Truth - Al Franken [12]
The Terror Management theorists who authored this study concluded:
The present findings support the views of many theorists who have noted that political allegiances are not always based on the balanced, rational forces of self-interest suggested by the Jeffersonian notion of democracy but also on the operation of nonrational forces of which we are not always aware.
Hence, the wolves.
And it worked. The wolves blew Kerry’s house down. Bush’s margin in the 2004 election came from the ranks of the terrified.
I know. You think Bush won on “moral values.” That myth came from one terribly designed exit poll, in which 22 percent of respondents looked at a list of “issues” and chose “moral values” as the most important one. And 80 percent of those people voted for Bush. For the next month, we were subjected to Republican talking heads crowing about how Democrats were “out of touch” on the “moral values issue.”
There were any number of problems with the “moral values issue” issue. For starters: To me and apparently to some other people, the economy is a moral issue. During the first three years of Bush’s presidency, 4.3 million Americans—including a million-plus children—fell into poverty. I, for one, don’t blame the kids. Yet of the 20 percent of the voters in this exit poll who said “economy/jobs” was the most important issue, 0 percent were considered “moral values” voters. And 80 percent of them voted for Kerry.
Ditto for Iraq, health care, and education, which Kerry won with 73 percent, 77 percent, and 73 percent, respectively. Does anyone think there’s a moral dimension to people dying in Iraq, to eighteen thousand unnecessary deaths each year because of the lack of health insurance, or to kids getting crummy educations in crumbling schools? Anybody? Anybody?
Even if we pretend to accept the 22 percent moral values number as valid, that still doesn’t mean that Bush won on that “issue.” I will permit my colleagues at the prestigious Tory magazine The Economist to administer the coup de grâce:
That 22% share is much lower than it was in the previous two presidential elections, in 2000 and 1996. Then, 35% and 40%, respectively, put moral or ethical issues on top, and a further 14% and 9% put abortion first, an option that was not given in 2004. Thus, in those two elections, about half the electorate said they voted on moral matters; this time, only a fifth did.
Okay? All right? So it wasn’t moral values, asshole. (Although coarse language may have played a role.) It was terror. Terror.
TERROR!!!
Guess how many people in 2000 said that terrorism was their number one reason for voting? I’ll give you hint. It was zero. That’s right. Why the change? Does the date 9/11/01 ring any bells? You may know it as “9/11.” I think that’s why the terrorism issue became prominent. You know I’m right.
Every one of the roughly 23 million voters who thought terrorism was the number one issue (if you believe this stupid exit poll) is a person who used to think something else was the number one issue. That is, before 9/11, and Bush’s constant reminders of 9/11, scared the shit out of them. Some of these people were probably “moral values” voters in 2000. Some of them were probably “economy/jobs” voters. And a lot of them were probably “non” voters. That is, they didn’t vote. But now they did. And even though, as I’ll prove in the next chapter, 9/11 happened while Bush was President, that’s not what mattered. What mattered was that through the skillful use of scary wolves and other subconscious and not-so-subconscious “priming” techniques, Bush, Rove, Limbaugh, and company had ensured that on November 2, 2004, as they entered the voting booth, Americans had one thing on their minds. Voting. Voting for that guy, the one who’s gonna protect them from terrorism.
On that day, on that terrible day—11/02—86 percent of terrorism voters went for Bush.
3 Bush’s Little Black Dress
On September 10, 2001, President George W. Bush’s approval rating was hovering at around 50 percent. On September 12, 2001, to my knowledge, no