People want a “strong leader” perhaps literally?

[Timefortruth]

Lately I’ve been conducting “mini focus groups” in which I ask Republicans I know what it would take for them to vote Democrat. (Before anyone flames me, I do not think trying to covert Republicans is how we will win, but I wondered what stops crossover in that direction). My sample has consisted of five people, all of whom are at various stages of awakening regarding Chimp. Every one of them said they don’t want Chimp reelected before I continued to question them, some of them hate Chimp some just think he isn’t the greatest.

My mother-in-law said she could vote for a Democrat if “he wasn’t a wimp.” My neighbor said that the Democrats need to run someone “strong.” Another friend used language that conveyed that she wanted a macho leader (not those words). Each of them said that the persona of the candidate as powerful would be a high priority in there consideration of a Democratic candidate.

Now the fiasco in California helps me put those opinions in perspective. Compare the winner and the loser using only macho criteria.

Now I’m no social scientist, and I don’t like the conclusion that putting the anecdotal stories together leads me to, but is there something there that is really ugly about human nature? Maybe some instinctive drive to be lead by the creature that can best fight off attackers?

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Unfortunately I think you're right

and this also shows why Bush is still stubbornly refusing to yield anything to the UN: he can't bear the thought of seeming to be 'weak'.

[Timefortruth]

2. What do you think it means for the Democratic primary?

Anyone think there is even a shred of credibility to my theory?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. It would suggest the tactic of 'support Clark'

because 'General' says 'strong leader'. I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not. I'm not American, so I'm staying out of the primary discussions - from abroad, Anyone But Bush looks good. At this stage, I'd even prefer Buchanan to Bush, and I never thought I'd say that.

[bearfartinthewoods]

8. that might work if he was more physically imposing

don't try and say i'm shallow because we are talking about other people. "strong" is not the first thing that pops into your mind when you see him. he looks 'slight' almost hunched shouldered, definetitly not the image of a strong general. he doesn't have the booming voice to anything close to a compelling presence.

Kerry has the voice but he doesn't look "strong" either. Edwards
looks strong but his bio is more cerebral. i hate to say it because i'm not drawn to him personally but Dean looks strong and has the attitude.

[librechik]

7. Sadly, I think you're on the right track

It's another symbol of the dumbing down process that voters prefer non-complex symbols of brutality rather than more feminized , nuanced individuals. It surprised me, because I hoped such narrow thinking was in the minority. Either I was wrong, or they tweaked something. It made alarm bells go off when they all announced "the winner" so quickly and with such huge fanfair, and that the media flogged the idea that Arnold was a foregone conclusion for days beforehand, despite how hard the opposition fought back. We are so screwed.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. Democracy is unnatural, literally.

We're just damned, ignorant apes who need a silverback to rule us.

Maybe some instinctive drive to be lead by the creature that can best fight off attackers?

That's how Sharon was reelected, and why perpetuating and accelerating the cycle of violence is in his political interest.

[AP]

5. That's what the media is trying to convince people...that masculinity

is the important criteria. That's why Tweety goes off on those "isn't Bush masculine" and "isn't Dean mascluine" jags.

That's from the fascists/imperialist play book, incidentally. It ensures that conservatives get elected.

[bearfartinthewoods]

9. bull....it's human nature....built into our genes

we can try and pretend it isn't and we are growing out of it but deep down, men respect a 'man's man' and women do too.

evidently, even if he's a pig.

[Mairead]

6. I don't think the key is 'macho' precisely, but 'a willingness to ACT'

People want someone who's not going to 'hesitate and bloviate / equivocate and dither / let's fund another study / of why you're in the river'.

They want someone who's going to use the power they've been entrusted with--the power of public will, of law--to pull them OUT of the goddamned river. Preferably before they drown! And then bring to book the ones who did the pushing-in.

We have no shortage of people who are willing to study something to (our) death, but a great shortage of people who are willing to ACT. That's part of why Clark is out in front. He's perceived as someone who will act.

[bring_em_home_bush]

10. Let Them Eat War

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16885

Maybe it's because Bush fits an underlying recipe for the kind of confident, authoritative father figure such dads believe should run the ship of state as they believe a man should run a family. Republican rhetoric may appeal to the blue-collar man, Lakoff suggests, because we tend to match our view of good politics with our image of a good family. The appeal of any political leader, he believes, lies in the way he matches our images of the father in the ideal family. There are two main pictures of such an ideal American family, Lakoff argues. According to a "strict father family" model, dad should provide for the family, control mom, and use discipline to teach his children how to survive in a competitive and hostile world. Those who advocate the strict father model, Lakoff reasons, favor a "strict father" kind of government. If an administration fits this model, it supports the family (by maximizing overall wealth). It protects the family from harm (by building up the military). It raises the children to be self-reliant and obedient (by fostering citizens who ask for little and speak when spoken to). The match-up here is, of course, to Bush Republicans.

<snip>

Maybe, however, something deeper is going on, which has so far permitted Bush's flag-waving and cowboy-boot-strutting to trump issues of job security, wages, safety, and health – and even, in the case of Bush's threats of further war – life itself. In an essay, "The White Man Unburdened," in a recent New York Review of Books, Norman Mailer recently argued that the war in Iraq returned to white males a lost sense of mastery, offering them a feeling of revenge for imagined wrongs, and a sense of psychic rejuvenation. In the last thirty years, white men have taken a drubbing, he notes, especially the three quarters of them who lack college degrees. Between l979 and l999, for example, real wages for male high-school graduates dropped 24 percent. In addition, Mailer notes, white working class men have lost white champs in football, basketball and boxing. (A lot of white men cheer black athletes, of course, whomever they vote for.) But the war in Iraq, Mailer notes, gave white men white heroes. By climbing into his jumpsuit, stepping out of an S-3B Viking jet onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln , Bush posed as – one could say impersonated – such a hero.