Misdirected Feistiness

book review by Brian King

What's The Matter With Kansas?:

How Conservatives Won The Heart of America

by Thomas Frank

Recently, there was a "First Person" essay in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (1/19/05). The fellow who wrote it (Neal Starkman-not a P-I regular) wanted to give his opinion on the November election. It was one of those "what should the Democrats do to actually stand a chance of winning a national election" pieces. The title of the column was "S factor still relevant in election." "S" stands for stupid, as in "red-state voters sure are stupid, aren't they?"

Starkman's case is a compelling one. What should an honest observer conclude after watching all those low income, hard working folks in red states vote for the same Republicans who are promising to cut taxes on the rich and shred whatever social safety net still exists in the US?

Don't those idiots understand their own vital interests? And if they do, then how could they possibly re-elect Bush? Goodness, those people are so easily manipulated by reactionary calls from demagogues! All they seem to care about is nonsense like ending abortion and stopping same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, the Republicans are busy shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to those same red-state working people. Is there any hope for getting these guys back in the Democratic fold?

Thomas Frank's neat little book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, offers an interesting answer to this question. It makes a nice counterpoint to all the blue-state intellectual despair one hears these days. Frank is a former red-state (Kansas) conservative who's come around to a pro-union, pro-choice point of view. He probably wouldn't be too upset to hear himself called a social democrat.

In his Kansas book, Frank takes us on a heartfelt social/political tour of his native state. He concentrates on the very people who drive blue state lefties nuts: Kansas State Senator Kay O'Connor is a 60-something working class woman who devotes a large portion of her political activities to the undermining of the fine public school system in Kansas through advocacy for school vouchers, when she isn't opposing abortion, of course. When O'Connor, a very successful politician and vote winner in Kansas, opined that female suffrage was a "symptom of America's moral decline," Jay Leno called her "Taliban woman of the year" on the Tonight show.

Frank also introduces us to the senior US Senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, a reliable supporter of Bush policies in the US Senate. Brownback's "signature gesture" came when he delayed the departure of an aide one day so that he could, Jesus-like, wash the aide's feet. One humble Senator, eh?

Then there's legendary mile-runner Jim Ryun, elected to the US House of Representatives from Kansas, who "once thrilled his followers at a campaign event by speaking in tongues." Really.

Frank tells about the summer of 1991, which was designated the "Summer of Mercy" in Kansas, as in "have mercy on the unborn." Activities were concentrated in Wichita. Protesters chained themselves to gates, laid down in front of cars trying to bring pregnant women to abortion clinics, got arrested, and generally made nuisances of themselves while trying to save as many "unborn babies" as possible. At the beginning of the summer, in a dramatic bow to the power of the Kansas anti-abortion movement, the city's abortion clinics closed for an entire week. The summer's climax came at Wichita State University football stadium, which was filled to the gills with over 25,000 exuberant true believers.

At the stadium, one female event organizer in a "Spartacus-like moment" first asked out-of-towners to rise, and then called on Wichitans to stand up. The entire crowd came to its feet and cheered the feisty pro-life woman on the stage in front of them. Quite a scene!

All of this tomfoolery does have real world consequences. In the 2004 election, Kansas voted 62% for George W to 36% for John Kerry. Kansas' six electoral votes went straight to the Republicans.

It wasn't always thus. Kansas has been a center of social ferment, in the center of America, since the "Bleeding Kansas" days just before the Civil War. But the ferment used to be a lot more interesting. Kansas was a hotbed front of the anti-slavery movement. Free soilers, led by men like the legendary John Brown, fought pro-slavery forces across the border in Missouri. Later, during the McKinley presidential campaign, populists were so strong in Kansas that a frustrated national Republican Party passed out flyers around the country by essayist William Allen White, holding the state of Kansas up to ridicule. Homegrown firebrands like Mary Elizabeth Lease urged populist farmers to "raise less corn and more hell!" During the depression, Roosevelt's New Deal was wildly popular in Kansas.

What has pushed things so far to the right in recent years? Frank's answer is definitely not the stupidity of Kansans. Rather, he blames the move to the right inside the Democratic Party for the drastic shift to the right among working people in America's heartland. According to Frank, "As political strategy, though, Clinton's move to accommodate the right was the purest folly. It simply pulled the rug out from under any possible effort on the left." Or, as one wag put it in the 90s, "If you have to choose between two Republicans, vote for the real one." Frank believes that since the Democrats have abandoned real issues, many Kansas working people feel they might as well get worked up over hopeless religious and cultural topics. When the Clintons declared the end of big government, the end of welfare "as we know it," and built upon the Reagan policy of throwing the US healthcare system onto the mercy of the market, they really helped right-wing religious movements gain support.

Thomas Frank appeared on the Bill Moyers PBS program NOW last year. When Moyers asked if "what's the matter with Kansas is also what's the matter with America," Frank responded with a hearty "yes." If he's right, the Democrats have some work to do. This is an important book. It should be read and discussed by people who care about the direction America is taking at the beginning of this new century. I highly recommend it for your reading list!