Reading again today about how, in the recent contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama “carried white voters in only two places–state capitals and university towns,” I wondered yet again why those in university towns, the well-educated and apparently thinking set would so enthusiastically support a man whose primary appeal is emotional.
Michael Barone was the first to explore this phenomenon in depth in his blog post on the contrasting appeals of Obama and Hillary Clinton, the former appealing to Academics, the latter to what he termed Jacksonians. (Back in April, Bruce called the piece “excellent” and recommended it. I concur on both counts; I strongly encourage you to read it.)
The Weekly Standard‘s Noemie Emery whose article, the Charisma Machine, reminded me of Obama’s academic appeal, offers her own theory. These voters:
(a) tend to lean left; (b) live in a world of words and abstractions; and (c) due to tenure, unions, and parental support, find themselves outside of the world of the marketplace. As such, they are pushovers for ego-massaging and vacuous maunderings. They tend not to notice that his frame of reference is always himself and his feelings, and that his appeals to racial healing, bipartisanship, government reform and sweet reason do not connect to his acts in real life.
Yet, despite academics’ love for this Democratic, Emery observes, in the campaign’s final days, Obama only “wheezed over the finish line,” not really catching on among working class Democrats.
Her article caused me to wonder — as did Barone’s in April — why thinking people give in so readily to the most charismatic candidate. (Just look at the appeal of the charismatic tyrant Fidel Castro on university campuses.) It would be interesting to see if some of these very scholars gone gung-ho over Obama mock Americans obsessed with celebrity talk shows and fashion magazines.
Obama’s appeal is little different than that of a Hollywood celebrity. He looks good, presents himself well in public and reads his lines well. To be sure, he has demonstrated a degree of intelligence that all too many celebrities lack. Yet, all too often he doesn’t apply that intelligence to his legislative responsibilities, not living up to his billing as a reformer who transcends partisanship.
What has he done in his career to promote bipartisanship and effect government reform? His appeal lies primarily in the eloquence with which he expresses a commitment to such goals and to his promise of change.
But, shouldn’t academics, those who have studied the world, want something more than lofty appeals and support instead somebody who had achieved something substantial in his career?
Obama is socialist, the most liberal member of the Senate (he even supports partial-birth abortion), and “postmodern” – i.e., too good for any whiff of such outmoded things as traditional religion, patriotism, logic, economics, etc. So are th people/towns you cite. That’s the answer. He REALLY represents them. He’s one of them. Very simple.
The better question is: why has *American academia* become so socialist, liberal (even supporting partial birth abortion), and “postmodern” – i.e., too good for any whiff of such outmoded things as traditional religion, patriotism, logic, economics, etc.?
(1) Their self-identification with the tyrant makes them feel dangerous and important, thus better about themselves.
(2) They secretly fantasize being the academics who are appointed to be the enlightened tyrant’s advisors. I.e., they want to be in power, to be Daddy’s favorite, to have more prestige and bigger budgets, to dispose of the lives of others, etc..
(3) They are fascinated by “men of action”, i.e., leaders who would as soon kill them as look at them. (Possible death wish here, though I’m not sure as to mechanism.)
Nothing. The (proposed) Emperor has no clothes.
Why should people who have achieved very little in their career want more from a president.
Sorry, being a college professor these days is not very strenuous, all they do is fill young minds with mush. They get mad at the few science profs who go out and start companies. Speaking of companies – big university bureaucracies – good. Big money and job producing companies – bad.
Of all they’d love nothing more than to see one who is so like them win the presidency.
As Mark Steyn said, “he sounds like the kookiest college Marxist”.
Sorry, but just who the heck are your referring to?
The academic is a denizen of an extremely cloistered world. Before long, he has forgotten how to question and become a fountain of answers. This does not apply to the real scientists and engineers and engineers among them. But the rest of the lot decorate their minds to compliment their preconceived notions.
Academics may study the world of something in particular, but their world view is patently predictable. There is nowhere more dangerous than a university community for bucking the political correctness syllabus.
