Again, what makes you think that politics is more polarized than before?
It’s always been polarized, we just look back and think it wasn’t.
You think they weren’t polarized in the 60s, 70s, and 80s?
But, not even LBJ or Nixon had as high a partisan approval-gap as both W and Obama have had.
I’m more in agreement with Airman Doors and Ibn Warraq in that I don’t see today’s polarization as being greater or at some sort of high water mark over previous eras. As has been mentioned, the media at the time of the United States’ founding was vastly more partisan and egregious than Drudge on his worst day. In the 1930s, Charles Coughlin’s radio show promoted outrageous conspiracies and made accusations against the President that would make Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck look like rank amateurs. In terms of domestic politics, I’d argue that we’re in an era of relative sanity, especially when you consider the tectonic shocks that are happening to the nation’s economy and demographics, as caucasians begin to transition to minority status. Occupy Wallstreet with its aimless agenda and few police clashes looks particularly silly compared to, say, the Bonus Army march and its subsequent dispersion.
I’m not trying to pull a Pangloss here, I’m just saying that situationally today’s political battles and partisanship don’t really smack of the incipient fall of the United States.
I’m not sure if partisan approval gap is the sole measurement of polarization but even so, according to this article (second graph) today’s gap doesn’t seem much out of line with historical gaps. It’s definitely wider but I don’t see it as a strong long-term trend (yet).
In historical eras, did either major party basically have its goal as wrecking the country if there’s a chance that it’d make the other side look bad if they could spin it right? Did they want to burn it all down so they could be kings of the ashes? Would something like the “debt ceiling crisis”, where one side deliberately damages two hundred years of good faith in the United States as a political stunt, be possible in previous eras?
Lets not forget that while there was a lot of extreme rhetoric in the past Congress still functioned because there were contentious issues and not all out war on all fronts. During Vietnam there were Democratic hawks and even some Republican doves. Before the Civil War there were proponents and opponents of the expansion of Slavery in both the Democratic and the Whig parties. What is different now is that the parties are more ideologically coherent, particularly the GOP, and that it’s not a disagreement over issues. It’s a matter of identity. To generalize, the Republican Party does not recognize the legitimacy of the Democratic Party.
Lets put that into perspective by asking if the typical members of historical parties would agree with the statement that the other party was the Loyal Opposition. This question disqualifies the premodern thinkers of the Founding period since they would immediately object to the assumption that they were in a party in the first place. There was no concept of a loyal opposition at the time. They would consider that a contradiction of terms. So forget Hamilton through Bache. Congress got things done back then because their electoral savvy was as limited as their political theory and one side or the other would dominate the federal government.
The Democrats and the Whigs were able to coexist because being in a party went from being an insult to commonplace. Of course citizens have varying interests and outlooks and banding together to express those politically is now accepted as natural. There were confrontations, mainly over slavery but also concerning what we would call Immigration and Prohibition, but these issues were contained because the parties didn’t uniformly line up on one side or the other. Eventually the strain of this balancing act became too strong and tore the Whig Party apart (and damaged the Democrats as well). The new Republicans and the Democrats couldn’t live together. Republican moderates like Lincoln were willing to reach a hand over the line but the Democrats did not see them as a loyal opposition. In the view of Democrats, particularly in the South of course, they were upstarts hell bent on destroying the American way of life and thus deserved no respect. (The Republican Party wasn’t immune to this sentiment either. See: “Copperhead”.)
After the Civil War the parties were able to coexist where there was an acceptance that both were well intentioned. That is, outside the Solid South. With the passing of the issue of slavery the stakes were lowered. This continued through the Great Depression and the Democratic Party’s response to popular pressure in the form of the New Deal. Conservatives of both parties hated it and called FDR a traitor but it was so popular there was no getting rid of it. Eisenhower’s victory represents the GOP’s coming to terms with the new political reality.
Not all Republicans were ready to quit though. Movement conservatism took form and captured the GOP. Reagan’s victory represents its triumph. Now we are back to where we were at the beginning. Republicans (not all of them, of course) do not recognize the legitimacy of the Democrat Party. As I argued earlier, I see this is as a strategy to dismantle the economic security of the New Deal. Certainly there are other factors. The balkanization of the media, gerrymandering, turning federal matching funds over directly to candidates, and others. But the main culprit here is the GOP view of their opponents. When you are fighting the Devil you are justified in taking the country through Hell.
