New prejudice in American politics

APPLETON, Wis. — In 1928, a national atmosphere rife with nativism, Protestant fundamentalism and Ku Klux Klan activity doomed Catholic Al Smith's bid to be president.

In 1960, when the word "diversity" referred to investment portfolios, not race or religion, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy felt impelled to appear before a group of Baptist clergymen and promise that, as a Catholic, he posed no threat to American democratic institutions.

In 2004, despite some media-hyped controversies over tensions between his religion and his politics, John Kerry's Catholicism was a non-issue for most voters. Windy, stiff and irony-challenged? Yes. But Roman Catholic? So what?

If Smith lost because he was Catholic, Kennedy won in spite of being Catholic, and Kerry lost for reasons having nothing to do with being Catholic. Has America transcended identity politics when it comes to picking presidents? Perhaps, but in so doing, it has replaced the politics of identity with the equally shallow and coarse politics of personality.

This new politics encourages voters to make judgments about candidates based on visceral reactions to surface attributes. The world's most important leader is now being chosen essentially on the basis of compatibility as a potential dinner companion. Identity politics of the 1960s.

The civil rights, women's and other "identity" movements of the 1960s were cultural as well as political revolutions. They climaxed with the triumph of political correctness and multiculturalism in the 1990s, when it became impossible to publicly oppose a presidential candidate because he or she was a "fill in the blank."

This shift in political culture has permitted the list of leading candidates for the White House in 2008 to include a black of African descent (Barack Obama); a woman (Hillary Clinton); a divorced Catholic whose first wife was his second cousin (Rudy Giuliani); and a practicing Mormon (Mitt Romney). The identity politics generated in the 1960s have, ironically, made the politics of identity passe in the America of the early 21st century.

Americans can, of course, take a measure of pride in the distance they have traveled since a significant portion of the electorate believed that a President Smith would install Catholicism as the national religion.

Consider the past two presidential elections. Hanging chads did not cost Al Gore victory in 2000. That condescending sigh during his first debate with George W. Bush did. Who wanted to have dinner with a smug know-it-all? Well, maybe those who couldn't stand someone who reminded them of a frat boy.