Code Red

Recently, I've been scaling back my post-election thinking to consider that perhaps 2004 was not the grandiose cultural battle it's being made out to be and that maybe we just lost an election. It was close enough, after all. It was decided by 4 million votes nationally out of 114 million cast, or you could even say it was decided by 150 thousand votes in Ohio out of over 5 million cast. Therefore, maybe the issues at hand were smaller than we thought. Maybe it was something about the candidate, or the issues, or the campaign's execution.

Today's David Brooks column would reinforce this thinking. He argues that the large percentage of exit poll respondents who say they voted based on "moral values" was skewed since this was an option in the poll's multiple choice format. Under this hypothesis, respondents said they were voting based on moral values, but took a subjective view of the subject and were voting on anything they considered moral, not necessarily abortion or gay marriage.

There are a few problems with this idea. First of all, a look at all of the poll's options for "most important issue" shows that abortion and gay marriage are not among them, so voters who were voting on this basis had no option other than to place it under "moral values."

Secondly, and more gravely, there is the matter of political code. Codes are nothing new to the GOP. Just as 40 years ago "states rights" was code for racism and "law and order" was code for...well...racism, "moral values" today has come to signify anti-abortion and anti-gay attitudes that are almost explicit in the term.

So maybe Bush and Kerry were the culture warriors they're being made out to be. I keep going back and forth on this...check back with me later.