Who Can and Can't Get Elected In American Today?

Detail from artwork by Leah Yellowbird

"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." --Letter to a Navy friend, quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)

I lead off with this quote because it dovetails with another, which I can't find at this moment, in which President Kennedy said that a black and a woman would sit in the White House before a conscientious objector would. Half of that equation has come to pass. We'll likely see the other half in our lifetimes, and probably not see the C.O. gain that highest office.

* * * *

Earlier today I came across a Gallup Poll that shows which belief systems are least problematic for those seeking the highest public office. The article is titled Socialism and Atheism Still U.S. Political Liabilities.

More than three decades ago I came across a 1934 pamphlet written by a Harvard scholar that made the case your religious belief could be a handicap if they did not align with the American culture. I forget the details, but it essentially said you have to give lip service to God even if you did not believe in God.

Birches by Sue Rauschenfels

This was further exemplified in the 1960 presidential election in which John F. Kennedy faced serious opposition--was excoriated--because he was Catholic, and might take his orders from the Pope rather than Congress or the People.

My view from that day to the present was that we should always be suspicious about any politician's statement regarding any belief. This is not to say a politician can't be earnest, but for the most part the public should not be so gullible as to believe they mean what they say.

THIS IS ALL SETUP for some interesting poll data from the Gallup organization.

According to recent polls, over 90% of Americans would vote for a black, Catholic, Hispanic, Jewish or who was a woman. A much smaller number would vote for an atheist or Muslim. And only a minority would support a socialist.

The pollsters also included several additional categories: Evangelical Christian, Gay/Lesbian, Under 40, and Over 70.

The Gallup team also sliced and diced the data by political party as well, so that one can see where each category stands for Dems and GOP. Not surprisingly 99% of Democrats would elect a black and only 91% of Republicans would vote that way. (Disappointing.)

88% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats would vote for a candidate identified as an Evangelical Christian, which shows vividly how much the name Evangelical has been tarnished in the past century.

If data turns you on as much as it does me, here's a link to this specific poll data and a link to the Gallup's Presidential Election Center. I especially like their slogan: The Metrics That Matter.

Oh, and though they never asked about Conscientious Objectors, I'm guessing JFK was prescient about this. Maybe the Gallup organization should think about adding that question next time. What do you think?

If The World Were 100 People.

Thoughts for Thanksgiving...

and a reminder that most of us have much to be grateful for 

that we too often take for granted.

It's interesting how quickly information can be transmitted

when it is presented visually.

Men, Women and Statistics

"Perfect numbers, like perfect men, are very rare." ~Rene Descartes

There's a scene in the 1988 film Rain Man in which Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) recognizes how profoundly numbers and data are oriented in his brother Raymond's head. Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) and Charlie are in a restaurant and the waitress drops a book of matches or toothpicks (I've since forgotten) and Raymond immediately, with a single glance, that there were 397 of them on the floor. Turns out that he was right. His mind was more than just pretty good with numbers.

In the film Raymond was an autistic man with savant abilities. The film was criticized for creating a stereotype about autistic people, but for the purposes of this brief discussion I am more interested in the fact that Raymond was a male.

Susie and I years ago befriended a street person who we ultimately became very close to named Robert. He too had some savant characteristics. We learned eventually of his schizophrenia, but were early on tuned in to his keen fascination with numbers. He loved baseball for this reason. Baseball is a wealth of statistics. Each player has stats, current and lifetime, which can be compared against other players' stats. Each player also has a birth date, and other personal data. More statistics, which Robert vacuumed endlessly into his voluminous memory banks. He was also a repository of railroad statistics, with knowledge too vast to report on here, but it was all about numbers. (eg.: the number of miles of railroad tracks in each state, and the percentage that was currently used as opposed to the amount that is abandoned.)

There are other reservoirs where statistics about. Hundreds of Government agencies produce whole libraries of stats. The Census Bureau is an agency committed to the accumulation of statistics. And Wall Street is has its own horse of minions collecting, and analyzing, statistics pertaining to valuations of everything from companies to international currencies.

Bell curves, standardized testing, probabilities, standard deviations, scales and a whole assortment of tools exist to evaluate the past, present and future for every kind of measurable, observable entity.

Personally, I am a numbers guy myself. I loved baseball in part for this reason. And the study of balance sheets and company stats for investment purposes is likewise fascinating. My career in advertising and marketing is similarly fascinating because of the stats generated. Stats regarding numbers of leads generated, conversion ratios, web stats, sales stats... Numbers are fun. Data is fun.

My question is this. When you read a book like The New Market Wizards, which is a set of interviews with investment pros who have excelled in that field, they're all men. I do not believe it is because of gender bias. My theory is that the kinds of people attracted to the analysis necessary to excel in that field simply love doing that kind of thing. Peter Lynch, former manager of the Magellan Fund, was so immersed in numbers crunching and data analysis that he missed two to three years of his daughters's lives when they went from 12 to 14. He was nearly a 24/7 slave of his passion, and he admit it was out of balance, an error of judgment on his part.

Women, it is my observation, are more relational. As a general rule people are more important than numbers.

This is, of course, an overgeneralization. It's not a black and white thing. But isn't it true?

So what I want to know is this. How often does this hyperkinetic fascination with numbers appear in women? Or do female autistic savants become oriented toward relationships more than numbers? Do they then call it a different name? I am sure there must be some stats on that somewhere? I'd be interested in those numbers.