Quick and easy political symbolism is as American as election season itself, so obviously the aspect of Scott Brown’s massively significant win in Massachusetts most in need of dissecting analysis is his truck. The reflex appears to be one of mocking wealthy Republicans for continuing (remember Fred Thompson?) to fake working-class economic values and down-home cultural ones by repeated recourse to the pickup truck. But I wonder if the truck actually trades in another sort of symbolic: manliness. I could launch into a bit concerning the relation between self-reliance and manliness, and another bit about the sort of conservative democratic individualism that’s paradoxically low on the ‘individuality’ you get out of liberal democratic individualism (I’d work in a meditation on the word ‘generic’)…but I’d rather hear your ideas.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 9:32 AM
January 20th, 2010 | 10:12 am
Semiotics aside, a truck is a rational choice for would-be SUV drivers.
A pickup truck is the cheapest way to get front-seat cabin space, ground clearance, (maybe) four-wheel drive, and all the other things that SUVs charge a premium for. You pay about $10,000 more for a Suburban than for a comparably equipped Silverado, even with a crew cab.
January 20th, 2010 | 10:51 am
Brown’s relatively goofy but still on-message and hugely self-confident victory speech was dipping with manliness. The differences between him and the perceived oligarch Romney are fairly subtle but really important. The big news is that the country wants divided government and hates Pelosi.
January 20th, 2010 | 12:16 pm
James,
The differences between the Brown truck and the Thompson truck are huge. For Brown, it wasn’t just owning a truck as a biographical, identity politics prop. Brown actually drove himself all over the state. This was in contrast to Coakley who was much less accessible and was surrounded by a flock of aides. It also added to Brown’s goo goo, nonideological, man vs machine, appeal.
Peter,
The stylistic differences between Brown and Romney are also huge. I’ve heard over a dozen Brown interviews in the last month. He isn’t the most eloquent, but he comes across as really sincere. He is like that pretty smart, good guy, on the next barstool over. Romney (or at least the 2008 Romney) was slicker, but also came across as big phony who was trying to sell himself as a consistent ideologue. Romney came across as maybe smarter, but I know who I would prefer to buy a used truck from. Still, if that McDonnell fellow from Virginia was a cut below presidential material, Brown is at least another cut below that – though still pretty impressive.
I take shots at Romney, but it was good to seem him gloat yesterday abut the unintended consequences of the Democratic Massachusetts legislature changing the rules for replacing Senators in order to deny Romney a potential appointment. Mmmm.. thats good poetic justice.
The Obama administration has a choice. They could move to the center or they could move to a different kind of left politics. So far, the Obama administration has pursued a kind of business + government corporatism in selling healthcare (gotta get big pharma on board) and of course cap and trade. Obama could instead go to a kind of populist and explicitly anti-business statism message. Conservatives should be ready to counter it. The high unemployment rate has produced alot of free floating anxiety. Much of that anxiety has found a focus in opposition to ObamaCare (thank God), but Obama might try to refocus it against the Wall Street, Big Business, Man who is trying to keep you down. At the end of the day, it is about real life, so conservatives should be emphasizing how their policies will affect people’s living standards and contrast them with symbolic swipes against banking executives and counterproductive tax increases.
A good place to start would be Robert Stein’s tax plan.
http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/taxes-and-the-family
January 20th, 2010 | 12:36 pm
Remember, Janet Reno also drove a pickup in her (failed) campaign for governor of Florida, back in 2002. So it is not only Republican or even male candidates who are doing the rustic accessorizing.
January 20th, 2010 | 2:48 pm
A truck is a practical vehicle generally used by people engaged in productive activities. The practical-phobes of government have not been engaged in productive activity for some time now. That a truck might be used to convey pragmatism is unsurprising. What is surprising is that people maintain a mock horror over politics but follow it as they would a professional sport and therefore enjoy…even crave the transparent balderdash of any campaign. Brown gave this to the public and his opponent sat on the sidelines until it was way too late.
I’d like to ascribe it to the New Englander actually wising up to the prematurely reported death of the Republican Party in their region but I tend to doubt that it is anything substantial beyond still inchoate distrust of the Federal Government combined with good old fashioned boots on the ground.
