A Cleansing Election

What about the power of the three hot-button social issues: abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research? There seemed to be solid shifts on gay marriage and abortion this year.
Gergen: Let's go back to a verb Peter used: how voters essentially adjudicate issues. On both abortion and gay marriage, people are adjudicating the issue in a way that does not involve an extreme conclusion. They're saying, "We don't like gay marriage in a church, but we find civil unions and the extension of rights to gay partners to be wholly acceptable. We don't like abortion on demand, but we think there ought to be abortions available to people in a whole variety of situations."

In both cases, the electorate has adjudicated the issue in a way that is more in accord with traditional values than it is hardcore conservative. They're saying, "You have a certain amount of personal freedom, and we're going to ask you to live in a constructive way, but we're going to respect you to live your life as you want." The same thing is true on stem cells. People reject cloning, but they are in favor of therapeutic research. Stem cells are increasingly going to be a winning wedge issue for Democrats -- one of the first they have found in years.

So the ugliness on these three issues -- the central issues for the religious right and the Bush wing of the Republican Party -- is waning? Are we done with this for a while?
Hart: "Done" is the wrong word. But there is a tremendous change in terms of attitudes. Voters opposed gay marriage in seven of the eight states where it was on the ballot this year -- but not by sixty-five percent like they did two years ago, but by fifty-something percent. If the Republicans are hoping to make this their linchpin for 2008, they're just wrong.

Gergen: I can't guarantee it, but I sense that these issues have lost some of their electoral potency. They're not going to be as central to national races as they have been. Which is not to say that the conservative movement is going to stop pushing them. The electorate may be changing its mind, but conservatives have put an awful lot of judges on the federal bench, and they will remain there for a long time and continue to approve a variety of restrictions.

Do the election results indicate that Rove's strategy of "smear and fear" -- slime your opponents and rile up the base -- has lost any of its impact and appeal?
Gergen: This election showed that there are lines -- and when you go over the line, it backfires more easily. In Massachusetts, the Willie Horton-type ad run by Kerry Healey backfired badly on her. Mike DeWine paid a price, in Ohio, for some of the negativity of the advertising there. It wasn't just how harsh some of the ads were -- it was that the ratio changed between negative ads and positive ads. Some states, you'd turn on the television and all you'd get was a barrage of negative ads.

Hart: The most fascinating two races were Jim Webb's in Virginia, which he won, and Michael Steele's, in Maryland, where he lost narrowly. Neither of them should have been competitive -- but they both communicated directly to voters in a civil and respectful manner, and they came across as authentic versus political.

Gergen: The Republican strategist Matthew Dowd has a new theory out. He's the one who went to Rove after the 2000 election and said, "You know, we always used to think fifteen or twenty percent of the electorate was undecided, but that's shrunk down to seven or eight percent. So the way to win the election is to no longer go to the middle but to energize your base." Now Dowd is saying, "That's true, but there is something else happening. There is a broader group in the middle of the spectrum who no longer feel their parties are speaking for them. If one party goes to the extreme, these people are open to the other party and can cross the lines." That's a pretty persuasive way to look at what happened this year.

Hart: Dowd is absolutely right. The best model for 2006: Arnold Schwarzenegger. He came in believing the Rove strategy, got his head handed to him in a series of ballot initiatives, and said, "Hold it, I want to get re-elected, here's my new strategy: I'm bringing in all Democrats, I'm going to promote the environment, I'm going to promote education." Now we have a Republican governor governing like a Democrat.

Is this the end of Rove's dream of building a "permanent Republican majority"?
Gergen: The old Republican majority has died, and it will be harder than Lazarus to resurrect. They are going to have to form a new majority -- one that includes, for example, far more Hispanics. The problem is, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote went down a dozen points this year because of the party's immigration stance.

Let's go to Ohio -- what do you make of the remarkable change there?
Gergen: Ohio is the best hope for the future of Democrats. Here's a state that is a bellwether state. They're feeling the effects of globalization, especially in northern Ohio. I was in Toledo ten days ago, and it's like, "Whoa, it looks like a war zone." They're very much feeling the economic squeeze, but their elected representatives were not paying attention to the economic issues, plus they have scandals at the statehouse and they have a bad war. It was a disaster for Republicans.

Hart: It was never close. I call it "Goodbye, Columbus." Look at how the city has changed over the past forty-five years. In 1960, Jack Kennedy said, "There's no place in America that gives me a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbus, Ohio." Since then, the city has grown by forty percent. The median age has gone from twenty-seven to thirty-four. The nonwhite vote has gone from twelve percent to twenty-eight percent. The economy has gone from General Motors and manufacturing to high-tech and insurance. And the gubernatorial vote has gone from sixty-two percent Republican to sixty-two percent Democratic. The ability to understand America is the ability to understand Columbus. In 1990, there were something like twenty Somalians in Columbus -- now there are 20,000. It is right in the vortex of what's going on.