind of ethnic quota for party chair will only be seen by both blacks and whites as a gimmick or, worse, an insult.

Finally, I don't believe that any party today would either openly our secretly reserve spots on their tickets for Jews or Italians. Now....they make consider these ethnic affiliations as factors but that is not nearly the same.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/11/2004

The new chairman of Mississippi's Democratic Party executive committee was elected by the committee in the usual manner provided. Would you _really_ expect the chairman of the Democratic or the Republican National Committee to be elected by a process that began with precinct meeting elections of delegate/representatives all across the nation? It's simply not a reasonable expectation. You don't even want to go to all the meetings your form of democracy would entail.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/11/2004

I know you consider me far too idealistic on this point, but it seems to me that the way for the Mississippi Democrats to regain their membership and electoral strength is by addressing issues that lots of people care about in persuasive and effective ways. Appealing to ethnic groups by including their representatives as a shorthand for saying "we take your issues seriously" is a short-term tactic that rarely actually addresses issues usefully.

Moreover, top-down, back-room selection is the wrong way to run a party: if the party can't develop a more effective and open process, then it deserves to wither, because practices like this have contributed to the decline of party identification and participation.