These people have to love Obama. He is the manifestation of all they have yearned for. If Obama fails to win or fails to succeed as President, he will have validated the liberal view of our corrupt and declining society. With McCain, the liberal knows that politics as usual will keep us mired in the sludge of class warfare, greed and corruption.
Anyone who reads course descriptions ought to know that these people have a fixation with selling their soap. Rare is the academic who can park his political assumptions at the door and deliver an unbiased examination of the subject matter. (Again, true scientists and engineers excepted.)
This is rubbish. There is no perfect candidate with perfect ideals and perfect proposals. I like Barack Obama and I will be voting for him in November. I am not among academia. I couldn’t care less about what a certain sector in society is thinking about Obama; I just care about the outcome of this year’s presidential election.
I think y’all are making it more complicated than it is.
1) These people mostly work for the government. Studies show two things about those who work for the government: other than the military, they usually do so for the job security, and, other than the military, they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
2) As for private academia, the job security there is pretty high too, and while they dont get their paychecks directly from the government, a large chunk of their pay still comes from there.
I think Emery touched on it, but then went the wrong direction. They aren’t “pushovers” because “they find themselves outside the marketplace,” they deliberately chose to be outside the marketplace because they are pushovers, or more precisely, because they are scared.
In other words, these people are where they are because they’re afraid of the real world, afraid of competition, they want security, and they want to be taken care of. And who promises to do that?
The ideology of the left doesn’t flow from intellect, it flows from emotion. These people aren’t in academia because they are any more intellectual — indeed there are a great many finer minds in private industry — they are in academia because they are afraid and it is safe.
Their ideology is both an attempt to justify it, and an attempt to deny it. Being dependent on government robs you of your dignity. Being unwilling to compete in the real world does the same. Different leftists deal with this in different ways. Lower class and minority leftists develop a sense of entitlement based in victimhood. Blacks are victims because their distant ancestors were slaves. Women are victims because, well, they’re not men. Lower class whites are victims because of a percieved class system that doesn’t exist, and gays are victims because, well because they say so. These people (with the exception of blacks) supported Hillary because she appealed directly to their victimhood.
But the leftists in academia are mostly people of privelege who cant really claim victimhood for themselves, and so they attempt to reclaim their dignity and justify their fear of the real world and dependance on government with the pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook that we call liberal ideology.
Obama appealed to them more than Hillary simply because he spoke their language — he approaches liberalism more like they do than do the former victims.
Thats how I see it at least.
Bigger question. Why is the secular, “reality-based” left embracing the “lightworker” Obama as a Messianic figure and attributing to him the ensigns of godhood?
They see the stage coming in bringing a super-whore who will fulfill every fantasy. All they have to do is put it front of him and he will bless it and caress it. No discretion required and none given.
It will be a regular candy store where anything passes as hope and change. What better person to have as official signer than someone who knows no bounds when it comes to the liberal cause?
Because government is their god.
I think there is a misperception of those in the ivory towers. Academics are smart, espcecially with regard to their area of expertise, but they don’t necessarily think, especially outside of there academic area. Someone who has mastered 16th century german liturature, does not necesarrily think through how policies affect the person on the street, contributing to our society while taking care of themselves. Just remember that because one has knowledge, doesn’t mean they can or will do anything constructive with it.
#5: “This is rubbish. There is no perfect candidate with perfect ideals and perfect proposals. I like Barack Obama and I will be voting for him in November. I am not among academia. I couldn’t care less about what a certain sector in society is thinking about Obama; I just care about the outcome of this year’s presidential election.”
Now here’s an unusually candid and verbose endorsement of Obama. It seems CoolBlue71 “likes” Obama and “will be voting for him in November.” Typically eye-opening. Although CoolBlue71 isn’t “among academia,” I can’t say I’ve heard reasons to vote for Obama that are any more specific that that from any college professors either. They like him; plan to vote for him. That’s it. The fact that he changes his positions on major policy issues about every 12 hours has literally NO EFFECT on his supporters. It really is messianic–they’ve already pledged their faith and are confident of their own salvation, thus, there is no need to hear or question the actual words themselves. They just float and weave peacefully behind all that beautiful music, fire and passion.
