Subjectivity and the Post-Election Campaign: Competing retrospectives on Obama’s Re-election
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Despite widespread recognition by political analysts that American presidential elections rarely, if ever,produce winners with a clear mandate from the voters to pursue a particular set of policy initiatives –featured as parts of the winning candidate’s platform – the “myth of manifest mandates” stubbornlyresists persistent efforts to put it to rest. Indeed, winning candidates in American presidential contestsshow no signs of abating their predilections to read the political tea leaves in the wake of an electoraltriumph as conveying a clear policy message, i.e., a mandate, after millions of voters have returnedballots on which there is no provision for the voter to express his or her rationale for favoring onecandidate over another. In consequence, political actors – including party elites, candidate committees,political consultants, and the media – are drawn inexorably into a “post-election campaign” in whichcompeting retrospectives on the election’s outcome are subjected to scrutiny among pundits, partisanstrategists, and members of the electorate themselves in a competition to forge the prevailing narrative onwhy candidate Jones defeated Smith or Smith lost to Jones. The product of this subjective competition,as Ronald Reagan’s first year in office shows, is an important element in the president’s strategy of governing by assuming control of the policy agenda in the crucial days and weeks following the inauguration. This research extends this line of inquiry by examining the views of a P-set comprised of mixed political identities (sophisticated, ordinary; Democrat, Independent, Republican; liberal, moderate conservative) as they sorted items in a 2012 post-mortem Q sample as a means of gauging thecontending narratives to emerge following Mr. Obama’s triumph. Results reveal a subjective substructure of partisan polarization in these retrospectives and they are discussed in terms of their implications for governing, with an emphasis on constraints they pose for significant policy progress at the federal level for Mr. Obama’s second term.
Abstract
Despite widespread recognition by political analysts that American presidential elections rarely, if ever,produce winners with a clear mandate from the voters to pursue a particular set of policy initiatives –featured as parts of the winning candidate’s platform – the “myth of manifest mandates” stubbornlyresists persistent efforts to put it to rest. Indeed, winning candidates in American presidential contestsshow no signs of abating their predilections to read the political tea leaves in the wake of an electoraltriumph as conveying a clear policy message, i.e., a mandate, after millions of voters have returnedballots on which there is no provision for the voter to express his or her rationale for favoring onecandidate over another. In consequence, political actors – including party elites, candidate committees,political consultants, and the media – are drawn inexorably into a “post-election campaign” in whichcompeting retrospectives on the election’s outcome are subjected to scrutiny among pundits, partisanstrategists, and members of the electorate themselves in a competition to forge the prevailing narrative onwhy candidate Jones defeated Smith or Smith lost to Jones. The product of this subjective competition,as Ronald Reagan’s first year in office shows, is an important element in the president’s strategy of governing by assuming control of the policy agenda in the crucial days and weeks following the inauguration. This research extends this line of inquiry by examining the views of a P-set comprised of mixed political identities (sophisticated, ordinary; Democrat, Independent, Republican; liberal, moderate conservative) as they sorted items in a 2012 post-mortem Q sample as a means of gauging thecontending narratives to emerge following Mr. Obama’s triumph. Results reveal a subjective substructure of partisan polarization in these retrospectives and they are discussed in terms of their implications for governing, with an emphasis on constraints they pose for significant policy progress at the federal level for Mr. Obama’s second term.
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