US Elections

Interview: David Smith on the Arizona debate

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

23 February 2012

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I watched today's Arizona Republican presidential debate with Dr. David Smith, the Centre's Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy. He had some interesting things to say about the proceedings, so after it was all finished, I grabbed him and asked him a few questions about what we'd just seen. Here are his thoughts on the accusations against President Barack Obama of curtailing religious liberty, Mitt Romney's Mormonism, and the state of the race as it heads into the Arizona and Michigan primaries:

Jonathan Bradley: When Mitt Romney said “I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama” you commented “for a Mormon to say that is extraordinary.” Could you explain why?

David Smith: The Mormons have suffered far worse assaults on their freedom of conscience and freedom of religion than the contraception mandate entails. Their founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob assisted by an Illinois state militia in 1844. Prior to that, they had been driven out of New York, Ohio and Missouri at gunpoint; in the case of Missouri there was a full-blown war between Mormons and their anti-Mormon neighbours in the west of the state, culminating in an extraordinary, quasi-genocidal extermination order from Governor Lilburn Boggs. In Utah (where they fled under Brigham Young to escape further persecution), the Federal Government mounted a series of increasingly draconian legislative attempts to stamp out polygamy among the Mormons, which they had been practising openly since the late 1840s. In 1883 the Edmunds Act denied polygamists (which was widely interpreted to mean any Mormon, since they all believed in it though only a few of them practised it) the right to vote, hold office, or serve on juries. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 allowed the Federal government to seize Mormon Church property. In response to threats to seize temples in Utah, the Mormons officially abandoned the practice of plural marriage in 1890, though they were (in some cases correctly) suspected of continuing to practice it until about 1904. The first Mormon Senator, Reed Smoot, was denied his senate seat for seven years on suspicion that he was a polygamist (he was not).

You also said that the audience was favourably disposed toward Romney. What about this audience made them Mitt-friendly?

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I don't mean to brag, but...

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

31 January 2012

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...we know our stuff here at the US Studies Centre.

This past Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald asked four people whether politics has "finally moved beyond the personal." The evidence of this purported cultural shift? Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina Republican primary, where he won over a socially conservative electorate despite his multiple marriages and reports that he'd asked an ex-wife for an open relationship.

"Politcians tax us too much, spend our money wastefully and regulate our lives," demagogued "The Libertarian," a.k.a. the Instittute of Public Affairs's James Paterson. "So why do we spend so much time worrying about their personal lives instead of the things that really matter?" Gingrich's success, he posited, was "one piece of evidence that American voters have moved beyond the personal." Voters have moved on, even if the media hasn't.

"The Feminist," Kate Gleeson pointed out, not unreasonably, that the public is more forgiving of the male and heterosexual Gingrich's indiscretions than they might be of a woman or gay man. "The Former Politician" Cheryl Kernot used the forum to urge legislators to restrict free speech by enhancing privacy laws, and and applauded one of Gingrich's self-serving attacks on the media.

Fortunately, "The Academic" — also known as the USSC's David Smith — was on hand to straighten things out:

The triumph of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina reminds us that the politics of the personal is as strategic as any other politics.

Moral outrage is not a natural phenomenon that occurs automatically in response to revelations about politicians' personal lives. It is a political weapon to be exploited or neutralised by those who best understand how to use it. No one understands better than Gingrich how outrage works in South Carolina.

America's "Red" states (conservative, Republican-voting) have higher average rates of divorce and birth out of wedlock than the supposedly more permissive "Blue" states. While conservatives insist on strict moral rules, they know they live in a morally complicated world. Everybody knows and loves people who have "fallen" at least once. Gingrich wants to appear as someone who has sinned and repented, and deserves the forgiveness everyone sometimes needs.

Moreover, he has successfully turned himself into a victim. When CNN's John King opened a debate with a question about Marianne Gingrich's claims that Newt had asked for an open marriage, he called the accusations "tawdry" and expressed outrage that the "elite media" would try to protect Barack Obama by attacking a leading Republican this way. This earned him a standing ovation; he had masterfully implied that an attack on him by his ex-wife was an attack on all conservatives by the vindictive liberal media. During the Obama presidency, Republicans have found no emotion more satisfying than victimhood.

Quite. Gingrich is a benefactor of circumstance and cultural affinity. Let us not forget that personal indiscretions recently claimed the careers of Demcoratic Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, a Republican and the former governor of South Carolina. (Sanford, you may recall, went missing in the middle of 2009 when he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out he had skipped off to Argentina to have an affair. Until then, he was expected to be competitive in this year's presidential primaries.)

After the jump, the rest of David's response.

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