To me, one of the biggest themes of the 2012 election was the conflict between narrative and data. Pundits, campaign officials, and traditional press focused on telling a story throughout the year, with important decisions and turning points, changes in momentum, and an uncertain conclusion. Political scientists and a lot of data-driven analysts tried to counter this portrayal by highlighting data that pointed to a fairly stable and consistent electorate. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight got a lot of attention for this, and I was one of many people who picked up and eagerly read his book The Signal and the Noise. (I really need to write a review of the book, because it’s probably one of the most important works about philosophical pragmatism that never mentions philosophical pragmatism.) I’ve also been enjoying the blog The Monkey Cage, where a group of political scientists share their opinions with a general audience. (I really need to write a post about the blogosphere being the new home of the public intellectual, because it’s probably the best place for citizens to build the civic literacy required for a flourishing democracy.) The data folks generally did well with their predictions, and the political scientists have even called some of the spin/postgame analysis from the Obama campaign into question.
But that has not stopped the political press from looking for a good story. On Nov. 8, Politico started previewing the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that
a more familiar political order is poised to reassert itself: the House of Clinton representing Democrats and the House of Bush atop the GOP.
Besides the lunacy of previewing an election four years before it happens, this is just a ridiculous statement. It’s trying to suggest that these two rival families have been fighting for decades, only taking a break in 2008. But a Bush has faced a Clinton in a presidential election exactly once, in 1992. It’s not exactly the Hatfields and the McCoys.
The article tries to make it look like it’s using data, but it doesn’t stop to let the data get in the way of the narrative it’s building:
The 2012 contest was notable for being the first presidential campaign since 1976 that didn’t feature a member of one of America’s most famous political families.
OK, so in order to make this work we have to count Hillary’s run in the 2008 primary and George H.W. Bush’s runs as the vice presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984. It’s a bit of a stretch, but we can work with it. That certainly sounds like these two families have been a constant presence in American politics for three straight decades.
The problem is that it’s a brilliant example of the idea of false equivalency – the idea that the press will take an action or event on one side of the political spectrum and treat as nearly identical to something on the other side of the spectrum, even when the resemblance is slight.
The quote covers the elections of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 – eight in total. How many of them featured a Bush? Six – all of them in the general election. George H.W. Bush ran for VP in ’80 and ’84 and for president in ’88 and ’92. Then his son George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 and ’04. It’s hard to argue that that’s not a pretty significant percentage, so the idea that Bushes are an important family in the Republican Party makes some sense – although really, what’s remarkable is how many elections Bush 41 was in. He was in half of the elections in question even before you add his son to the mix. But if you want to be more impressed that the House of Bush was on top of the GOP for 4 elections, I can’t argue with you.
OK, so what about the Clinton family? Do they have a similarly substantive record of running in presidential elections? Heck no. Between Bill and Hillary, they’ve run in three elections and only two generals. Bill’s presidential runs in ’92 and ’96, plus Hillary’s primary run, and that’s it. Walter Mondale ran in three general elections. Al Gore ran in three, and got involved in a fourth primary. The House of Carter and the House of Obama have both been on top of the Democratic Party just as often as the House of Clinton, and I don’t see anyone speculating that James Carter IV or Michelle Obama are going to return to their family’s traditional spots atop the party in four years. (If you have seen someone say this, please, let me enjoy my ignorance.) There is just no way to make the Clinton family an equivalent of the Bush family using facts, but the media has built up so much symbolism around the names that they assume their readers won’t care about the facts – they just want to keep reading about the legend.