I think it was NBC Nightly News (don’t hold me to it) that reported on the polarization of American society and politics through a series of “man on the street” interviews. All interviewed believed and bemoaned it. One seemed to speak for the rest when he said he would vote for a third party presidential candidate who’d be a more centrist unifier. It made me wonder. Is the whole of the nation divided one side against the other? What is centrist? Does a unifier build uniformity or greater acceptance of diversity?
An April, 2023 YouGov.com report said that two thirds of the American public believe the nation is more polarized than ever. A deeper look into the report revealed a wide variation between self identified Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Urbanites, Suburbanites, Town residents and rural residents. With few exceptions, each believed the others were the polarized ones, and each professed beliefs about the others’ politics and prejudices while denying the prejudices attributed to them. That’s a simplified version of data you can look up for yourself.
The point it seems to me is that we are not as divided as news media and popular belief say we are. The persuasiveness of the message drilled into us day after day convinces us that all those other people are polarized, but not us. The same messaging demands that unless we are uncritically loyal to our side the other side will destroy the nation and that there can only be two sides: liberal or conservative. To conservatives, all liberals are extreme leftists. To liberals all conservatives are anti-democratic right wingers. In the daily news cycle grind there are enough loud voices at the extremes to drown out others. Non-stop revelations about the latest outrages from Trump, DeSantis, Abbot and McCarthy leave little time for anything else.
The difficulty facing Americans wanting more politicians who can meet in the middle is that the meaning of middle has changed. From the late 1930s through the early 1980s the middle was defined as the place where the agreed upon role of the federal government in actively promoting investment, research, education, public health and civil rights was negotiated between liberals who desired more for the little guy and middle class, and conservatives who wanted less regulation of business and lower taxes on the very wealthy. Conservatives were a check on liberal enthusiasm and liberals were a check on conservative miserliness. Neither conservatives nor liberals were a bloc so there was always room for bipartisan deal making that could generate a majority vote. Starting with the Reagan administration the middle shifted far to the right. Conservative activists took more extreme positions complaining that it was necessitated by the extraordinary demands of liberals, demands that had never been made. The tactic worked. For the middle to be met liberals had to move right. The current Congress is hamstrung on certain key issues because enough right wing extremists have the votes to stop everything unless their demands are met without question or negotiation. The middle has become what will appease them.
I can understand why “the man on the street” wanted a unifying centrist leader to emerge, one who could be the sensible voice of the broad American majority of people who lean a little left or right, but not far from the old center. Oddly Biden and his administration are the centrist’s unifying voice he wants. Even though he is already in the White House, the third party candidate people ate unwilling to admit he is trying to do what they desire.. Why is that so hard to see? I believe there are two reasons.
First national cable news outlets are loathe to admit it. Even liberal MSNBC shades its approval of Biden in an effort to appear balanced. Fox and other right wing sources give him no credit and harp endlessly about socialist agendas that don’t exist and corruption for which there is no evidence. Good old CNN reports both sides as if they had equal merit.
Second, the now well established Republican tactic is to attack, attack, attack with no regard for truth or intention of seeking agreements for the good of the nation. For them it’s win through unconditional defeat or nothing. It’s far removed from the Republican party of decades past. The yield of noxious weeds sowed by Gingrich, Norquist and others is Trumpism and the Freedom Caucus. They were abetted by the Koch network, for whom I have some sympathy. A cadre of self righteous, powerful men turned out to be naively unsophisticated. They thought they would be the puppeteers of a big business libertarian movement, but it turned out their puppets had minds and resources of their own, and refused to have their strings pulled. Whatever remains of authentic conservatives has ben cowed into going along to get along and not lose in primary elections. It’s a sad state of affairs because the. Nation needs a responsible conservative movement on the center right, and it doesn’t have one.
What will it take? Enough authentic conservatives committed to the old middle to stop belittling Democrats, stand up to Trumpism and the Freedom Caucus, duke it out in the primaries with messages that don’t rely on fear mongering, and ignore the barking junk yard media dogs. Likely? The Magic Eight ball does not answer.
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Steve, I have lived through the growing extremism of the right growing up. Mind you, this was when Bob Dole was considered extreme!
What’s changed is that, stsarting with Hillary Clinton, the candidates on the right have apex those on the far right and adopted the “scare the bejesus out of voters” in every email to raise money for their own candidacy.
Their positions haven’t changed but their statements basically portray their elections as a matter of life and death.
There are exceptions to this on the Democratic side, but I’ve stopped responding and deleted the pleas from those those aren’t.
Diana
P.S. my poster boy for sanity happens to be Al Franken.
Bravo Steve!
Nice piece, Steve. As often when reading one of your “political” or “state of the world” pieces, I try to square it with what I know of your theology. I think your strong faith gives a moral impulse to your views on the current state of affairs, a moral impulse rather than, say, a pragmatic or realpolitik one. (Which is good, in my view; morality is the good angel of theology when it is a good morality and not a fanatical one…. We can discuss the bad angel some other time and place.)