Like a slow, political striptease, mysterious “Retro vs. Metro” advertisements recently popped up in newspapers, the Internet and some other major media, revealing very little at first, then a little more and a little more.
They caught the eye by contrasting “Retro” icons such as Mel Gibson, oil wells and George W. Bush with “Metro” images such as Michael Moore, windmill power generators and John Kerry. After about a week of this, the ads were revealed to be an elaborate promotion for a political concept via an unusual book, “The Great Divide,” which is being distributed over Amazon.com and the RetroVsMetro.org Web site.
It is refreshing to see ads pushing an idea, even if the allegedly new idea sounds mostly like some old ideas cleverly dressed up in new buzzwords.
Created by John Sperling, 83, billionaire founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix, and four other authors, the book argues that the United States is deeply divided into two 25-state regions by politics, culture, religious beliefs and social attitudes. Sperling’s book relabels the “Red States” that voted for Bush in 2000 as “Retro” for their conservative politics, racial and social inequality, “extraction industries” like mining and drilling and traditional religious views. The “Metro” states like Illinois that voted for Al Gore are characterized by their advanced scientific industries, their progressive ideas about education, economics and the arts and, in general, their tendency to imitate California.
The idea is that the Retros have been shafting the Metros, which have 65 percent of the nation’s population and provide 71 percent of the country’s federal tax revenue but don’t control Congress or the White House. Democrats should write off the Retro states, the authors argue, and concentrate instead on consolidating power in the Metro states to win back political power. In that spirit, the book slams the Electoral College system and the constitutional guarantee of equal numerical representation in the Senate for all states regardless of their size.
This rally-your-base argument has divided Democrats for decades and, when applied by presidential candidates, it has failed. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and other Democrats who won the White House over the last half-century did so by reaching out to independent swing voters and bridging the great divides of the country, not by deepening them.
To win Congress, similar battles of persuasion must be waged within each state, not between the states. The old, tried-and-true two-step approach still works: Rally your base, then reach out to the persuadable middle in districts and states.
Sperling’s book is hardly the first since the 2000 election to clobber the Electoral College, a perennial bane of the big states. Yet America’s presidential election system easily survived the contested election and it still has its charms and benefits. It does, for instance, force presidential candidates to care at least a little about voters who live outside of the big television advertising markets.
This country’s “great divide” is not nearly as big as the red-blue maps make it appear. Americans, despite their great diversity, still tend to agree on far more than they disagree. Retro vs. Metro sounds like a decidedly retro idea.
