Why WASPS Buzz So Loudly These Days

Power Shift Causes Rifts, Not Cable News or the President

Sunday, July 20, 2014

John Brummett says Arkansas politics aren't local any more. Now "we subjugate our charm and eccentricity to the general national debate." I largely agree with that.

He blamed the change, though, on "the modern digital and cable-news era." This has "transformed Arkansas politics from something peculiar on an in-state basis into nationally homogenized politics," he said. I don't agree with that, though I'm being picky. The end result is the same.

Congress took a large, active and direct role in personal health care in 2010. It's hard to stay quirky and detached when Washington makes decisions about your health insurance coverage. That's getting about as close to home as you can get.

Also, this is a socially conservative state, and social conservatives are clearly losing the national culture war. The marriage equality movement certainly didn't spring up in Arkansas. It swept over us. Again, national politics showed up at our doorstep. Arkansans could hardly ignore it.

All this gave the "the modern digital and cable-news era" fear-mongers their shot. WASPS -- white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and straight -- no longer have unquestioned rule of the country. That makes a lot of WASPS nervous. A lot, but not all; I'm white, Anglo, Protestant and straight and I'm not nervous, so please refrain from using broad brushes.

And, to mention the elephant in the room, many WASPS were already ill-at-ease with a black man in the White House. Nobody ever asked to see George W. Bush's birth certificate. Practically the whole rest of the country rightly blamed Republicans in Congress last year for the federal government shutdown. Not Arkansas, according to polling.

I've been called a racist for pointing out in 2008 that the junior senator from Illinois never would have received a second glance as a serious presidential contender had he been white. So I'm very aware of how critics of the president often get painted with same kind of broad brush I mentioned earlier. I don't bring the subject up lightly. While it's up, though, let's admit that Barack Obama got painted with two broad brushes, one from each side.

We've used the word "prejudice" in its negative racial context for a long time. We've forgotten that you can be prejudiced in favor of something. For example, what basis was there for believing the freshman junior senator from Illinois would transform politics? His election alone, given his skin color, was supposed to accomplish this. As a candidate, the president promised as much.

That was simply irrational. More than a few of us pointed this out at the time. Yes, a glass ceiling was broken and a milestone passed. Profound, deep change in the nation's racial attitudes, though, didn't show up on the White House steps in a basket. Obama's election was the beginning of a new chapter, not the finale.

First the president failed to deliver the impossible. Then he cashed in all his remaining political chips to pass health care reform. After that, support for him fell hard. He's suffered the full force of "negative" prejudice ever since. There's a steep price for being first. He's still paying it.

I've been very hard on the president in previous columns. In hindsight, I have to admit something. I used to think he was a fool to cash in all his political chips to get health care reform passed. The Republicans had fouled the country up so badly, the Democrats should have been looking at an FDR-like era of dominance. Instead they lost the House in 2010 and are now on the brink of losing the Senate. In hindsight, the blowback against a black man in the White House was going to be severe whatever happened. Once the worst of the economic panic ended, that backlash began.

Therefore, the president was right to cash in his chips right away, before the blowback hit. He didn't plan things that way, but he took the only opportunity he was ever going to get to do anything..

President Obama didn't end our conflicts or cause them, either. WASPS are losing their tight grip on power. That would make many of them tense under any circumstances. At the same moment, our nation's falling credit score no longer allows us to offer something to everyone. It's a bad time to lose your grip on power if you had it.

Real battles lie ahead. They will have real winners and losers. Things are going to be a little uptight, whatever's on cable.

Commentary on 07/20/2014