The political crisis:
Jr, E J Dionne
THE POLITICAL CRISIS IT'S THE ECONOMY AND MORALS... E.J. DIONNE, JR. Ir here are two large arguments going on right now in politics. One is over exactly what it was that happened last November....
...The gospel "speaks different words to different times," he said, "and even different words to different participants in the same times...
...This is neither possible nor, in the long run, desirable...
...Because of his pro-allied sympathies...
...Generally speaking, Catholics who still live in regions of the original immigration-i.e., the Northeast and Midwest-are more Democratic than Catholics in the South and West...
...What is most revealing, and what points most strongly to the disappointment hypothesis, is that the Democrats' 1994 losses were concentrated in the groups that had suffered a longterm decline in their economic fortunes...
...The issue is not to stop technological change and the huge globalization process in its tracks...
...An alternative view of 1994 sees the election in terms that are much less grand...
...The state of emergency is over and with it the spirit of American progressivism embodied by the two Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman...
...Dwight Eisenhower posted large gains among Catholics, essentially splitting the Catholic vote evenly with Adlai Stevenson in 1956...
...Also striking is the fact that Catholic/Protestant differences vary sharply by region...
...And beginning with George McGovern in 1972...
...Among white women, the patterns were the same but less dramatic: The Democratic share among white female high school Ir he story is told of a middle-class man taking his mother----call her Mrs...
...Kennedy won close to 80 percent of Catholic ballots against Richard Nixon...
...The corrections were designed to deal with the public's legitimate anxieties over the functioning of government-thus the reinventing government project-and the importance of being clear that social policy needed to embody certain values-thus a welfare-reform plan that embodied greater generosity on the side of education, training, and work opportunities, but also a sense of responsibility embodied in a work requirement and an emphasis on the need to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births and fatherless families...
...White Catholics are fairly consistently 10 to 15 points more Democratic than white Protestants, but on the whole, Catholics have voted pretty much as the rest of the country has...
...Indeed, I think one of the arguments-what is troubling us as a country-may be based on faulty premises on the part of both parties to it...
...And there was the church, with its authority to provide moral guidance: Now all three legs of the stool are in danger...
...In the area of teen motherhood, the churches have played an enormously constructive role in trying to create shelters and what Progressive Policy Institute analyst Kathleen Sylvester has called "second chance homes" where teen mothers can live with their children in safe, supportive environments...
...Today, Puerto Rican and Mexican-American voters are far more Democratic than either Cubans or any wave of Catholic European immigrants...
...There is family breakdown...
...Polish Catholics, strong ly anti-Hitler, rallied to the Democrats...
...Aw...
...The church must indeed preach responsibility to fathers who abandon their families and to teen-agers contemplating the obligations of parenthood...
...A great many felt they were being forced to choose between providing adequately for their family financially and having the time they needed to spend with their children...
...white Protestants went Republican by 64to-34 percent (see chart...
...But now, they will argue, there is no Depression, no Hitler, no Soviet Union-and thus no need for a big government in Washington...
...The plain fact is that we will get nowhere if we deny that there is a very real, very troubling moral crisis in the country, a crisis that is indeed destructive to families and especially destructive to children...
...In the 1960 election...
...O'Reilly snapped back...
...hush" Mrs...
...The older vision was embodied in an effort to complete the New Deal and Fair Deal by passing health-care reform and to respond to economic change with various initiatives in job training and job placement...
...But it's harder and harder to identify a "Catholic vote_" And the more Catholics move up the class ladder and disperse to the South and West, the less distinctive Catholic voting behavior will be...
...voters were not dissatisfied with big government so much as with bad government, or, more precisely, disappointing government...
...Some government actions, indeed, may have undermined the sector of civil society, the churches, and voluntary institutions...
...But it was, he noted, a very different time...
...This article is based on remarks he made at this year's annual social ministry gathering, "The Politics of Values and the Value of Politics, " sponsored by the Department of Social Development and World Peace of the U.S...
...In the South, white Catholics are slightly more Democratic than white Protestants: the difference was especially small in 1992...
...Moreover, the benefits of the economic recovery in its first two years were unevenly distributed, The well-educated posted substantial income gains...
