Along the Back Roads, It’s the Little Things That Sway the Swing Voters

As the politics-by-the-numbers crowd figure it, swing voters of a swing state like Pennsylvania are apt to swing the 1992 presidential election and thereby set the course of history, for good or ill.

No need to moan about it, our campaigns are unbearably long. Too long for their own good, and too long for ours. But there is nothing that can be done.

So periodically we scrub up and hoist the swing voter on the examining table until something actually happens along the campaign trail to surprise the candidates and everyone else, or until Nov. 3 arrives to give us back our newspapers, televisions and dinner-time conversation. Only then and in private can we re-examine such foolish thoughts as this: Since we pick millionaires by lottery now, why not pick our . . . ?

So, the theory of the swing voter in 1992 is simple.

They are men and women of two component parts. They have a heart, and they have a wallet. They worry about the cost of living and the degree of starch in the social fiber.

Which will it be?

We began our first examination of the swing voter in the mushroom-farming country of southeastern Pennsylvania, driving up and west past the summer sweet corn and into the rolling regimental green pastureland of the Holsteins, and then across into the Civil War country.

Our questions lack the precision of the scientific poll-takers, and who knows, maybe the conceit too. “How ya doing?” is one. And then, “How do you think America is doing?” The margin of error is astronomical, of course, and made worse because we have resolved to avoid those most all-American of places, fast-food drive-ins and interstate highways.

“I don’t like his smirk, Clinton. Makes my skin crawl the way he smirks.” Speaking is an earnest young woman with the nice smile, pageboy haircut and an extra-long filtered cigarette. “And I don’t like that Hillary either.”

The woman is from New Garden and will not give her name. She knows the protocol. Choosing a President is serious business. It’s about big things. Little concerns like the way you size up a man’s face, that’s how you chose your spouse maybe, but not a President. Not for attribution.

Clarence Darnell, a farm machinery fixer-upper and welder from Cochranville, is happy to give his name and his considered opinion. He’s a Democrat, and he’s voting Republican. Too much featherbedding on government jobs. He adjusts his faded baseball cap, his shirt popping open and his bare belly jiggling with emphasis.

“I’ve seen three men mowing the weeds on the road. Three men on a tractor mowing a strip this wide.” Darnell holds his fingers just inches apart. “Three men! It’s a waste. And, why, you go down here on (Highway) 926 and turn left. They didn’t even clear away around that stop sign. They didn’t even get close. Go look. Gonna be an accident, uh huh.”

Someone mentions to Darnell that the federal government does not mow weeds.

“Same thing,” he says.

Naturally, there are Republicans for Clinton here among the swing voters. In New London, William Smith, a retired excavator--tall, neat, creased baseball cap, pink skin with liver spots--has watched the mushroom industry struggle in the face of cheap foreign competition.

“I don’t think Bush did enough to prevent this recession. Everyone else saw it coming three, four years ago. . . . Family values are great. But a big issue in politics? No. He should have done something sooner about this economy.”

Finally, someone who speaks from the script. Smith’s words are reassuring. The experts have to be right once in awhile, eh?

But when did the experts ever meet Michele Mendenhall, a college student in Gap, Pa.?

This is the first presidential election in which she can vote. She liked Clinton because he was fresh and new and talked about education. But then the Democrats promised to go after fathers who are not paying child support.

“That burned me up. I have a brother who would love custody of his children. But the government always sides with the mother.”

Farther along the road, where only the tourists giggle at the village names of Intercourse and Bird-in-Hand, is the Byerstone Carriage Shop. David Glick is sanding a small wagon. The Amish usually don’t vote, and telephone polls have a way of passing them by because most Amish do not have phones in their houses.

But with their beards and bonnets and wagons and suspenders, they make a poignant picture of American diversity. Look, there is a little girl in a high-collared 19th-Century gray smock happily waving to a tattooed woman with a halter top and mirror sunglasses roaring past on a Harley.

“I don’t know, what can I tell you. We stay here, we work, we follow the Lord, we go with the flow,” Glick says. “I don’t vote, but I guess I would if someone asked me.”

What about America?

His gray Amish beard and his brown straw hat are flecked with red dust from his woodworking. A horse snorts out front. The shop is full of old carriages and old craftsmanship. But his answer, after a pause, is surprisingly contemporary.

“Well, you know, the young people have more temptations these days. When they get 16 they want a car. They’re not buying a horse and buggy anymore. They want to move fast.”

We could leave it here, figuring we have more work to do on this swing voter issue but feeling as if the gulfs between us aren’t so great after all. But this would be sentimental, if not dishonest.

It’s only midday when we stop for a peach at a fruit stand at the edge of Lancaster.

We meet Nancy Hertzog, who has four children, three jobs, no health insurance, no retirement plan. She feels helpless and almost hopeless. Fear outweighs hope. Trucks roar past, and she has to yell to be heard.

She would vote for Bush--if she was to vote--because she is white and she looked at her TV and saw a lot of faces at the Democratic National Convention that were not. And they were applauding Bill Clinton.

“Just look up the street. The ----- they could work. But they don’t have to. I work. Nobody helps me. And their kids are wearing better clothes than my kids. . . . You bet we’re bitter.”

The enemy of her enemies is her friend, and she speaks the bitter epithets of prejudice to describe other people struggling for a rung on the ladder with her. Forget the swing vote. Don’t you know, it’s the us’s vs. the them’s? She’s heard it from the mouths of some candidates themselves.