The Law of Politics is the Law of the Pendulum

So wrote Walter Lippman perhaps 100 years ago.  The pendulum swings back and forth just as did the metronome on my mother’s piano.  We have had dramatic changes in American politics in recent decades and they will continue.

Anyone who has ever studied politics knows that economic issues are at the very core of our national political discussion.  Whoever is in office wears the bad times.

Looking back, we can see that after the inflation which followed World War I, there was a Republican sweep in the presidential election of 1920 and a Republican dominance of our politics until the Great Depression a decade later.  In 1946, after a dozen years of sweeping Democratic majorities, the Republicans captured both Houses of Congress; Harry Truman later labeled it as the “Do Nothing 80th.”  Once again, inflation was the real issue after World War II.

President Ford was a good and decent man but could not survive in 1976 because inflation was in double digits.  Jimmy Carter, another good and decent man, was clobbered in 1980 by Ronald Reagan in part because interest rates were very high in response to inflation. The identity politics which has dominated the Democratic Party is recent years has overshadowed the reality that pocketbook issues impact every American.

I knew we were in trouble when an Uber driver of Haitian heritage told us he was voting for Trump because he didn’t like all the new people coming into the country.  I think he said he had been in the U.S. for about 20 years. [He also complained about his auto insurance having been increased, as if the President could do very much about that.]  We have to spend more time listening to Haitian Uber drivers and less time listening to highly educated people in Washington, D.C. sipping chardonnay. 

There are other factors at play which many have ignored.  Sax, Reeves and Haidt have all written, with significant documentation, of the declining position of young men in American life. They are not disciplined. They do poorly taking exams. They are not getting into good schools. No wonder many of them are attracted to a candidate endorsed by Hulk Hogan, the poster child for toxic masculinity.  It should come as no surprise that men between 18 and 29 favored Donald Trump by 56%.

We also have to remember the fluidity of the unaligned. The young can never be relied upon around election time because they have yet to establish their roots or their identity.  I found out the hard way when running for office that younger people often do not vote. In 1973 I had a poll worker stand at Ward 21, Precinct 2, right near the B.U. campus where over 500 had voted, nearly all of them for George McGovern, the prior November. He came back with a sunburn and proudly announced that I had come in second place in the multi-candidate field.  I said “That’s great, Randy.”  He said “Yes, six people voted; the Socialist got 4 and you got 3.” That is unlikely to change, especially given the ability to move easily and frequently, as so many young people do.

Perhaps some of the privileged feel that, since they live in a jurisdiction where cannabis and abortion are legal, where they live very nicely on a six-figure income and can order dinner to be delivered via an electric bicycle whenever they want, that there is no real reason to be concerned about those who are not as well situated.  Years ago, we would call this selfishness. 

Back to the pendulum. Many thought the Republican Party was dead after the Roosevelt landslide of 1936. Many were still alive to feel the same way after the Johnson landslide of 1964.  Many Democrats were in peril after Nixon carried every state in 1972, other than Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.  Many of the same folks were in peril after Reagan carried every state except Minnesota in 1984. 

The pendulum will continue to swing back and forth just as did the metronome on my mother’s piano.