"Why? Because We Can..."
Among other things, the sudden rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger to high political office got me thinking about suburbanist political theory. I'm not sure if it's actually called that, but let's say it is. Seems like a good enough name for it.
Briefly put, the theory proposes that a crucial factor driving politics over the last several decades has been the increased political clout of the suburbs, and the corresponding decrease in the influence of urban and rural voters.
It sees political behavior as a function of demographics, and argues that a number of developments which people have found surprising are really not that mysterious -- they are examples of suburbia flexing its political muscle.
"Who cares if candidate X is qualified? We took you out and put him in because you weren't listening to us. He's a product of our pissed-off-ness and our will to power. And if he lets us down, he'll be punished the same way."
Does the California recall support this theory? That's what I'm wondering. I don't know, I'm just curious.
It's interesting to see that Californians did not vote in a social conservative -- suburbanites like to think of themselves as tolerant. They didn't respond with enthusiasm to Arianna Huffington, the diva turned gadfly. The middle class is aware of the well-known affinity between the fabulously wealthy and the progressive left: both forces despise the middle class. They didn't flock back to Davis, and they didn't lend a hand to Bustamante. They voted in a figure whose ideology is somewhat nebulous.
Nebulous, that is, if we think in terms of traditional ideological categories. From a suburbanist perspective, though, it could be argued that Schwarzenegger is part of the same phenomenenon that produced Bush, Reagan and Bill Clinton. And which may also be responsible for the emergence of Wesley Clark, who, like Ahnuld, is a political novice with a mix-and-match approach to ideas.
Well, I don't want to take this too seriously. It's a reductive and highly deterministic model, after all, and that's intellectually unsatisfying. Then again, politics may in fact be simplistic, reductive, deterministic and intellectually unsatisfying. Hmm...
10:43:07 AM 
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