Whistling Past Dixie

I like Alex Massie and Daniel Larison's contributions to the whole "does the South hold American politics hostage" debate that Paul Waldman and Kevin Drum kicked off, largely because - as you might expect - I didn't find the original complaint particularly persuasive. Drum's suggestion that "most Southerners just flatly refuse to vote for anyone who comes from north of the Mason-Dixon Line" is a particularly self-defeating form of liberal condescension: It's the same line of identity-politics thinking that convinced certain Democrats that the way to win over the hawkish rubes out in the heartland was to nominate a veteran for President in '04, and have a lot of veterans at their convention, and talk a lot about "reporting for duty." Of course Southerners are somewhat more likely to vote for Southerners than non-Southerners, everything else being equal, and maybe they're somewhat more likely to vote for one of their own than a Californian or a New England Yankee would be. (It wouldn't be surprising if a region that's considerably more culturally particularist than the rest of America cared more about, well, cultural particularism in assessing Presidential candidates than the rest of the country does.) And sure, Waldman's probably right that John Edwards "can go to places where Clinton, and to an extent Obama, can't." But not that many places. Remember that Edwards ran for President in '04 in part because he was probably going to lose his N.C. Senate seat anyway, and he didn't do Kerry any good in the Carolinas in the general election. Indeed, you could argue that he owes his current prominence almost entirely to liberal identity politics: Had he hailed from Oregon, say, instead of tobacco country, there's little chance that Kerry would have picked him as a running mate in '04, and even less chance that he'd be considered one of the "big three" Democratic contenders this time around.



"Most Southerners just flatly refuse to vote for anyone who comes from north of the Mason-Dixon Line." Sure. Except that Southerners voted for Ronald Reagan over the Georgian Jimmy Carter; outside of the Border South, they voted for Bob Dole, a Kansan, over the Arkansas Bill Clinton; and I'm willing to bet they'd vote for Romney or McCain or even Giuliani, Noo Yawker though he is, over the drawling, folksy, down-home Edwards. To the extent that they hold American politics hostage, they do it the old-fashioned way - by voting for the candidates who share their views and values, and against the ones who don't.

It is the case, I think, that the South - perhaps for the same reason it produces better literature - produces more appealing politicians than other regions of the country, and as a result finds itself overrepresented on the national stage. If you were drawing up an ideal Republican candidate for President, for instance, he'd look like Tommy Thompson: The successful, Catholic governor of a Midwestern swing state. But Tommy Thompson is charmless and clumsy and going nowhere, whereas the far less accomplished Fred Thompson is smoother than smooth and rising to the top of the polls - and his Southern-ness, and poor Tommy Thompson's lack thereof, has at least something to do with it.

But it isn't Dixie's fault that her sons and daughters are just flat-out more charming than the rest of America. Don't hate the player ...