Experts Debate if Culture War Will Matter on Election Day
With the backdrop of the financial crisis and oil prices at record-high levels, culture war issues seem to have been relegated to the back burner in presidential debates and on the campaign trail. But two experts recently debated if the culture war has really disappeared from this election year or if it only underwent a transformation.
"Culture war is a fixture," argued Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York, at an event hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Gitlin dismissed the idea that the culture war has disappeared, but believes the issues commonly associated with it have evolved. Instead of only the usual hot-button topics of abortion and gay "marriage," the culture war has broadened to a theme of city versus country this election year.
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"We have Barack Obama, of Honolulu, New York, Cambridge and Chicago versus John McCain of Sedona and Sarah Palin of Wasilla," Gitlin contended. "Obviously, the impact of all of these will be muted by the financial and economic crisis to the great benefit of Sen. Obama and the chagrin of Sen. McCain."
He further noted that in recent weeks there has been an intense war between, "Main Street versus Wall Street" – going along with the city versus country theme.
"The legacy of the culture war, in other words, is well nigh inescapable – whatever's the ostensible object of attention," the culture war expert remarked.
Likewise, Yuval Levin, the Hertog fellow and director of the Bioethics and American Democracy Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., agreed that the culture war in politics is about a "set of opposing attitudes and dispositions."
In his opinion, the culture war this election year is a war of two types of populism: cultural and economic populism.
"For that reason, I think that this election is definitely, and has been and will be, a culture war election – because in fact, in this particular election more than most, we see the war of cultural populism defining the two candidates," Levin said.
Cultural populism refers to identifying with the average American in terms of culture like how one eats, talks, and what car one drives, while economic populism refers to identifying with the average Americans in terms of finance.
Levin contended that this election is interesting because the nominees reversed the populist pattern of their party – Republican Sen. John McCain is not as much a cultural populist as he is an economic populist "at least in attitude, in disposition."
Meanwhile, Democrat Sen. Barack Obama is "more of a cultural elitist," and seems to be somewhat uncomfortable with the role of an economic populist.
"Certainly, many people would argue that it's silly to call Barack Obama an elitist. He grew up relatively poor and he was even once on food stamps. He didn't come from a prominent family; he made his own way in the world; he made his own name," Levin acknowledged. "And John McCain is the son of a fairly wealthy family of kind of American military aristocracy. He married an heiress…"
But Levin argued that people confuse cultural and economic populism, "a confusion of cultural identity with class identity."
Traditionally, Republicans are "very good at cultural populism" and are characterized by traditional values, patriotism, anti-cosmopolitan, "non-nuance sort of Joe Six-pack Americans."
Democrats, on the other hand, are "much better…at economic populism" where they are "out for fairness," anti-corporatist, "people against the powerful, and defender-of-the-little-guy type."
But Americans don't care so much which candidate is richer, Levin argued, as much as who is perceived as an elitist.
Levin recalled that Obama did not help his image as a cultural elitist when he said earlier in the campaign season that people in small-town Pennsylvania cling to God and guns because they're bitter.
"I think Obama is a walking, talking example of the way in which economic and cultural populism are not the same thing," Levin said, referring to the fact that Obama is less wealthy than McCain but is perceived as an elitist.
"He is a cultural elitist and a classic representative of the cultural elite. And yes, his mother was on food stamps," he added. "She was on food stamps at a time when she was a graduate student getting a Ph.D. in anthropology. His elitism didn't come out of nowhere."
In the end, both experts agree that traditional issues of culture war, abortion and gay "marriage," will be "dampened" and matter less this election year.
