Aspirin for a Post-Election Hangover

Never trust a first impression.

Maybe that's the biggest lesson to take from all the apoplectic post-election hand-winging from the Left about how "values" supposedly swept Dubya back into office for a second term. Hell, I bought into it, too, swallowing all the election analysis that "moral values" were the central concern for 22 percent of the electorate, the vast majority of whom supported Bush.

And, yes, it made me feel pretty lousy about the direction this country was taking. Reasonable people can disagree about a number of social issues, of course -- abortion, gun control, etc. -- but it was a sobering notion that the "values" being bandied about by some of the truly crazed on the outside lane of the Religions Right (gays=bad, non-Christians=bad, foreigners=bad) really motivated that many voters.

Thankfully, a crop of post-Nov. 2 information questions the weight that "moral values" actually played.

First, let's take a deep breath and take note that, whaddya know, the electoral map of 2004 looks virtually the same as it did in 2000. While the gay marriage ban that appeared on the ballot in 11 states was undoubtedly employed as a wedge issue to separate the manly men Republicans from them sissified Democrats, Andrew Sullivan rightly points out that only three of the 11 were so-called "swing" states -- and Kerry won two of the three (OK, so that elusive third was the pivotal Ohio, but still....) And the overwhelming majority of the nation still supports civil unions for same-sex couples, or at least that's what they're telling pollsters.

The Nov. 22 issue of Time tackles the "folklore" of the 2004 election, including the misperception that churchgoers dominated the polls. The magazine notes that Democratic pollster Geoffery Garin found that the portion of the '04 electorate attending church at least once a week was 42 percent, the same percentage that turned out four years ago. In fact, Garin adds, Bush's support in that group rose by only 1 percent. He actually increased his support among the group of voters who never go to church, witnessing an increase of 4 percentage points.

The magazine goes on:

"Though 22 percent cited their moral values as the deciding issue, the percentage that cited one of the two biggest foreign policy issues, Iraq and terrorism, was significantly higher -- 34 percent. And it turns out that a 'moral value' is in the conscience of the beholder. In a poll due out this week from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, 42 percent of respondents said the war in Iraq was the most important moral issue influencing their vote, compared with 13 percent who chose abortion and less than 10 percent who chose gay marriage."

Maybe I should have realized as such. Most of my Republican friends who voted for Bush did so chiefly because of what they perceive as his resolve in the war on terrah (read: terror) and not because they have any hidden desire to beat puppies.

Anyway, it's not New Year's yet, but I've got a new resolution. I'm gonna try not to sweat it that we've got four more years of Dubya. Perhaps Tom Wolfe put it best. "This country is so centrist, we're not really going to go wrong whoever's elected," he wrote in a recent Rolling Stone. "Our government is like a train on a track: People yell at it from the left, and they yell at from the right, but the train goes right down the middle where the tracks are."