Missouri vote signals complex national mood

The gleaming, 630-foot-tall arch along the west bank of the Mississippi River at St. Louis is known as the Gateway to the West, but during presidential election years it may as well be called the mirror on the nation.

Super Tuesday's results in Missouri, with narrow primary victories by Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, reflect the nationwide excitement with the Democratic ticket, the lack of enthusiasm for the Republican choices and the limitations that hinder candidates in both parties in their march to the nomination.

And with remarkable precision, Missouri's Democratic primary vote for Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton — 49 percent to 48 percent — defined the competing national delegate counts separating Obama and Clinton after Super Tuesday.

"The primary showed that Missouri's a great barometer," said Kenneth Warren, a political scientist at St. Louis University.

Missouri has an uncanny ability to choose presidential winners, going with the loser only once in the past century (Adlai Stevenson in 1956). The state is effectively an intersection of cultural forces — urban and rural, north and south, east and west — and it periodically swings with prevailing national moods.

"What you have in Missouri is a lack of fundamental coherence, much like the nation," said Wayne Fields, director of American cultural studies at Washington University in St. Louis. "One of the striking things about Missouri is that it never became something in particular. It never really forged its own identity."

Missouri does have its political inclinations, though, and it tilts toward ideological and cultural conservatism. According to exit polls, two-thirds of Republicans called themselves conservative and half of the Democrats called themselves moderates. Nearly half of the Republicans describe themselves as white, born-again Christians. And when it comes to race, it is more Southern than Northern.

In 1994, Missouri Democrats nominated then-U.S. Rep. Alan Wheat, an African-American, as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, against Republican John Ashcroft. Ashcroft won in a landslide, getting 60 percent of the vote and carrying all 114 counties. Wheat won only the city of St. Louis.

Wheat's defeat 14 years ago does not portend trouble for Obama, Warren said, because the Chicago Democrat is a different kind of candidate with a more appealing message.

Still, Warren said, Missouri would be a tough state for Obama to carry.

•	Missouri vote signals complex national mood Campaign 2008 Chicago Tribune, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008 Byline: Tim Jones, TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT