FORECASTING THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The Guru and I were sitting on the patio of the Restaurant of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club, looking at the historic Fort Niagara just a few hundred yards away on our right, across the mouth of the Niagara River, and at the sail boats tacking back and forth on our left in Lake Ontario. We were in the midst of a heat wave but there was a pleasant breeze off the lake, and we had some cold beer and delicious sandwiches.
I should make it clear that the Guru and I are not golfers---we both subscribe to the Mark Twain view that ‘Golf is a good walk spoiled’---but the Club kindly lets the non-golfing public use its restaurant.
The Guru had lent me a copy of a book by Jim Kenney, “Thriving in the Crosscurrent: Clarity and Hope in a Time of Cultural Sea Change”. He said he had been impressed with the book and was thinking of discussing it in his monthly newsletter but he first wanted to get an historian’s view of it.
We had agreed to discuss the book over lunch but first I wanted to get the Guru’s latest assessment of the US presidential election.
“The first thing is that I was right that the Supreme Court would find Obamacare constitutional. The decision was closer than I had thought---5 to 4 instead of the 6 to 3 I had predicted---but a win is a win. And Obama should be pleased.”
“So, you still think he is going to win in November?”
“I do, but now I am wondering if he is going to have a landslide victory.”
“A landslide! I wonder if this heat wave is getting to you. No one’s predicting a landslide.”
“And that’s why the clients I consult for pay me the big bucks. To see things that others don’t see.”
“How long have you thought that a landslide might be possible?”
“A few months ago, I started to get these feelings of ‘déjà vu all over again’, to quote Yogi Berra. I lived through the unpredicted (by me and by other forecasters) landslides by Diefenbaker in 1958, Rene Levesque in 1976 and Mulroney in 1984 and I began to sense that something was happening in the US that was similar to what had happened before those victories. At first I dismissed the thoughts but part of my brain kept sending messages saying I was missing something. At first, I gave a landslide a probability of only 10% but now I think there is a 35% chance. It’s far from a sure thing but the point is that the likelihood is increasing.”
“This is astounding! What are the factors, trends, intuitions that make you think there might be a landslide?”
“Could we hold that until we have discussed Kenney’s ideas? This is really an important election, not just for the US but for Canada and the rest of the world, and it is easy to get angry or worried as you listen to the daily news reports. It pushes up my blood pressure---just ask Gloria, who keeps track of it. The best antidote I’ve found is to focus on the big trends that are shaping society. And that’s what I am going to be recommending to my newsletter readers. So, what did you think of Kenney’s analysis?”
“You know’, I started, “I’ve always been skeptical of writers who try to see patterns in history and then project from those patterns into the future. Whether it’s a Gibbon, a Marx or a Toynbee. But that said, I found myself agreeing with Kenney’s analysis of major cultural shifts, or waves as he calls them, throughout history: the shift from hunting and gathering, to farming, and then the shift to science, which is where we have been for the last few hundred years. I liked his description of the attempts to reject cultural changes, for example the Roman Catholic Church’s punishment of Galileo and Copernicus, and today the evangelical churches which reject evolution. I found his notion of eddies in which the people who can’t accept change go round and round in ever-decreasing circles until they gradually learn to accept the change.”
“Yes, I liked the idea of eddies, as well”, the Guru smiled.
“But then,” I continued, “we have to deal with his argument that a new wave is engulfing us with new values. First, there is ‘peace’---according to Kenney, nations will find it harder and harder in this new era to profit from war. And then there is ‘fairness’---human rights will become paramount, no more literal or metaphorical slavery in the treatment of different genders, races, sexual orientation and so on. Finally, there is ‘ecological sustainability’---humanity will have to end dumping poisons into the ground, sea or air in what he calls ‘ecocide’. It is an enticing picture but I wonder if it is a little too rosy, too optimistic.”
The Guru responded, “I understand what you are saying but when you look around it begins to made sense. Think of the US invasion of Iraq, which was ostensibly because of weapons of mass destruction but was really, in my view, engineered by Cheney and his pals to get oil reserves for American companies. Years ago, the war would have been wrapped up in a couple of weeks. Instead it took nearly a decade and almost bankrupted the US.”