January 20th, 2010 | 3:17 pm
It all starts with individual freedom, single pebbele droppers. “Don’t make waves,” and “Don’t rock the boat,” yet, no one has ever seen a boat going anywhere that was not making waves and rocking from side to side, making the placid water choppy. For new start-ups and jobs we need to continue welcoming the wave-making pebble-droppers or secure the peace of the pond. Governing elite tell us the interests of the pond, the community, are more important than are the interests of the individual, the pebble-dropping wave makers. Pebble-droppers made America what it is today, giving form and shape to our American Evolution. Pebble droppers made us prosperous and only they can keep us prosperous. Without pebble droppers, America will have no prosperity, no growth, no entrepreneurs, no small business and no new jobs. Government managers cannot control pebble droppers, only prevent their disturbing behavior. See Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on Amazon.com and claysamerica.com
January 20th, 2010 | 3:29 pm
The truck is not a Prius. He does not bow to climate god hysteria.
The truck is not a BMW. He is not Eurocentric.
The truck is not SUV. He is not a woman.
The truck is not logical. He is not an intellectual.
The truck will haul chain saws and venison. He is not afraid of trees and animals.
We more do you need to vote for him, if you believe Brown is honest about his truck.
January 20th, 2010 | 3:36 pm
for the record, I agree that folksy, manly Thompson came off as an act, and, despite his vast acting experience, hardly anyone is convinced. Wining the Virginia and Mass elections were big steps to alleviating the Republican talent dearth. I have a high opinion of Romney, but I agree the list of ways in which he doesn’t come off as manly is long.
January 20th, 2010 | 4:01 pm
The election of a Scott Brown in Taxechewsetts of all places indicates just how desperate the electorate is to correct the mistake it made in electing the radical Obama. The problem with the GOP is not so much manliness, though they don’t have a candidate who projects that characteristic, it’s one of principle but the tea party people will address that shortly.
January 20th, 2010 | 5:14 pm
It is possible to read too much into the Brown win. The flood of suburban white persuadables that broke to Brown and the lower turnout in Massachusetts cities is obscuring the underlying strenghts of the two political coalitions. There is something real happening out there apart from the gap in quality between the two candidates. It is mostly being driven by the combination of bad economic times and the sense that Obama is both more liberal and less honest than promised (healthcare deliberations of CSPAN ect). But these Republican gains are on weak foundations. Even a slight improvement in the economy could put many of the white suburbanites who flocked to Brown (and their counterparts around the country) back into play. The 2012 election and Obama’s skills as a campaigner and campaign organizer should boost the turnout among Democrat-leaning constituencies.
And another thing. One of the disturbing things about the Msassachusetts election was Brown’s failure to make major inroads among African Americans and Latinos under what should be favorable conditions (I’m going by the PPP polls and it is kind of complicated because the last PPP poll had no separate category for Latino, but you can work it out looking at thelast two Massachusetts Senate polls). If Republicans fail to make converts among those two constituencies, it is going to come back to bite them in the butt the next time that white persuadables aren’t breaking hard for Republicans. And that is not just a Massachusetts problem
January 20th, 2010 | 9:46 pm
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January 21st, 2010 | 9:13 am
Pete, Good comments as usual. Obama does seem more liberal and less honest. And there’s reason to be optimistic about the 2010 election and pessimistic about 2012.
January 21st, 2010 | 12:42 pm
An important part of Brown’s appeal was charisma – for a man, manliness. Clinton had it in spades too. But the difference – with say W. Bush – is a touch of the femine. Contrast is king.
January 21st, 2010 | 1:23 pm
I’m not sure that manliness and the charisma are exactly the same thing. If they’re not, Brown for now lacks the latter. It may be that a touch of the feminine is required to turn manliness into charisma. But you have to be able to be charming in speech too, which poor W isn’t. Obama has a touch or more than a touch of the feminine and is pretty charismatic, although not all that manly. Obama is going to have to upgrade his manly side to get through his current swoon, and I’m not as sure as some that he won’t.
