Wonk the vote

Reading up on policy, issues, and strategy as the election nears

We are nearing the end of one of the most fascinating and important presidential races in the nation's history, and in two days voters will write the denouement of this sprawling saga. This seems the perfect time to sneak a last peek at a handful of books on electoral politics and policy in the hope that they will not just inform but inspire you to vote on Tuesday.

Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter
By Rick Shenkman
Basic, 210 pp., $25

The first book in our survey opens with a question posed by its title: "Just How Stupid Are We?" The author, Rick Shenkman, means it to be rhetorical. But the answer becomes obvious early in his author's note: really stupid. A history professor who often writes for a general audience, Shenkman counts as stupid not only the tens of millions who voted the now-unpopular George W. Bush into the White House, but also many of those who voted against him. "What went wrong, went wrong long before Mr. Bush's ascendancy," Shenkman says. "His flaws simply gave us the unwelcome opportunity of seeing what heretofore had remained largely invisible. . . . The cliché is that people get the government they deserve. If that's true, why did we deserve Mr. Bush?"

After studying that question from numerous angles, Shenkman concludes that voters are often ignorant of the facts, caught up in myths about democracy, and sometimes both. He offers as evidence the nation's reaction to 9/11. "Busy spreading democracy around the world, we refused to reflect bravely on the defects of our own," he says. "Instead of admitting our flaws, we settled, somewhat defensively, on the myth that we are a good and great people with noble aims."

One of the most dangerous myths, Shenkman says, is that a well-informed citizenry can ferret out mistruths disseminated by those with partisan agendas. Despite much sound journalism to the contrary, a huge percentage of Americans believed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had provided overt support for the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction within Iraqi borders. Acceptance of those claims not only encouraged Bush's waging of war in Iraq, but also helped usher him into a second term.

"If Americans cannot think straight about events of the magnitude of 9/11 and the Iraq War, what can they think straight about?" Shenkman asks.

Measuring citizen ignorance is not an exact science. But Shenkman offers "five defining characteristics of stupidity": ignorance (of newsworthy events, of how the government works), negligence (failing to seek reliable sources of information), wooden-headedness (refusing to change beliefs in the face of contrary evidence), shortsightedness (supporting policies harmful to long-term national interests), and bone-headedness (believing stereotypes, simplistic policy diagnoses, and the like).

Shenkman wants to jump-start the process, so the final chapter of his book is devoted to ways to help encourage a better-informed and more involved electorate. "If we want a country of smart voters who can't be played like a fiddle, we can certainly have one," he asserts.

Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines
By Richard A. Muller
Norton, 380 pp., illustrated, $26.95

While Rick Shenkman believes that most Americans are mired in ignorance, physicist Richard Muller appears to believe that, at least in specific realms, meaningful education is not only desirable but possible.

The next president will face a number of complex decisions requiring a grasp of physical science and technology, including how to respond to terrorists with nuclear weapons, whether to encourage further development of nuclear and solar energy as oil prices rise, at what level to continue exploration of space, and the best way to grapple with global warming.

Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, assumes that John McCain, Barack Obama, and tens of millions of voters understand science poorly, if at all. So, in a timely, erudite manner, he has written a book for the candidates and for us. "Physics for Future Presidents" is a triumph, even for a reviewer like me, who failed high school physics and avoided the subject in the halls of higher education.

Muller suggests that even those who have completed physics courses often cannot explain "the important difference between a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb, or between ozone depletion and greenhouse warming." How, he asks the next president, "can you lead your country into a clean-energy future if you don't understand solar power or how coal could be converted into gasoline? How can you decide important issues about research funding, arms control treaties, threats from North Korea or Iran, spying, and surveillance if you understand only the political issues and not the technical ones?"

The book does not lay out a political platform. Rather, it is intended as a primer. That said, Muller is not wishy-washy. When it comes to global warming, for example, he suggests that those who can afford to purchase hybrid automobiles should, because "every little bit helps" when it comes to reducing fossil fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Such advice is leavened throughout with plain talk. "Note that I am not advocating hybrids because of the lowered cost of operation," Muller says. "Until battery costs come down, there may be no net monetary savings. The hybrid is good for society because it reduces fossil fuel consumption and the associated carbon dioxide emissions. Lower oil use gives the United States greater energy independence. But don't plan on buying a hybrid car to save money."