...We are called to be true to all our commitments...
...But among white women who graduated from college, the Democratic share actually went up, albeit marginally, by two percentage points...
...Lyndon Johnson did nearly as well in 1964 against Barry Goldwater...
...Jewish voters are consistently more Democratic than either Catholics or Protestants, usually backing Democrats by margins of 2-to-I or better...
...says the son, "If Jesus came back to earth and ran as a Republican you'd vote against him...
...My argument is that the resources of Catholic social thought could help prevent this argument from becoming a dialogue of the deaf...
...In 1992, Bill Clinton did indeed offer a promising synthesis aimed at updating the old Progressive and New Deal vision and accepting some corrections...
...Looking at the most recent elections...
...Both groups are suffering in this economy...
...Before the New Deal, there were sharp differences among Catholic ethnic groups in their political allegiances...
...Harry Truman restored Democratic strength among Catholics pretty much across the board...
...G 14: 5 May 1995 Commonweal...
...Our problem is not economic," he said in a speech to the Christian Coalition...
...The Irish and the Poles, for example, tended to be more Democratic than Italians or FrenchCanadians...
...They can remind us in particular that there is no way to help the impoverished solve their own problems in the absence of money...
...The first question is what happened last fall...
...But periods such as this one of enormous economic change produce huge disruptions in the lives of families and communities, substantial new opportunities but also substantial problems...
...Why should he change his party after all these years...
...I would add that we will also not solve these problems unless we take seriously the hugely disruptive effects of the economic changes we are passing through...
...The notion of a "Catholic vote," of course, has always been problematic...
...12:.5 May 1995 Commonweal graduates dropped by four points...
...It seems to me that those who are doing well because of these transformations have a particular obligation to think about how they, how the community, and how the government can ease the burdens on those from whom this transition period is extracting the largest costs...
...it dropped by nine points among both high school graduates and those with some college education...
...Contrary to a certain triumphalism apparent in Washington right now, I do not believe that either argument is settled...
...Her son is...
...There was the family to provide love and nurture...
...It can be argued in particular that George Bush's decided weakness among Catholic voters in 1992 was an important reason for his defeat...
...Back then, there was a kind of triad that provided a foundation on which poor people could build themselves up...
...More broadly, the churches can speak with a clarity and forcefulness about moral obligations and personal responsibility in a way that governments never can...
...Many are working harder for less, as the president likes to say...
...But voting analyst Kevin Phillips noticed what proved to be an important trend: In middle-class Catholic areas, especially in New York...
...That argument is over what it is drat most troubles us...
...This analysis of the election, with its emphasis on the performance of government and the economy rather titan on conservative ideology, feeds into the second large argument going on in the county...
...In this view, the country really has decided that government is the problem and wants the federal government cut down, chopped up, shipped off to the states...
...There can be no denying that if we don't figure out ways of putting parents and kids back together, most of the problems that everyone on all sides worries about will get much worse...
...But let us not pretend that simply having government walk away from these problems will lead to a miraculous solution...
...We cannot abandon either...
...Those policies must be reversed...
...In the West...
...The most popular view among Republicans is that November's vote was the big bang, the real revolution, the final fulfillment of the promises of Ronald Reagan's election...
...Goldwater actually ran quite a bit better than Nixon...
...This was one of the wider Catholic/Protestant differences in recent years-and the difference shrank back in the 1994 midterm elections: White Catholics voted for Republican House candidates by 55 Is there a Catholic vote...
...Traveling around the country during the 1992 campaign, what struck me and many of my colleagues in talking to voters was their anxiety over the impact of economics on their family lives...
...By all means let us be open to new ways of helping the poor and let us acknowledge the social catastrophes in our midst...
...Mrs...
...white Catholics voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush by a 42 percent to 37 percent margin, with Ross Perot winning 22 percent...
...Catholic/Protestant differences still exist despite enormous social changes, and Catholics are, on the whole, more open to Democratic candidates than Protestants...
...DIONNE, JR., a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Post, is the author of Why Americans Hate Politics (Touchstone...
...The churches enjoy less authority than before...
...The notion that disappointment rather than ideological realignment was the real story in 1994 is underscored by several facts...