“And I suppose Kenney would argue that the people today who deny climate change are twirling around in eddies, like the ‘flat-earthers’ in the 15th century.”
“Exactly!”
“Well”, I said, “I want to think about it some more, but it does seem that Kenney is on to something.”
“OK”, the Guru said, “let’s agree that Kenney seems to be describing a complex of trends that if valid must be factored into any forecasts we make about the future.”
I nodded.
“Well, let me outline some more trends and issues that need to be considered when we try to look ahead. One is that the way we have carved up the pie---the wealth of a nation--- no longer works. Nations continue to get wealthier and wealthier but thanks to technology, automation, globalization etc. there will not be enough traditional, living-wage jobs to absorb all the workers. We have to find new ways of sharing the wealth.”
“I can hear the wealthy, whirling around in their eddies, shouting that you are a socialist who is proposing ‘tax and spend policies’.”
“Sure”, the Guru agreed. “Let me finish with my final trend. An American political scientist, Pendleton Herring, argued 60 years ago that the US oscillates between periods of Innovation and Conservatism. For example, the social legislation of Kennedy and Johnson was followed by the conservative policies of Regan and the Bushes. It can be argued that the election of Obama may have ushered in a new period of Innovation with a turn away from war and a turn to policies like health care, the environment, and the rights of women, gays and minorities.”
“Kenney’s thesis and these other trends don’t seem to be very congenial to the Republican Party as it’s presently constituted”, I said.
The Guru beamed broadly, “My point exactly. Can you see any of today’s Republicans campaigning on a platform of ‘peace, fairness and ecological sustainability’, or of searching for new ways of sharing the nation’s wealth?’
“No, I can’t. So it is these ideas that make you think that a landslide could happen?”
“Remember I am not yet predicting a landslide, I am just saying that it is likely that Obama will be re-elected, but that there is a probability of around 35% that it could be a landslide.”
“Despite the massive amounts of money that the millionaires and billionaires can deploy for negative ads---the kinds of ads that destroyed Perry, Gingrich and Santorum?”
“That’s a fair point, and it needs an answer. Let’s shift from what has been a bit philosophical to the practical. The Republican Party is terribly fractured with its social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarians and assorted interest groups such as the National Rifle Association. It would take a political genius of the highest order to paper over all those cracks and present to the public a party that appears to have an agreed-upon and coherent platform that can address the problems the nation faces. And Mitt Romney is not a political genius.”
“I agree”, I said, “He is not even a ‘B’ grade politician. He has hidden himself away on Fox News until that disastrous interview with Bob Shieffer on CBS when he couldn’t come up with a response to Obama’s immigration policy on the children of undocumented immigrants. Newt Gingrich would have just confused Shieffer with bluster and bellicosity, leaving poor Bob speechless.”
“And he has tubs of baggage with his taxes and his off-shore and other investments that the media are only now starting to address.”
“I sometimes think”, I added, “that Romney must be counting on gaining the presidency through a catastrophic economic crash, coupled with latent racism.”
“Another telling point is the recent behavior of Rupert Murdoch. He now seems to be distancing himself from Romney, as though he expects that Obama will win and he and his News Corporation will have to deal with a Democratically-controlled Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service etc. Murdoch made that kind of calculation in Britain when he shifted support from the Conservatives to Tony Blair. Murdoch can’t openly support Obama, as he did Tony Blair, but he can hobble Romney.”
“And”, I joined in, “Murdoch’s statement that Romney needs to bring in a new team of advisers is like trying to prop up an inadequate quarterback with better cheerleaders.”
“So”, the Guru smiled as he lifted his glass of beer, “you can see why I think Obama is going to be re-elected and why it could be a big win, not a squeaker.”
“Could you let me know when you raise the probability of a landslide to more than 50%? I might want to place a little bet on one of those online betting websites.”
“Will do”, the Guru said as we paid our bills and prepared to leave the cooling breezes of Lake Ontario for our hot cars.
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If you have any comments, please leave them below or drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com. The next Icewine Guru posting will appear in the fullness of time. My other blog, The Letter from Virgil, (http://letterfromvirgil.blogspot.com/) appears on a more regular basis.