Muller comes across as an amiable, smart professor. "If you hate physics, it isn't your fault; you probably had a bad teacher," he says. "Some physicists intimidate outsiders by obscuring their knowledge in a fog of math."

What You Should Know About Politics . . . But Don't: A Nonpartisan Guide to the Issues
By Jessamyn Conrad
Arcade, 313 pp., paperback, $16.95

Richard Muller goes relatively deep, but Jessamyn Conrad goes wide. In just over 300 pages, she comments on the political motivations underlying hundreds of pressing issues, hoping that voters will cast ballots more wisely after digesting her research.

The chapters in "What You Should Know About Politics . . . But Don't" constitute lessons in civics, economics, foreign policy, the military, environment, education, energy, health care, civil liberties, culture wars, socioeconomic policy, homeland security, and privacy. Conrad is 30 years old and pursuing a doctorate in art history. Those seem like unpromising qualifications for writing a book like this. Conrad sells herself, however, as a skilled researcher with a pedigree in politics. Her father, Kent Conrad, is a US senator from North Dakota. Her maternal uncle is a former Republican governor of North Dakota and US agriculture secretary.

Conrad infuses the book with humor, starting with a description of politics in her sparsely populated home state: "Everybody gets to be something for a while. As long as you bring a hot dish."

As for substance, Conrad is mostly a skilled summarizer. Here are excerpts from her section on immigration: "Most politicians feel that some immigration is useful, but think that it should be controlled. They diverge largely on what should be done about the illegal immigrants already in the country, but there is a consensus that the situation we have now - uncontrolled borders and approximately 12 million illegal immigrants - is untenable. . . . The long-standing argument against illegal immigrants when there is anything but a labor shortage is that they depress wages, especially those of unskilled workers, by increasing the labor supply. While this is a reasonable concern, most data seem to indicate that this is false. . . . The cultural issues at stake over immigration may be more intractable than the economic ones. People in areas with high concentrations of recent immigrants often feel pushed out."

Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority
By Bob Moser
Times, 274 pp., $25

Ultimately, electoral politics do not come down to education but to winning votes, whether voters are well informed or not. Journalist Bob Moser has written an incisive book about campaign strategy circa 2008.

In "Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority" Moser decries the failure of Democratic strategists to understand Southern voters. As a result, he says, the party has lost chances to carry the region in presidential elections, ceding it to the Republicans even though the majority of voters identify as Democrats.

Moser, a North Carolina native who lives in Brooklyn and writes about politics for The Nation, is relentless in his indictment. He opens the book as a pre-teen in 1972, when he persuaded his Democratic-leaning father to drive him to the Greensboro, N.C., airport for a rally featuring then-President Richard M. Nixon, who was seeking re-election. In retrospect, Moser writes that Nixon, abetted by Jesse Helms, near election as a Republican US senator from North Carolina, orchestrated "one of the most brazen acts of political thievery in American history." From the end of the Civil War, the Democrats had owned the South. The year of Moser's birth, the Republicans did not hold even one Southern governorship or US Senate seat.

By appealing to Southern whites put off by Democrats with long hair and liberal views that seemed to favor communist nations, mandates for racial integration, and opposition to prayer in schools, the Republicans were winning votes. (Southern blacks for the most part continued voting Democratic.)

"It was a neat trick by the GOP," Moser comments, "stepping into the void created when the Democrats became the party of social, not economic, liberalism, and postwar prosperity lifted millions of Southerners into the great suburban middle class. Republicans were adapting the old 'us versus them' populism - a sword long wielded against them - to 'flip' white Southerners and create their own new electoral stronghold. They weren't just stealing Democrats, they were stealing populism."

While reluctantly praising the savvy of Republican strategists, Moser devotes more space to excoriating their Democratic counterparts, journalists, and pundits - some of them Southerners - who should have known better than to cede the "Solid South" in national elections. The sting is particularly keen given that Southerners continue to elect Democrats for many state offices.

Given voting blocs of blacks, Hispanics, and white progressives, the South is populated by millions of citizens who would rather vote for a Democrat than a Republican, Moser says. The "Democrats can no longer afford to accept the myth of the red-state South. They leave the region uncontested at the peril of the party's future."

Steve Weinberg is author of eight nonfiction books, most recently "Taking On the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller."