An essay on American voting habits

NASHVILLE - Why don't people vote their own self-interest? Every
few years
the Republicans propose a tax cut, and every few years the
Democrats pull
out their income distribution charts to show that much of the
benefits of
the Republican plan go to the richest 1 percent of Americans or
thereabouts.
And yet every few years a Republican plan wends its way through
the
legislative process and, with some trims and amendments, passes.
The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal
of the
estate tax, which is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al
Gore, who ran a
populist campaign, couldn't even win the votes of white males
who didn't go
to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the past decades
and who were
the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans
want to
distribute more wealth down to people like themselves?
Well, as the academics would say, it's overdetermined. There are
several
reasons.
People vote their aspirations.
The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from
a Time
magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1
percent of
earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the
richest 1 percent
and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away you
have 39
percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a
plan that
favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them.
It's not hard to see why they think this way. Americans live in
a culture of
abundance. They have always had a sense that great opportunities
lie just
over the horizon, in the next valley, with the next job or the
next big
thing. None of us is really poor; we're just pre-rich.
Americans read magazines for people more affluent than they are
(W, Cigar
Aficionado, The New Yorker, Robb Report, Town and Country)
because they
think that someday they could be that guy with the tastefully
appointed
horse farm. Democratic politicians proposing to take from the
rich are just
bashing the dreams of our imminent selves.
Income resentment is not a strong emotion in much of America.
If you earn $125,000 a year and live in Manhattan, certainly,
you are
surrounded by things you cannot afford. You have to walk by
those buildings
on Central Park West with the 2,500-square-foot apartments that
are empty
three-quarters of the year because their evil owners are mostly
living at
their other houses in L.A.
But if you are a middle-class person in most of America, you are
not brought
into incessant contact with things you can't afford. There
aren't Lexus
dealerships on every corner. There are no snooty restaurants
with water
sommeliers to help you sort though the bottled eau selections.
You can
afford most of the things at Wal-Mart or Kohl's and the
occasional meal at
the Macaroni Grill. Moreover, it would be socially unacceptable
for you to
pull up to church in a Jaguar or to hire a caterer for your
dinner party
anyway. So you are not plagued by a nagging feeling of doing
without.
Many Americans admire the rich.
They don't see society as a conflict zone between the rich and
poor. It's
taboo to say in a democratic culture, but do you think a nation
that watches
Katie Couric in the morning, Tom Hanks in the evening and
Michael Jordan on
weekends harbors deep animosity toward the affluent?
On the contrary. I'm writing this from Nashville, where one of
the richest
families, the Frists, is hugely admired for its entrepreneurial
skill and
community service. People don't want to tax the Frists - they
want to elect
them to the Senate. And they did.
Nor are Americans suffering from false consciousness. You go to
a town where
the factories have closed and people who once earned $14 an hour
now work
for $8 an hour. They've taken their hits. But odds are you will
find their
faith in hard work and self-reliance undiminished, and their
suspicion of
Washington unchanged.
Americans resent social inequality more than income inequality.
As the sociologist Jennifer Lopez has observed: "Don't be fooled
by the
rocks that I got, I'm just, I'm just Jenny from the block." As
long as rich
people "stay real," in Ms. Lopez's formulation, they are
admired. Meanwhile,
middle-class journalists and academics who seem to look down on
megachurches, suburbia and hunters are resented. If Americans
see the tax
debate as being waged between the economic elite, led by
President Bush, and
the cultural elite, led by Barbra Streisand, they are going to
side with Mr.
Bush, who could come to any suburban barbershop and fit right
in.
Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads.
This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth
redistribution,
the reason that subsumes all others. Americans do not see
society as a layer
cake, with the rich on top, the middle class beneath them and
the working
class and underclass at the bottom. They see society as a high
school
cafeteria, with their community at one table and other
communities at other
tables. They are pretty sure that their community is the nicest,
and filled
with the best people, and they have a vague pity for all those
poor souls
who live in New York City or California and have a lot of money
but no true
neighbors and no free time.
All of this adds up to a terrain incredibly inhospitable to
class-based
politics. Every few years a group of millionaire Democratic
presidential
aspirants pretends to be the people's warriors against the
overclass. They
look inauthentic, combative rather than unifying. Worst of all,
their basic
message is not optimistic.
They haven't learned what Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt and even
Bill Clinton
knew: that you can run against rich people, but only those who
have betrayed
the ideal of fair competition. You have to be more hopeful and
growth-oriented than your opponent, and you cannot imply that we
are a
nation tragically and permanently divided by income. In the
gospel of
America, there are no permanent conflicts.