Nothing makes white men angry, after all, like the humiliation of lost jobs and diminished earning power. (True enough, but more often than not the anger in question goes beyond money and approaches implicit group identity. — Ed.)
On that heady evening last August when Barack Obamaclaimed the Democratic presidential nomination before an adoring throngin Denver, it seemed possible he could change the very nature ofAmerican politics. Americans, Obama said, had “lost our sense of commonpurpose”. He vowed to restore “the promise of a democracy where we canfind the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in commoneffort”.
It seemed entirely plausible, as Andrew Sullivan had argued inan influential December 2007 Atlantic magazine essay: “If youare an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battlesof the boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may beyour man,” Sullivan wrote. Obama, he argued, could usher in a new eraof post-baby boomer politics, one that would transcend the culture warsthat had dogged America since Vietnam and the rise of Richard Nixon.[snip]
No, today’s culture warriors are more reminiscent of another famoustype in recent American politics: the Angry White Male. This was thearchetype of the political force that rocked Bill Clinton’s presidencyduring the 1994 congressional midterm elections, in which Republicanstook control of the House of Representatives and Senate. Thecatchphrase was based on the huge shift by white men to the Republicancolumn in that election; just 39% voted for Democratic House candidatesthat year, a 10-point dip from the 1992 election. The anger wassomething more intang-ible, but also quite real: storm clouds of bilefilling the conservative talk radio airwaves. Most memorably, perhaps,in the autumn of 1994, the Watergate-conspirator-turned-talk-radio-hostG Gordon Liddy advised a listener worried about intrusions by federalagents to “shoot for the head”.
Today, white men again symbolisethe conservative resistance to a Democratic president. And with a blackman in the White House, the racial element is even more pronounced.