...It relates to the falling living standards of many in the middle and the economic catastrophe in the inner cities...
...O'Reilly-to the polls on election day...
...I believe in miracles, but I also believe God helps those who help themselves and we have to be willing to take responsibility for these problems...
...For the last two decades or so, there has been more a "Catholic tendency" than a "Catholic vote...
...O'Reilly has always, always voted straight Democratic...
...Impatiently, knowing the answer in advance...
...White Protestants voted for Bush 47 to 34 percent, with 19 percent going to Perot...
...Catholic Conference and a number of other Catholic groups...
...DIONNE, Jr...
...Both Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Ruy Texena, apolitical analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to these figures as demonstrating that the Democrats' 1994 defeat was largely the result of disaffection among Americans who are suffering in the new economy...
...Hubert Humphrey carried the Catholic vote again in 1968, but by a much reduced margin...
...We also have social responsibilities...
...This second argument is central to the future because buying into one side or the other leads to quite different policies and approaches...
...The other is over what exactly it is that ails us as a country...
...William Bennett put it very forcefully...
...Her upwardly mobile son, on the other hand, always splits his ticket and has been drifting more toward the Republicans...
...and are understandably resentful...
...there was a trend toward the Republicans among Catholics in all regions, but it was especially pronounced in the South and West...
...After his dad died, Murnion's family was on welfare for several years...
...For a sixty-year period, beginning with the New Deal response to the Great Depression, continuing through World War II and then through the cold war, all of the pressures were to increase the power of government and in particular the power of Washington...
...It has been argued that by stepping into so many areas, the government has sapped the energies of private institutions to help the poor...
...But as my colleague Laurie Goodstein pointed out recently in the Washington Post, those who run the voluntary institutions organized by the churches fear that they would simply collapse under the pressure of huge new burdens if government withdrew large amounts of support for the poor...
...My conclusion about what awaits us in politics and public policy in the future is that a policy of laissez-faire, of pure handsoff or anemic government, will not finally satisfy the country because it will not deal with the underlying economic and moral crises so roiling us...
...Catholic loyalty to the Democrats would never again be quite the same...
...But it must also preach to those blessed with the world's riches about their responsibilities to their neighbors and theircommunities and their country, to the poorest among us...
...This view attributes the election not to the strength of Republicanism or to the power of the conservative idea, but the failure of Democrats and liberals...
...Robert McAfee Brown offered what I think is a brilliant insight on how the gospel speaks to us...
...Our problems are moral, spiritual, philosophical, behavioral.-.crime, murder, divorce, drug use, births to unwed ntothers, child abuse, casual cruelty and casual sex, and just plain trashy behavior-" The other view, put forth among liberals and the Left, is that the fundamental crisis is economic...
...Increasingly, they were finding they could do one or the other but not both...
...There is no denying that taking over the House of Representatives was a very, very big deal...
...First, the Republican victory was...
...Thus in 1992, Clinton enjoyed a 1 0-point margin over Bush among Catholics in the Northeast and an 8-point margin among Midwestern Catholics...
...Murnion argues, and I think he's right, that we will not solve the problems that trouble us without paying attention to the need to strengthen all three supports...
...The most interesting iteration of this argument sees the 1994 election as the logical outcome to the end of the cold war...
...Al Smith's candidacy in 1928 generated enormous Catholic solidarity around the Democratic party and Franklin Roosevelt won a strong Catholic vote in 1932 and 1936...
...O'Reilly is not the Catholic norm anymore...
...Yet in the first two years of the Clinton administration, the Commonweal 5 May 1995: 11 administration and a Democratic Congress failed to deliver the basic components of the program: Health-care reform failed, welfare reform never got off the ground, political reforms in lobbying and campaign-finance law died, and the administration's quite popular job-training initiatives never got financed at anything like the levels implied during the campaign...
...There was government to provide resources-cash...
...It-s also worth noting that Catholics are not only more Democratic in the Northeast and Midwest, they are also more distinctive in their voting behavior...
...But among those doing rather well, white male college graduates, the Demo rats lost only five points...
...Those without college degrees and especially those with only high school diplomas or less held their aswn at best, and in many cases continued to suffer income losses...
...John Kennedy, of course, changed everything, but only briefly...
