Krauthammer and "Scientific" Political Analysis

Charles Krauthammer earned his undergraduate degree in political science and economics at my alma mater, McGill. If his column today is any indication, he must not remember his time there very well.

Putting aside the usual disingenuous sophistry that's a hallmark of Krauthammer's columns, his piece today seems almost willfully ignorant of the last half-century's work connecting material economic conditions with electoral outcomes. For those who'd like to be spared the whole column, Krauthammer argues that Obama's recent attempt to explain the Democrats' upcoming thumpin' in the midterms reflects an effort to impose a 'liberal psychological narrative' on the American people. Obama, in Krauthammer's view, is excusing his party's losses by constructinng a narrative in which "an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high." Rather than this convoluted bit of psychology, Krauthammer suggests that Obama's problem is that he's "tried to impose a liberal agenda on... a demonstrably center-right country," and is facing the backlash.

Once again I'm left wondering wistfully what the daily news would look like were it covered by political scientists. Anyone having even a passing familiarity with American politics literature (and as someone with more of a comparative/IR focus, my own familiarity is indeed passing) knows there is precisely one reason the Democrats are going to get punished in a couple of weeks: the economy. Incumbents get punished when the economy is bad. The economy right now is really bad, so incumbents are going to get punished especially harshly. That's really the only story here (well, if you read Bartels, it's slightly more complex - it's the direction of the country's economic health that counts). Hans Noel's excellent recent article "Ten Things Political Scientists Know That You Don't" adds some more context. The United States isn't a "center right" nation, because most people aren't particularly ideological one way or another. In addition, for all of Krauthammer's harping about the importance of independents, there's really no such thing. The vast majority of self-identified "independents" lean strongly one way or another, though they might be more inclined than strong partisans to punish the incumbent party for a poor economy.

Obama's "psychological" narrative might be a bit off in the sense that narrative in general just isn't what drives electoral outcomes except at the margins. Krauthammer's self-satisfied platitudes about how America is just a conservative place, though, are equally misguided. As someone with a background in political science, he ought to know better.

Update: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that the Obama Administration and the Democrats are just prisoners of circumstance here. Government policy does actually have a measurable effect on economic performance, and if the Administration had taken this to heart, they could have set themselves up for, at the very least, a much less serious defeat. Listening to the people who were telling them to pass a much larger, more employment-focused stimulus back in 2009 would have been a good start. By the time the 2010 campaign season rolled around, though, the basic course of events was locked in. Actual campaigning, and the creation of narratives that stick in the public mind still matters, but it matters at the margins.