Symbolitics As Usual

The Weekly Standard ^ | 01/21/2008 | John J. DiIulio Jr.

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For those who thought that Hillary Clinton was through because Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, or because the polls supposedly proved she would lose in New Hampshire, or because they let the personal, ideological, or partisan wish be father to the thought--and for those who made proclamations about John McCain being kaput, Mike Huckabee having no chance, and Ron Paul staging a surge--herewith a political science recovery plan.

But first, to sugarcoat the academic pills, swallow a catchall election--analysis concept that might help to discipline the discourse from now through November: symbolitics.

The term was coined during the 2004 election season by David Kuo, former deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the White House, and it complements nicely an important contribution by the late, great political scientist Donald E. Stokes, coauthor of the 1960 classic The American Voter.

That book was the first systematic, scholarly look into how Americans vote in national elections. As the data-bearing punch-cards whizzed through first-generation computers, Stokes, the junior member of a University of Michigan research team, noticed that the results of the elections of the 1950s could not be adequately explained by the usual variables: party identification, ideological orientation, and candidates' positions on the issues that mattered most to voters. Another factor, harder to categorize or quantify, loomed large: namely, the degree to which candidates were linked in voters' hearts and minds with conditions, goals, or symbols that were almost universally approved or disapproved by the mass electorate.

Stokes's key insight was that Americans increasingly were choosing parties and candidates not solely or even mainly by their real or perceived differences on policy questions, even questions that powerfully divided the electorate, but, instead, by the candidates' perceived association with broader conditions, goals, or symbols [...]

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Barack Obama refuses to wear an American flag pin because he feels it has become a substitute for “true patriotism or a corny symbolism in an old-fashioned display of patriotism.

Is that the message we want displayed to the world and especially right here at home should he become President and Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces?

Obama stands with hands to his side during national anthem
when the flag is displayed.