...We have individual responsibilities...
...What riles the country most, in this view, is that those who work hard and play by the rules have discovered that many of the rules have been repealed and that no one has let on what the new rules are...
...The costs of providing food and shelter and those second-chance homes are enormous...
...The Democrats also fell fifteen points among white males who attended college but never got a degree...
...To deny that the results, in some sense, did embody at the least an impatience with government would be foolish...
...indeed, historic, but it was also narrow...
...In the Northeast and Midwest, white Catholics are quite a bit more Democratic than white Protestants...
...There is no way forward but to acknowledge both crises...
...With both parents having to work, sometimes more than two jobs between them, they felt they were cheating their children...
...Bill Clinton did especially well among Jewish voters in 1992...
...Roosevelt lost substantial ground among German and Italian Catholics and also suffered losses among Irish Catholics who were anti-British...
...The focus here is on white Catholics and white Protestants because African-Americans, Catholic and Protestant alike, are overwhelmingly Democratic...
...The money is still there, but it is now under threat...
...This is a serious argument that contains some truths, but it is not, I think, the whole story...
...Father Philip Murnion, director of the National Pastoral Life Center, offers a powerful insight from his own experience...
...Some conservatives will even concede that this whole process of aggrandizing government was necessary...
...But Southern Catholics voted for Bush by a 14-point margin, while Western Catholics gave Clinton a narrow 4-point edge...
...Catholics and Protestants vote almost exactly the same way...
...It is also important to find new structures outside of government to help solve these problems...
...But those who believe in something other than laissez-faire will not make their case successfully unless they acknowledge the personal and moral dimension of this problem to which William Bennett among others speaks so forcefully...
...It must teach the virtues of self-discipline, work, and perseverance...
...But the churches can do something else, and the Catholic bishops have done this with great courage: they can remind us that degrading economic circumstances can lead to a degradation of the moral climate...
...Forvery large numbers of people, there to-44 percent...
...But in 1940, Catholic votes again divided along ethnic lines...
...Between 1992 and 1994, the Democratic share of the House vote dropped a staggering twenty points-from 57 percent to 37 percent-among white male high school graduates who never went on to college...
...None of this is to suggest that the pollsters and politicians can now ignore whether someone is Catholic or Protestant...
...O'Reilly replies...
...In this view, E.J...
...THE CATHOLIC VOTE NATIONAL RESULTS 1992 White Catholic White Protestant Clinton 42 34 Bush 37 47 Perot 72 19 Clinton +5 -13 Margin 1994 House Vote 44 34 Democratic Republican 55 64 REGIONAL RESULTS 1992 White Catholic W White Protestant Clinton 40 Bush 36 Perot 24 Clinton Margin NE MW S NE 11W S W 44 43 34 34 35 30 39 34 35 4l 47 46 53 37 22 " IS 19 19 17 21 +10 +8 -14 +4 -13 -9 -23 +2 1994 House Vote 46 42 34 34 36 33 34 Democrattc 46 Repuhlican 51 53 57 64 64 03 66 63 1992 Results: Exit PolItn- by Voter Research and Survcys 1994 RetiuItx: Exit Polling by Voter News Se rvwe Commonweal 5 May 1995: 13 is no longer such a thing as what the Catholic church has called over the years "the family wage...
...Anyone who cares about social justice must be concerned with the future of the family because one of the overwhelming forces increasing inequality and immiseration is the rise of fatherlessness...
...Roughly the same patterns held in 1994...
...Technological change and the globalization of the economy have kicked out many of the supports for a middleclass standard of living...
...Mom...
...We are, in this view, returning to "normalcy," which is a normalcy of limited government and decentralized power...
...Movement south and west seems to weaken the hold of the tradition that tied Catholics to the Democrats...
...But in 1952 and 1956...
...Conservatives have a clear answer: The country is bothered by too much government and, above all, by a moral crisis...
...as expected, "Straight Democratic...
...Yet the fact is that Republican House candidates took only 51 percent of the vote...
...The Republicans won thirty of their seats with 52 percent of the vote or less...
...the son asks his mother how she will vote that day and Mrs...
Vol. 122 • May 1995 • No. 9
