Why Polarization Will Likely Persist

Read an interesting book yesterday on the Red-Blue divide, Common Ground by Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel, based on their opinion column of the same name in USAToday. The book, subtitled How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America, is filled with commendable analyses of the historical and structural explanations of the bipolar disorder that currently afflicts American politics.

They have several chapters devoted to prescriptions for how to end polarization, mostly aimed at candidates and parties. The authors also argue how the voters are frustrated and fed up with the dysfunctional politics of partisanship and this certainly seems confirmed in this election cycle with the success of both Barack Obama and John McCain. Polarization works very well for electoral campaigns until it doesn't and it's to Obama's credit that he recognized we were reaching that point. McCain is arguably far closer to the ideological center than Pres. Bush, while Obama has also made conciliatory politics the cornerstone of his campaign. (Unfortunately, Obama's brief public biography doesn't yet give evidence of that commitment, forcing him to spend considerable energy defending himself against charges of orthodox left liberalism. But this is the kind of opposition he'll face if nominated and elected--the nation is nowhere near as liberal as Barack Obama appears.)

My only caveat to this book and its authors is that recent polarization in American politics is not a complete fabrication of the polarizers. It's based on some real differences in lifestyles and ideology that do line up with geography. True, the Red State-Blue State narrative is mostly myth, but the tension between red rural/suburban and blue urban is real and significant--those county maps are not fabrications of pundits' imaginations. This configuration is rooted in the voters preferences, as Obama and Clinton have discovered in rural PA, so it won't be easily wished away by whoever becomes president. The rural-urban divide is between different voting constituencies and any compromises will need to draw both extremes toward the center. Both Obama and McCain expect their opposition to do most of the moving, but no matter who prevails, the future president will need to do a little pulling of his own party base as well as pushing against the opposition.

To stake out the center requires the strong support of independents and moderates to counterbalance extremists like MoveOn on the left or James Dobson on the right, who can significantly influence close elections. So far McCain has demonstrated his independence better than Obama, but this is partly a reflection of nomination pressures on the Democrats' side. The battle between Clinton and Obama is so tight that neither one can risk offending any constituency within the base. This has prevented them from moving toward a more centrist general election campaign strategy.

Anyway, when it comes down to Democrats vs. Republican I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing a lot more noise about guns, religion, gays, abortion, race, the war, etc. and these spats will sound as partisan as ever. But recognition of the rural-urban divide can help remove many of these wedge issues, especially differences over guns, religion and gays. The question is how many of us will be willing to see past the party, the man and our ideological prejudices to the issues we face? If not, we'll be driven into our respective corners again and have only ourselves to blame. If you're a knee-jerk liberal or a jerk Republican, take heed.