EXCERPTED FROM The New Southern Politics J. David Woodard Copyright © 2006 ISBNs: 1-58826-373-8 hc & 1-58826-397-5 pb 1800 30th Street, Ste. 314 Boulder, CO 80301 USA telephone 303.444.6684 fax 303.444.0824 This excerpt was downloaded from the Lynne Rienner Publishers website www.rienner.com i Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii 1 Southern Politics in the Twenty-First Century 1 Political Science and Political Culture 2 The Traditional Southern Political Culture 7 Classification of the Southern States 15 A Political Culture Approach 18 2 History and Political Culture 23 The Colonial Era 25 Secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction 31 A New South and the Great Depression 44 Postwar Affluence 53 Summary 57 3 The Demography and Geography of the South 63 The Urban Demography 72 National States 74 Emergent States 94 Traditional States 102 Summary 120 4 The Racial Legacy 125 Postbellum Reconstruction 128 The New South 139 The Civil Rights Movement 148 v vi Contents The Modern Period 158 The Future Prospects 160 5 Religion and Southern Politics 173 Southern White Evangelicals 176 The Carter Presidency 183 Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and the New Religious Right 185 The Christian Coalition 192 The Southern Baptist Controversy 194 Compassionate Conservatism 198 The 2004 Presidential Election 200 The African American Church 202 Black Theology and the Civil Rights Movement 205 Summary 207 6 Political Partisanship 215 Political Culture and Political Realignment 217 Levels of Political Change 224 The Ranney Index of Party Competition 236 Measures of Party Competition in 2004 237 Summary 244 7 The Republican Electoral Surge 249 National States 252 Emergent States 274 Traditional States 283 Summary 303 8 The Democratic Response in Statewide Races 309 National States 317 Emergent States 333 Traditional States 341 Summary 360 9 Leaders and Legislators 363 Southern Governors 367 The Modern Era 372 State Legislatures 378 Summary 384 Contents vii 10 The South and the Nation 387 The Congressional Legacy 390 The Military Legacy 396 The Confederate Flag Controversy 400 Southern Womanhood 404 Summary 412 11 The South and the Future 415 Selected Bibliography 427 Index 437 About the Book 446 1 Southern Politics in the Twenty-First Century The South remains the most distinctive part of the nation because in so many ways life there has always been a contradiction of American values and ideals. When John Winthrop wrote in 1630 that settlers in New England should see themselves as a “modell (sic) of Christian charity . a City set upon a Hill,” Virginia had been importing Africans and enslaving them for eleven years.1 When Abraham Lincoln asked for national unity after his election in 1860, he was met by the secession of southern states. When Franklin Roosevelt said he saw one-third of the nation, “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” in 1936, he was describing every state south of the Mason-Dixon Line.2 Finally, when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dream of racial equality, that one day “the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight” he named the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi in his speech.3 Today the South remains as much a contradiction as at any time in its past. Southerners know the best and worst of human qualities; their native land is a place where legend is history, and sometimes history is legend. The southern record is notorious for slavery, class consciousness, white supremacy, segregation, poverty, and isolation. Yet the region is also known for charity, family, manners, humor, reli- gion, and some of the best political oratory ever to touch a voter’s ear. “History, like God and nature,” wrote the poet Donald Davidson, “has been both generous and unkind to . the South.”4 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, despite dramatic economic growth, increased political power, and cultural acceptance, the region is as much an enigma as at any time in its past. The South has more churches per capita, and more of its residents attend church services regularly, than anywhere else in the country. It also leads the nation in annual surveys of gun violence, murder, and racial antipa- thy.5 The South has a history of the best writers. Mark Twain once wrote that “Southerners talk music,” but the region also has some of the worst public schools, and the lowest SAT scores in the nation.6 Southern landowners were among the 1 2 The New Southern Politics wealthiest in the original colonies, but the region also has a history of dirt-grinding, enervating poverty. More than one hundred and forty years after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to end the Civil War, the public display of a Confederate flag still sparks political controversy, complete with sidewalk demonstrations and acrimo- nious debate in state legislatures. “I am the grandchild,” wrote Texas novelist Katherine Porter who died in 1980, “of a lost war.”7 US history was once synonymous with southern history. The founding of the United States was the vision of southern aristocrats; men like Madison, Jefferson, and Washington left their imprint on the character of the country’s institutions. The aristocracy of the Old South was the embodiment of Aristotle’s political animal, with an education auspicious for political leadership and a record of effective administration when called upon. Not surprisingly, Virginia spearheaded the American Revolution and gave the infant republic its early leadership. As the southern aristocracy grew richer and more secure in the antebellum years, it found itself removed from the mainstream of citizens in the rest of the country. Elite leadership insulated the region from egalitarian ideals. The small farmer republic model of yeoman agrarians stood opposite genteel planters who defended slavery. Conflict was inevitable. The South reached the eve of the Civil War opposed to the secular spirit of science and the leveling spirit of democracy. From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1976, the legacy of the South was a liability in political races outside the region. The record of white supremacy and slavery checked political ambition such that no southern politician could seriously challenge for the national office of president. Politicians who won the office, like Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson, used the vice presidency as a stepping stone. “Southerners were the junior partners . not until 1912 did a southern politician . seriously attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination.”8 After Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, the southern past was reha- bilitated for voters, and forgiven by the mainstream press. Televised softball games between the administration and the White House Press Corps in Plains, Georgia, made good public relations; the contests washed out the blemish of inferiority from one hundred years earlier. At the end of the twentieth century the memory of sec- ond-class political citizenship was receding when politicians from the South were the standard-bearers of both major political parties in the 2000 presidential elec- tion. In 2004 the presence of North Carolina senator John Edwards on the Democratic presidential ticket hinged in part on his ability to deliver electoral votes from his native South, something he failed to do. Political Science and Political Culture The irony of the millennial presidential elections was that a part of the country, his- torically outside the mainstream experience of US life, found itself critical in Southern Politics in the Twenty-First Century 3 selecting leaders for the nation as a whole. The best way to understand this change of status in the South is to liken the region to a subset of the larger political culture. The influence of culture in terms of ethnic identity, urbanization, and religion has been a guiding principle in political science since the time of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. Aristotle looked not only to the culture of the state, but also to its potential of being directed to some end.9 The idea of the “just regime” implied public action that was in agreement with the values and habits of its citi- zens. Similarly, Moses ruled the Israelites in accordance with divine law and instructed the citizens as to its precepts. The ancients regarded the formation of character and development of civic virtue as the fundamental responsibility of government. The classical tradition was challenged in the sixteenth century when Niccolo Machiavelli abandoned culture and focused on the passions and behavior of egotis- tical human beings.10 The new political science focused on changing circumstances to achieve peace and prosperity, as well as individual freedom and equality. Thomas Hobbes suggested that the fear of violent death was basic to all cultures. The social contract conceptualization of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau rendered culture and character superfluous, because the contracting humans were not politi- cal animals, but natural, precultural beasts. Later, Marxists damned culture and character as byproducts of the economic substructure. Their arguments were that political culture was the dead hand of the past that ignored the primary role eco- nomics played in political life. In the 1950s scholars like Gabriel Almond and Bingham Powell responded that “political culture” was a better way of understanding political action than the mech- anistic concepts of some Marxian material consciousness. Almond defined political culture as a “particular pattern of orientation to political action.” The approach regarded politics as the “cognitions, preferences and evaluations or choices through the application of standards or values to the cognitive and effective components.”11 In other words, the orientation people collectively had to politics was based on transmitted patterns of conduct and their attachment to group symbols. This cultur- al orientation of a people determined their political orientation.