Explaining U.S. Politics in Italian

The below was written for the Italian newspaper La Stampa and published on Nov. 5:

Stock market analysts call it a “sucker’s rally”: a little flurry of upward activity in the middle of a bear market that encourages investors to buy stocks just in time to suffer another round of losses.

Republicans are poised to mark the anniversary of Barack Obama’s election with some wins in off-year elections. The great danger is that Republicans will interpret these successes as proof that no change is necessary. In that case, this week’s expected gains only prepare the way to greater defeat in the next presidential election.

Here’s the Republican problem:

Despite the savage recession in the United States, President Obama remains personally trusted and popular: still at 50% or better approval in every poll conducted in the month of October.

While the president’s numbers are trending down, Republican numbers are not rising. Barely more than 20% of Americans identify as Republicans, the worst showing for the party since the 1970s.

Republicans are trapped in a vicious cycle. As the party shrinks, it becomes more conservative: almost three-quarters of those who still identify as Republican call themselves “conservatives.” As the party becomes more conservative, it becomes more susceptible to angry extremism.

Result: Even as Americans become more concerned about President Obama’s spending and deficits – even as they oppose his bailout of the automobile sector – even as he hesitates indecisively over Afghanistan – Republicans cannot make headway.

The Republicans are hurt by deep underlying trends in American politics. Much attention is paid to the role of the Hispanic vote. But the Hispanic share of the American electorate remains comparatively small: only about 7.5% in 2008. The bigger problem is the collapse of support for Republicans among university-educated Americans.

In 1988, the elder Bush beat Michael Dukakis among whites with four-year university degrees by a margin of 25 points. In every subsequent election, Republican performance among university-educated whites has declined. In 2008, John McCain defeated Barack Obama among university-educated whites by only 2 points – and outside the South, it was Obama who won university-educated whites, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

What alienates these people?

First: economic disappointment. University education in the United States is expensive. Tuition at a public university can cost $10,000 or $15,000 per year. That money can be borrowed – which means that most new graduates emerge from university carrying significant debt. Yet between 2000 and 2005 the median incomes of university graduates actually declined, after inflation.

Second: remember that a majority of new university graduates are women. Republican messages on the environment and social issues are often unappealing to women – as is the image of the Republican party as a male-dominated institution.

Third: the George Bush-Sarah Palin effect. Historically, Democrats were seen as the more caring people, Republicans as the more competent party. Iraq and Hurricane Katrina undermined that image. So too did the nomination of Sarah Palin in 2008: As Palin’s unpreparedness and ignorance became too blatant to deny, some Republicans instead publicly argued that knowledge was not an important quality in a high government official.

What’s the answer for Republicans?

Four points.

1)    Republicans need to develop a new economic message. They must remain the party of free markets, free trade, and private enterprise – but they must apply these principles to the problems of today. In particular they must focus their attention on the unaffordability of healthcare and Obama’s burdensome debt. The tax issue – so important in the 1970s and 1980s – does not resonate with voters as it once did. And a country that will soon be facing the heaviest debt load since the end of World War II cannot responsibly cut taxes in any event.

2)    Republicans must integrate an environmental ethic into their politics, as the British Conservatives have done. This does not mean they must out-green the Democrats. That would be impossible and undesirable. What it means instead is that they must seek to do on the environment what the Democrats do on defense: make themselves credible and therefore competitive.

3)    Republicans should modulate their social message. They do not need to change that message – they will remain the more socially conservative of the two parties – but that message must be presented in a less strident and aggressive manner than in the past.

4)    It’s time for a renewed emphasis on competence and effectiveness in government, as opposed to ideological purity. As ever, the place where Republicans will discover their next generation of leaders is among their successful state-level leaders. And they must end their fatal infatuation with Sarah Palin, a woman who quit her governorship after 18 months because she could not endure criticism – and who now appeals to Republicans as a martyr and victim, not as a person of accomplishment.

The trouble is that a party cannot change until it recognizes the need for change. As yet, there is little recognition of that need among Republicans – and Tuesday’s results may postpone that recognition even further into the future.