specialagency.net: It all looks purple from the moon

June 13, 2004

It all looks purple from the moon

Who am I to ignore a challenge from Ms. Bond? She points to this article in today's Times, which suggests that differences between people on either side of the political divide aren't that significant. The author, John Tierney, cites a forthcoming book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, and says:

The book presents evidence that voters in red and blue America are not far apart. Majorities in both places support stricter gun control as well as the death penalty; they strongly oppose giving blacks preference in hiring while also wanting the government to guarantee that blacks are treated fairly by employers. They're against outlawing abortion completely or allowing it under any circumstances, and their opinions on abortion have been fairly stable for three decades. Virtually identical majorities of Blues and Reds don't want a single party controlling the White House and Congress.

I don't have any reason to disagree. There are key philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats, but these generally relate to means, not ends. In the article, Professor Alan Wolfe asserts that gay rights are "the great exception" to this trend, but there is evidence that attitudes are softening on this issue as well. Tierny paints a picture of a nation in which we all basically get along, but are driven to opposition by the political parties and the chattering class.

What's all this about unprecedented vitriol in political discourse, then? Part of the answer, I think, is in this article by Tim Noah, published in Slate two months ago. In an article on the extent to which individual counties are becoming increasingly politically homogenous, Noah writes, "The likelihood that you will ever argue politics with your neighbor is diminishing rapidly, because it's less and less likely that, politically, you and your neighbor will ever disagree." Having divided the past seven years between Cambridge, Berkeley, and Long Island, I know exactly what he means. In the first two places I feel terribly conservative, while in the third I feel almost dangerously liberal. But while I suspect that the crews from Charlie's Kitchen (in the heart of Harvard Square) and Pier 44 (on Long Island's Great South Bay) would view each other with a good deal of suspicion, there's not a great deal of difference in what they want for this country. And that's exactly why I'm so concerned about how we talk to one another.

Tierney paints a picture of political elites engaged in an ugly rhetorical war while Billy Average shrugs and goes about his business. He blames special interest groups and gerrymandered safe seats for placing undue favor on candidates at the extreme of each party. I'm not so sure it's that simple. If political parties are increasingly creatures of their membership, as demonstrated by the rise of the primary system at the expense of party bosses, it's hard to say that elected leaders are not representative of the parties that back them. That's not to say that many people wouldn't prefer more moderate alternatives, but I'm unwilling to let the electorate off the hook for democratic choices. President Bush's victory over Senator McCain in 2000 was a victory for extremistm over moderation, but the same cannot be said of Senator Kerry's triumph in this year's Democratic horserace. The only point there, I think, is that primaries don't necessarily promote candidates on the extremes; the voters have to be willing accomplices.

As further evidence of the narrow gap between Republicans and Democrats, Tierney points to the willingness of voters to support candidates from each party. He says, "The six bluest states in 2000, the ones where George W. Bush fared worst - Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut and Maryland - all have Republican governors. Even California went red last year when Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, became governor." I don't believe it's a coincidence that there's a lot of shoreline in those six states. What the article misses, and I believe is crucial, is that our politics are regionally influenced more than anything else. I suspect that on a fundamental level, Governor Pataki of New York has a lot more in common with Senator Schumer than he does with Senator Lott. The most divisive aspect of our two-party system is that the Republicans and Democrats are expected to function on both state and national levels. As such, local and statewide elections are -- whether implicily or explicitly -- influenced by the views of people from all corners of the country. As long as southern, evangelical Republicans are vehemently opposed to abortion, the issue cannot be truly closed even in places much closer to consensus on the issue. Democrats enthusiastically welcomed Congresswoman Herseth's recent victory in South Dakota, but as far as I can tell, my Republican governor is more liberal than she is. It's a dangerous time when people are inclined to support people they would otherwise oppose on the basis of party affiliation.