I’m not, no. Could you please explain?
This is false balance, the assumption that all sides are equally merited and equally flawed, and therefore your perception of which side is right or wrong is merely bias. But it’s wrong.
I mean, let’s say hypothetically one party was totally composed of honest, well-intentioned, competent angels, and the other party was dedicated to thwarting that party in any way they can, to cause as much damage as they could. Would you tell a supporter of the former side that if they’re blaming the other side for the problems, then it’s ironic because that’s exactly the sort of attitude that’s causing the disunity! But in this scenario, the latter side actually is causing the problems, and the person is accurately reflecting that.
Now the actual reality is that the democrats aren’t perfect angels, of course. But the more or less official stance of the Republican party at this point is to try to burn the motherfucker down because they think they might be king of the ashes.
I should think, because saying “It’s the Republicans’ fault,” whether that is true or false or partly true or mostly true or just Democrats projecting (and, yes, it is mostly true ;)), is a symptom of this polarization.
The admonition to not discuss politics and religion (or the Great Pumpkin) isn’t because there was such a high level of agreement that it would be too boring of a conversation.
In the recent Daily Show interview, Mark Leibovich claims that partisanship inside the Beltway isn’t really any different than before.
My father was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and the fund raising letters send in the 70s weren’t any different than what Fox News is saying now. It’s just easier to find.
That. And no, I’m not arguing that the two sides are equal and opposite here. But that doesn’t mean it’s all the Republicans’ fault.
I’m curious if your perspective is an artifact of graph reading. Here’s the same graph but with a red line superimposed showing the difference between on- and off-party support. Ignoring 1982 (economy continued to worsen with parties having opposite priorities) and 2002 (war euphoria),the upward trend seems very clear to me.
The trend could be described as unprecedented hatred directed specifically against Clinton, GWB and Obama. One could try to understand why these three are particularly “easy to hate.” (I think partisanship fostered irrational hatred against Clinton and Obama. At the risk of sounding partisan myself, the hypocrisies and incompetence of the Cheney-Rove Administration made it particularly easy to hate.)
That’s not ironic. No one is saying that only Republicans engage in finger pointing. A person’s belief that the GOP is the main culprit here does not give any reasonable expectation that they would refrain from posting to that effect. But that’s really minor. I’d rather see someone argue against the idea that Republicans are the root cause of the unprecedented partisanship.
IMHO, incivility in American political discussion, and the culture in general, is merely a symptom of a deeper root cause traceable to a time when Americans became more unabashed about rejecting its past Judeo-Christian Heritage - lowering the ethical standard within family, community and government. I’m making a specific reference here to the 1960s; the emergence of America’s “counter-culture.”
‘As the family goes, so goes America.’ It never really was about GM.
And that accounts for the now even greater incivility of the conservatives/traditionalists? It is their response to all that?
Yesterday’s liberal is today’s conservative. And yesterday’s “conservative” is today’s ‘right-wing extremist nut.’
Not the way you mean it. Read Michael Lind’s Up from Conservatism. Lind was part of the conservative movement once, a National Review editor, protégé of Buckley, who finally broke with it because, from his POV, he had remained in the same place he started while center-of-gravity of the whole movement-conservative coalition had careened to the right.
Furthermore, in the past couple of decades, American RWs have become nutsier in absolute, not just relative, terms. What accounts for that? Why the conspiracy theories? Why the Vince Foster murder theory? Why birtherism? Why the goldbuggery and “End The Fed!” nonsense? Why the Tea Party? Why the Minutemen? Why the militias and “sovereign citizens”?
These are not conservatives any more. Conservatives are cautious. That’s the whole point. Conservatives don’t trust rapid change or radical experiments. These RWs demand them.
I’m gettin’ old and remember 1968 like it was yesterday. Politics these days are polarized? Where are the riots? Where are the bombings?
In the period I’m talking about, the past two decades more or less, we’ve had riots, and we’ve had bombings. More recently . . . Well, in fact . . . I don’t like this, sir, it’s too quiet . . . [spearhead sprouts from chest]