January 21st, 2010 | 2:38 pm
Well, the only problem about your truck/manliness comparison is that his truck is a “small truck.”
January 21st, 2010 | 3:27 pm
“I’m not sure that manliness and the charisma are exactly the same thing.”
Yes, you hit on a distinction I should have made more clear: for a man, charisma is a necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient for “manliness.” Just as the charisma of social dominance can be a very powerful way to attract a woman, the charisma of attracting women is one powerful way to convey “manliness” to other men. W. had the swagger, but lacked the charismatic appeal that can make women swoon and men stir in their envy. A “touch of the feminine” conveys that a man is so much a man he can away with it (the trick of Mick Jagger and other rockers.)
January 21st, 2010 | 3:52 pm
In his MANLINESS, Mansfield says something like small trucks can be manly, although you can’t help but wish they were larger. The new senator is working the point that he attracts attractive women and is showing the very opposite of shame when it comes to the “scandal” of his totally transparency in the magazine for women looking for manly men.
January 21st, 2010 | 4:04 pm
I didn’t know the “size” of the truck mattered, though I understand the age of the truck does!
January 21st, 2010 | 4:57 pm
I’m not even sure charisma is a necessary condition for manliness, unless you include the understated attractiveness of the strong silent type as a species of charisma. My father was a pretty manly sort but certainly not charismatic, except to that class of women who really like the dour, fatalistic types (he fared better when he was still in Ireland). One way of looking at the difference is this: the manly man asserts his position but the charismatic approach is a mode of persuasion, a kind of pleading, however confident. The magnanimous man, as Aristotle describes him, knows the honors he deserves and claims them, but he doesn’t try to convince anyone he deserves them, or particularly cares that they think he does.
January 21st, 2010 | 7:16 pm
I think that we should think of the possibility that that the truck and its relation to manliness was, in itself, a litltle less important than some of this discussion seems to indicate – though not unimportant. The main thing was the uses to which the truck was put. Brown made it a point to note that he was driving himself and personally asking people for their votes. One thing that struck me about Brown was that he spent election day calling people and asking for their votes. This was a reminder of the saying from that New England porcher Tip O’Neil that all politics is local and that people like to be asked for their votes rather than taken for granted. It was also in contrast with Coakley, whio did few public events in the early part of the general election race, and spent the latter part of the race surrounding herself with establishment polls and the latter progeny and spouses of the Kennedy family.
Thats not to say that the “optics” and symbolism of Brown and the truck were worthless. It wouldn’t have worked as well if Brown were short, dumpy, had a nasal voice, and drove a Lexus. On the other hand, much of the Brown approach could have worked for a woman candidate who was driving any of a number of different kinds of cars.
January 23rd, 2010 | 6:30 pm
I’m a long time registered Massachusetts Democrat (60 years) and I voted for Brown, contributed to his campaign fund, and held a sign for him a traffic rotary and on a main street on the Friday and Saturday just before the election. I also had two letters published in my local weekly explaining my support for his candidacy. Believe me, his truck driving was of no significance in my decision to vote for him, and I’m confident it was also of no significance to any of the 100 or more people I know who also supported for him. .
My first knowledge of Brown dates back about six years. He was the main speaker at a Young Marines graduation ceremony. My fourteen year old granddaughter was among the graduates, and I liked the content of Brown’s graduation address, with its emphasis on duty and self discipline.
Subsequently when Brown ran for the State Senate and faced considerable opposition from Mass Equality because of his support for traditional marriage my positive opinion of him rose. And when he announced his candidacy for the US Senate and Mass Citizens for Life endorsed him because he supported its initiatives in support of legislation putting such curbs on abortion access as are compatible with Roe v,Wade jurisprudence, my positive opinion oF Brown rose further, and I decided to support him actively. Here, I thought is a man with fortitude. The opportunity a pro-life and pro traditional marriage Massachusetts citizen gets to support a candidate that does not march in lockstep with NARAL and Mass Equality is rare indeed. Whether such a candidate drives or does not drive a truck is really of no importance.
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