This isn't necessarily anything new, but I think regional differences have been accelerated and magnified by the technological innovations of the last half century. People are much more likely to move these days, and it seems that when they do move, they wind up with neighbors more like themselves than before. The Internet has created such an echo chamber that it's possible to spend the whole day communicating and never encounter a truly broad range of opinion. It doesn't particularly matter that there's not much difference in ideology across the spectrum: in my experience -- and this experience seems similar to that of others -- people are very unlikely to consider what other people think about an issue. It's not just that people are agreeing to disagree; there's a feeling on both sides that people who disagree are not just wrong, they're bad people.

There's a reason for this, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. So much rhetoric of both liberals and conservatives is tinged with alienation. Both sides feel that mainstream America represents someone other than them. So who does it represent? Does our democracy pander to an aggregate that doesn't exist in reality? Or are people on both sides wildly overreacting in a quest for complete victory? Representative democracy never has been and never will be the best way to achieve full implemenation of one side's agenda, but it seems to me that compromise is increasingly dropping out of the vocabulary. Noah closes his article with:

What do all these numbers mean? They mean that within the universe of people who vote in presidential elections, nearly half of us are likely to be smug in our political views, while nearly one-third of us are likely to feel absolutely certain that the winds of history are at our back, rendering us utterly boorish. That's quite a market for political candidates and radio talk-show hosts to tap. Indeed, they'd be fools not to.

I do feel that the level of antagonism in political discourse is uncommonly high, and I worry that this division is fueled by something that transcends the issues of the day. If this is the case, merely pointing out the similarities between the agendas of Republicans and Democrats is not enough, as they're largely irrelevant. What's vital, and much more difficult, is to discover why people who might generally be able to find common ground are increasingly unwilling to do so.

Posted by withers at June 13, 2004 01:29 PM

Comments

See, I knew someone over here would say a bunch of thoughtful things in response to that article... which require me to think about them more before saying anything myself. Excellent post.

Posted by: Gwenda B. at June 13, 2004 06:05 PM

It's worth noting that from a marketing perspective, Bush's victory of McCain was a victory of moderation over extremism. He just didn't keep any of his campaign promises.

Posted by: David Moles at June 14, 2004 12:49 PM

Heard part of a nice interview with SF Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll on KQED radio's Forum program (attempted link here, scroll down near the bottom) about his recent trip cross-country talking to people in various communities. His observation was that as long as he steered clear of politics itself, most people he encountered were perfectly willing to hold friendly, informative conversation with him despite almost total political disagreement.

The program had the benefit of the usual host being out and a substitute filling in: Angie Coiro, who previously I'd only heard doing traffic reports. To my untrained ear, I'd say she's a much better interviewer than the usual guy.

Posted by: Dan at June 23, 2004 04:45 PM

Ah, no html?

http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-archive.jsp?progID=RD19&ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&type=radio

Program is Friday, June 18th, 9:00 AM

Posted by: Dan at June 23, 2004 04:47 PM

I agree with almost everything you say, Susan. However, it seems to me that the fact that "Republicans and Democrats are expected to function on both state and national levels" is actually salutary and unifying, not divisive. As you say, regional differences -- especially rural/urban differences -- are what's being strongly accelerated by technology and so on. So it's probably a *good* thing that national politics encourages us to find sympathy with people we otherwise wouldn't be allied with.

If abortion wasn't a national issue, it would be illegal in the Deep South, and there would be no constraints on the use of fetuses, up until birth, in the cosmopolitan coastal centers -- which would cause each region to view the other with horror.

I expect it's the necessity of being allied with people from all regions on our formal political "side", as much as anything else, that keeps us in a region of uneasy compromise about such issues, rather than smug certitude locally and vast alienation transregionally.

And I think the electoral college is actually very cleverly designed to manage precisely this conflict -- to win the presidency, you have to pay attention to a very broad set of regions, and extra attention to less populous (and thus more easily marginalized) regions. The electoral college system took an unfair beating, I think, over the Bush/Gore dead heat finish; in particular, its regional-hostility-dampening features were largely ignored.

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