The Supposition Being...

Back in the fall of 1968, I enrolled at Northern Arizona University.  I was a young 17-year-old, naïve as hell about life.  I relied on the educational experience I had gained from a small, but productive high school (My graduating class of 68 members had three National Merit Semi-finalists).  When I met with my NAU academic advisor to determine which classes would be the best for me to enroll, I was told to take PS260.  My NAU advisor said if you are going into education, you will need this class to meet teacher certification requirements.  I agreed.

On the first day of class, I scouted out the other students who had enrolled in PS260, and I immediately knew I may be trying to swim in deep water.  The class membership was predominantly juniors and seniors, and I was questioning not only my resolve, but my academic advisor’s advice.

Class began when Dr. William Strauss arrived.  He was a small man, looked to be in his 60s, white hair, spoke with an evident southern accent, and dressed in a navy-blue suit.  When he laughed, his head would turn stoplight red and accentuated his white hair.  Strauss had an idiosyncratic behavior of putting his head down and rubbing his hand through his short-cropped hair saying, “The supposition being…”.  Anyone who was enrolled in a class taught by Dr. Strauss knew this to be true.

As class continued throughout the semester, I found the upperclassmen in enrolled in PS260 were just about as confused as I was.  Don’t get me wrong…Strauss was a great teacher, knew his material backwards and forwards, but had not put his thoughts together in a well-structured setting.

One class, Strauss decided to speak about elections and election campaigns.  During his lecture, Dr. Strauss said, “I told Lyndon…” and at that point an upperclassman immediately interrupted Dr. Strauss and asked, “Lyndon who?”  Dr. Strauss simply answered, “I was Lyndon Johnson’s campaign manager in 1948 in Texas”.  From that moment forward, the entire class knew we were in a special situation, and the concentration in class surged.

During the semester, Dr. Strauss brought to us his expertise in elections, campaigns, and winning elections.  He brought forth the concept of understanding what must be realized about the electorate, and where the positions of candidates must be if the candidate wished to win.  And with that, I would like to share what the good doctor gave the students of PS260.

What Dr. Strauss brought to our attention was the Bell Curve and how it played in the role of an election.  For clarity, A bell curve is a graph that shows how values in a dataset are disbursed, with most falling near the average, and fewer appearing at the extremes. It is used to understand patterns, trends, and variation in data.  The highest point of the bell curve represents the middle of the data…in Strauss’s world, the middle of the population or electorate. 

The Bell Curve is divided by “standard deviations”.  A standard deviation is a measurement used to quantify the data dispersion in a set of given values around the mean.  According to Dr. Strauss, the values he was used for the Bell Curve was political thought (campaign issues) of the electorate (population). 
 
One standard deviation to the left of center represents roughly 34 % of the population.  Combining that with one standard deviation to the right of center, according to Strauss would represent 68% of the electorate.  And, according to Dr. Strauss, it was easy to say, anything to the right of the median of the Bell Curve was Republican, and anything to the left of the median could be considered Democrat.  As Dr. Strauss was carefully showing his students all of this, it became apparent, if one wished to win an election, the candidate had to draw voters from the standard deviation closest to the median.  In other words, the candidate had to have some centrist qualities to attract voters from the other side of the median.

According to Dr. Strauss, what this means, is the potential candidate must be agreeable to work for the benefit of the entire country and not just his voter base should the candidate be elected.  The candidate can still have a conservative or liberal philosophy of how to govern, but, the elected official must work across the aisle to accommodate the “minority party”, the party not in control of the national or state politics.  If the elected official failed to do so, his tenure as a political leader would be rocky at best.

With that being said, it brings me to this conclusion.

Unfortunately, the current state of politics in our nation is nowhere near Dr. Strauss’s idea of politics.  The Bell Curve has been turned upside down.  The die has been cast.  The combined standard deviations from the median no longer represent 68% of the electorate.  The attitude is you’re either with us or against us.  And in my view, that comes from both parties.  There are no centrist elements of the current administration being displayed, and that causes the retort of the minority party to be curt and abrasive.
Both parties have had elected officials resign because of the behavior and actions of their respective party leadership. This doesn’t promote a healthy, cohesive and effective government, one of the people, by the people and for the people.  

​With the mid-term elections approaching in November of 2026, and potential candidates already posturing to gain public attention, it will be interesting to see if the political pendulum swings back to a more centrist position.
  
And with acknowledgement to Dr. Strauss, “The supposition being…if government doesn’t return to a more centrist philosophy, the next few years could be rocky at best.  And what will that produce?”