A grain of sand for your thoughts

WILLIAM BLAKE talked of being able to see “a world in a grain of sand”. Students of American politics don't have as convenient a microcosm to help them understand a country of nearly 300m people. But they do have Ohio.

Ohio has always had two things going for it, psephology-wise. It is a classic bellwether state—“wrong” in only two presidential elections in the past 104 years. And this slice of the mid-west contains a bit of everything American—part north-eastern and part southern, part urban and part rural, part hardscrabble poverty and part booming suburb. But for political wonks, it now has an irresistible addition: a state Republican Party that mirrors first the success then the problems of the national one.

Republicans have done a remarkable job in Ohio of taking an evenly divided electorate—the state voted for George Bush by a mere 2% in 2004—and parlaying it into Republican hegemony. They run every branch of government from the governorship (which they have held since 1991) through both houses of the legislature to the state Supreme Court. They control both Senate seats. The Democrats can't boast a single statewide office-holder.

Yet as in Washington, the Republican machine is sputtering. The governor, Bob Taft, boasts one of the grandest names in politics. His great-grandfather, William, was the 27th president; his grandfather, Robert, was such a powerhouse that people used to joke that there were three branches of government—the executive, the legislature and Senator Taft. But his grandson's approval-rating is currently 15%—one of the lowest ever recorded.

Long a byword for lacklustre leadership, Mr Taft is now embroiled in a succession of corruption scandals. He pleaded no contest to failing to declare golfing trips with lobbyists and campaign contributors. But “Golfgate” was nothing compared with “Coingate”. The Republican leadership decided to invest some of the state's $15 billion workers'-compensation fund in rare coins. Alas, the plan's mastermind was not only tainted by self-interest (he is a rare-coin dealer who has made big donations to the party), but also contrived to lose some of the coins.

The combination of dismal leadership and dumb-as-it-comes sleaze has strained party unity. Activists are furious with the state party's betrayal of conservative principles—spending like drunken sailors during the good times in the 1990s and then jacking up the sales tax in 2003 to pay for their extravagance. Conservatives are cross that one of their senators, “weeping” George Voinovich, tried to scupper John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the UN, and that the other, Mike DeWine, joined the gang of 14 that stopped the Republicans using the “nuclear option” against Democratic filibustering. Internecine squabbling almost lost the party a safe seat in the Cincinnati suburbs earlier this year. The Republicans are now involved in a bitter primary race for the governor's job: Ken Blackwell is leading the true believers, Jim Petro is championing business conservatives and Betty Montgomery is rallying the moderates.

This is hardly the end of the party's problems. Ohio continues to bleed manufacturing jobs (only last week Ford shut a factory). Earlier in 2005, 17 local soldiers were killed on a single day in Iraq. And the Democrats have finally come up with a first-rate candidate for governor. Ted Strickland, a Methodist minister with a top rating from the National Rifle Association, has already won two culturally conservative congressional districts.

Yet if Ohio is a bellwether, it is hardly a comforting one for Democrats. Sure, Mr Strickland may be able to pull-off an upset, but none of the locals expects a return to the glory days of the 1980s when the state's government was firmly Democratic.

Talk to young Republicans and they still exude self-confidence. They regard their party as a well-oiled machine: brilliant at developing “farm teams” of volunteers, a master of the art of getting out the vote in suburbia and exurbia (“We deliver”). They put their success down to a single all-important fact: they know what they believe in. Talk to young Democrats and it is all doom and gloom. The party is an old-boys' club that is better at covering its backside than thinking ahead. Young activists are joining single-issue pressure groups such as Campaign for a New Ohio rather than the Democratic dinosaur. They worry that the Democrats are too fissile—divided between blue-collar workers and middle-class professionals and fractured along all sorts of line of racial and sexual politics—to produce a clear message.

Why Karl Rove may still be right

The Republicans have shown themselves better than the Democrats at erecting a big tent. A party that was once dominated by white men (like Mr Taft) has embraced “white ethnics” (Mr Voinovich), blacks (Mr Blackwell) and moderate women (Ms Montgomery). The Democrats, by contrast, seem prisoners of an industrial economy that is visibly dying. Things do not seem to have changed since John Kerry won Ohio's cities by 57% to 43% but still lost the state. The Democrats are still not reaching out to the suburbs.

The Republicans know how to use culture to trump economics. Mr Bush triumphed in poverty-ridden Appalachia by sounding the clarion calls of “God, gays and guns”. A proposition banning gay marriage won with 62% of the vote. And the religious right is continuing to gain strength: groups such as the Ohio Restoration Project boast of registering 300,000 people.

Ohio has a particular place in Karl Rove's affections, not just because it tipped the 2004 election but also because it was home to his hero, Mark Hanna, another political mechanic who guided a Republican to the White House. William McKinley's presidency (1897-1901) laid the foundations for a period of Republican dominance. Today Mr Rove's dream of repeating Hannah's success may well be battered. But to judge from the mood in the Buckeye State, it is far from buried.