And they have the luxury of doing so, having little or nothing at stake in this election. If Obama’s policies lead to another 9/11-styled terrorist attack on U.S. soil, it will easily be blamed on Bush by the MSM. It will be characterized as “justifiable revenge” for our invasion of Iraq (how the U.S. deserved the FIRST 9/11 attack they won’t say, except in the vaguest of terms–Muslim oppression, U.S. imperialism, etc.). It will then be used as justification for a wholesale, immediate reversal of the Bush Doctrine: pathetic, unmitigated appeasement and capitulation to Islamists.
Just this week Obama is on the record regarding a few things (likely some of the only statements he’ll make in this election that he won’t completely repudiate within the next 24 hours)–higher taxes on the “rich;” a tax cut for the “middle class” (meaning, a handout for people who don’t even pay taxes in the first place); huge taxes on the big oil companies’ “windfall profits;” no suspension of the gas tax for the summer; and $150 billion program for the development of “green energy” technologies (meaning, no drilling in the U.S. anywhere, no refineries and no nuclear development for another 10 years at least).
How can any rational adult look at these proposals and authentically say that this is a good plan for America? And this is all, of course, IN ADDITION TO the humiliating defeat Obama plans to accomplish in Iraq as his first order of business once he is sworn in as the Commander in Chief. Top that off with Obama’s unequivocal plan to dismantle our entire EXISTING nuclear arsenal so he can have a shiny, happy “nuclear free world” (seriously: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs), and well WHAT?
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. These people have completely lost their minds. This is beyond differences in policy. It’s just plain, unadulterated sovereign suicide. MORE taxes? Give up the fight against the Islamists? Disarm ourselves and just trust that our enemies will do the same because “we’re better than that?” Punish successful corporations for being successful (to ensure that even less investment in oil production takes place in the future)? Block any use whatsoever of our OWN natural resources? Pour billions of dollars into man’s noble obligation to “change the heavens” and control the fucking weather? Give our sworn global enemies, plotting at this every moment to murder thousands of Americans, the right to habeus corpus, the presumption of innocence, a lawyer at taxpayer expense, and freedom from warrantless or unreasonable searches and seizures (the same rights as every American in this country)? [ooops! we already did that! AND SURPRISE! OBAMA PRAISED THE SCOTUS FOR THE DECISION!]
Obama’s supporters HAVE TO keep talking about “change” and “inspiration.” If they bothered to listen to any of the actual words, wouldn’t at least SOME of these things on Obama’s punch-list scare the beejeesus out of them? I’ll admit it, I’m seriously concerned that if Obama is elected, the U.S. is headed for a very dark chapter in its history–and given the liberals’ control of the MSM, once it goes south, they will be able to blame everything on Bush for a VERY LONG TIME before anything is done to fix the real problem. I’ll always be confident in America’s survival, but until liberalism is ruthlessly aborted and crammed down the garbage disposal for good, we are always going to be on this merry go round where the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas of the world are stupidly given the paddles long enough to take us right up to the edge of the falls. Why do we have to keep learning this lesson over and over again?
Thinking people and academic intellectuals no longer equate on the Left. In fact, the leftist faculties espouse anti-intellectualism in support of many left wing policies. Since a rigorous adherence to intellectual discipline in fact often discredits what they support, it is not useful. Hence we meet Post Modern deconstruction. When careful intellectual analysis leads away from the desired outcome it is discredited with the claim it is derived from a suspect class of thought, e.g., White, male, straight, privileged, American, Republican, etc., (take and/or add your pick) constructed argument or point of view. Therefore it is ruled as invalid, mean-spirited, repressive and on and on. Validity of positions is the mere assertion of right outcomes. Process, like majority vote or logical and demonstrable analysis, is not required. What stands in is the Left’s validation of its self-righteous and circular reasoning. Logic is superfluous when one owns the TRUTH. Intellectual critique is merely little demonic flies buzzing around the Haloed Head of the Truth of the proposition. Analysis of policy is the tactic of those who “cling” to their intellectualism. The left has become a group of cafeteria intellectuals, i.e. non-intellectual. Thus the academic and other noted Leftist “intellectuals†have elevated the old saying “heads I win, tails you lose†to a new level of deceit.