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Several Christian radio shows included frequent, unabashed proselytizing for Bush votes. Ministers, and their guests, regularly said that a vote for George Bush was the vote that God wanted cast. One minister advised listeners that "God's watchman" would be observing us all "in the polling booths," and reporting what we did directly to God.
Of course, this is anecdotal evidence. It was (and is) too soon for any reliable studies to have surfaced. But the religious influence in this election certainly accounts for at least part of the reason why Kerry supporters cannot understand Bush supporters. Conservative religiously leaders have been boasting of the massive turnout they instituted for the election.
Again, though, this is but part of the story. In truth, not only is there a culture divided between Bush and Kerry supports, but they seem to inhabit separate realities - and different views on religion's role in voting are only one dissimilarity between their two disparate worlds.
The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters
The term "separate realities" isn't mine - it comes from an important and incisive October 21, 2004 report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and the Center for Intentional and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, entitled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters."
Importantly, this study wasn't funded by partisan political groups. To the contrary, it was underwritten by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation.
The report's findings are stark: Bush and Kerry supporters agree that the U.S. should not have gone to war if there were no weapons of mass destruction or if there was no support of Al Qaeda by Saddam. But - like the colleagues of the caller mentioned earlier - other Bush supporters have closed their eyes to the reality that, in fact, there were no WMD, and there was no Al Qaeda connection.
According to the report, Bush supporters have similarly rejected the reality that world opinion was against Bush - believing, contrary to facts, that it actually favored Bush. No neutral observer could possible dispute that, as a factual matter, world opinion strongly opposed, and continues to oppose, the United States's actions in Iraq - and would have preferred Kerry to Bush as President.
Indeed, Bush's own argument has been that he is unwilling to hold an international referendum on his policies - not that he would prevail were such a referendum held. The only supportive countries he has cited in the debates, among the "Coalition of the Willing" are the U.K. and Poland.
Why Are Bush Supporters Resistant to Well-Established, Non-partisan Facts
The report shows that Bush supporters seem to simply ignore information they don't like - even if it is confirmed by the Bush Administration itself! They continue to believe in arguments even Bush and Cheney themselves have dropped - the WMD, and the Saddam/Al Qaeda connection, respectively. And this may be because they get their information from unreliable sources.
Steven Kull, the report's author, provides a rather benign explanation for why this is: "The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," Steven opines, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake."
This bond between Bush and his supporters, Kull notes, interacts with some "idealized image of the President" that they hold. And the two, together, make "it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies, or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with [those of] his supporters."
To study this report is to realize that Bush won reelection through blind faith and loyalty. Bush did not acquit himself well in the debates: Kerry won adherents each time he spoke. But it seems it did not matter: Bush supporters either weren't watching, or weren't really listening, when the debates occurred. This becomes more glaring because the University of Maryland study shows the Kerry supporters were living in the real world.
A "Broad Nationwide Victory" And a New Bipartisanship -- Not Exactly
When introducing the President's victory appearance, Vice President Cheney said, "We've worked hard . . . and the result is now clear: a record voter turnout and a broad, nationwide victory." (Emphasis added.) Forty-eight percent of the nation's voters -- all those (literally and figuratively) blue voters -- will take exception to Cheney's arrogant analysis.
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