11.15.2004
In American Politics, Geography Is Destiny (Observer.com)
by Mitchell Moss
John Kerry’s defeat in the Presidential election should not have come as a surprise. During the past 70 years, there have been only two Presidents elected from the Northeast or New England: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960. Since the Depression, Americans have consistently favored candidates from the South and West, regardless of political parties. In Presidential politics, political geography is destiny.
New York politicians, with their easy access to the media, consistently dream about their prospects for national office. In 1964, former Mayor Robert Wagner thought he might be the Vice Presidential nominee, a position that went to Hubert Humphrey. Former Mayor John Lindsay made an ill-fated run for the Democratic nomination in 1972. Former Queens Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro ran as Walter Mondale’s V.P. candidate in their failed 1984 bid. Mario Cuomo encouraged speculation about his Presidential plans when he almost filed papers to run in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. Even former Staten Island Congresswomen Susan Molinari, the keynote speaker at the 1996 Republican National Convention, thought she might be tapped for the Vice Presidential nomination. And current New York Governor George Pataki campaigned across the nation for George W. Bush, in part to gain exposure among Republican Party heavyweights.
Clearly there is no limit to the ambitions of New York politicians, and yet there is also no future for them in national office. The same can be said for politicians from Massachusetts. Not only has the nation’s population shifted to the South and West, the cultural values of the Northeast and New England are increasingly driven by a zest for secular over spiritual values, and commercialism over community, that the rest of the nation considers offensive and threatening.
(More ... In American Politics, Geography Is Destiny) ¶ 20:22
John Kerry’s defeat in the Presidential election should not have come as a surprise. During the past 70 years, there have been only two Presidents elected from the Northeast or New England: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960. Since the Depression, Americans have consistently favored candidates from the South and West, regardless of political parties. In Presidential politics, political geography is destiny.
New York politicians, with their easy access to the media, consistently dream about their prospects for national office. In 1964, former Mayor Robert Wagner thought he might be the Vice Presidential nominee, a position that went to Hubert Humphrey. Former Mayor John Lindsay made an ill-fated run for the Democratic nomination in 1972. Former Queens Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro ran as Walter Mondale’s V.P. candidate in their failed 1984 bid. Mario Cuomo encouraged speculation about his Presidential plans when he almost filed papers to run in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. Even former Staten Island Congresswomen Susan Molinari, the keynote speaker at the 1996 Republican National Convention, thought she might be tapped for the Vice Presidential nomination. And current New York Governor George Pataki campaigned across the nation for George W. Bush, in part to gain exposure among Republican Party heavyweights.
Clearly there is no limit to the ambitions of New York politicians, and yet there is also no future for them in national office. The same can be said for politicians from Massachusetts. Not only has the nation’s population shifted to the South and West, the cultural values of the Northeast and New England are increasingly driven by a zest for secular over spiritual values, and commercialism over community, that the rest of the nation considers offensive and threatening.
(More ... In American Politics, Geography Is Destiny) ¶ 20:22
