40 The nature of American politics
was re-elected and, although the Democrats have carried Pennsylvania for
the presidency in every succeeding election (although with diminishing
majorities), Arlen Specter won the Senate seat for the Republicans for five
successive terms. Specter’s success depended in part on having rather differ-
ent views on policy compared with many of his Republican Party colleagues;
he is pro-choice on abortion and has supported stem-cell research and family
planning programmes.
Such examples could be multiplied by examining the votes for members of
the House of Representatives, by looking at state offices such as the governor-
ship, and so on. Much of this split ticket voting is to be attributed to sectional
differences in attitudes within the party, so that the national presidential
candidate may have policy views that differ considerably from those of the
local party. Clearly there is, however, a very considerable personal element
in these split-ticket voting situations, where a senatorial candidate may have
a local reputation that brings in a much larger vote than the more remote
presidential candidate can hope to generate. It is always difficult to assess
the importance of the personality of a candidate upon voting decisions, and it
may well be that personality alone is not enough, and will not sway the voters
unless there is some other latent factor which the personal appeal of the can-
didate serves to bring into operation. The importance of personality will also
vary according to circumstances. Thus, in areas where party organisation is
minimal, personality may be decisive in some state and local elections. Even
at the presidential level, the fact that Eisenhower could attract the votes of
a quarter of those who normally voted Democratic was startling evidence of
what personal appeal can achieve if the circumstances are favourable. Eisen-
hower would have won the election for whichever party he stood, and at one
time or another he was considered as a potential candidate by both parties.
Similarly, when he was active in Californian politics, the future Chief Justice
of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, was able to win the nomination of
both parties at the same election for the post of governor. Senator Wayne
Morse of Oregon was able to change his party allegiance during his term of
office and still gain re-election to the Senate. These are extreme examples,
but they indicate that we ignore the importance of personality in American
politics only at the risk of altogether failing to understand it.
The most recent expression of the role of personality in American politics,
and perhaps the most questionable, is the part played by celebrities. Ronald
Reagan, an actor who appeared in innumerable B movies, was elected gover-
nor of California in 1966 and again in 1970. He won the presidency in 1980
with a landslide vote, and was re-elected in 1984. Another ‘celebrity’, but not
from the entertainment industry, to take up a political carer was John Glenn,
the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, who was elected Senator
from Ohio in 1974 and served in the Senate until 1999. Perhaps the most
extraordinary example is the election of a wrestler turned actor, Jesse ‘The
Body’ Ventura, as Governor of Minnesota in 1998 representing the Reform
Party. Ventura appeared in three films with Arnold Schwarzenegger, body-