In my last post, I said that I didn't think that contemporary political problems in the United States are a reflection of social problems (the loss of meaningful connections) or economic problems (lack of growth in working-class standards of living), but of failures of political leadership. But that raises the question of why political leadership has become worse.
One part of the answer is a combination of American political institutions and changes in the nature of parties. The institutions worked reasonably well when parties were loosely organized and not very ideological, but when the parties are ideological, they create bad incentives for politicians. One reason is the dominance of the two-party system means that negative partisanship can be at least as effective as trying to make a positive appeal. Another is that the complexity of the system means that there are lots of ways to try to manipulate the rules to your benefit. Complexity also means that there are opportunities to take a symbolic stand without worrying about the consequences--you can leave it to someone else (often the courts) to do the "responsible" thing. An example of that is the Texas v. Pennsylvania suit, which was supported by most Republican attorneys general and members of the House of Representatives: they knew that the Supreme Court would decline to hear it, so it wouldn't really make any difference but they would get credit with the "base." But all of these have the effect of making the public more discontented with politics, and therefore more likely to support outsiders who promise to cut through the partisan wrangling but usually make it worse.
These considerations apply to both parties, but there is a difference between the way that they've responded. Republicans were more vigorous in playing "constitutional hardball" even before the 2020 election. Also, there's a difference in their treatment of extreme positions. Few Democratic politicians expressed support for "defund the police," and those who did tried to say that they didn't mean it literally, they just wanted to move some resources from policing to social service. But in every race for the Republican presidential nomination, some candidates will propose abolishing the IRS, or several cabinet agencies, cutting the federal workforce in half, etc.. Another way to look at it is that it's fairly common for Democratic politicians or pundits to say that the party needs to move to the center on certain issues, but Republicans almost never say that--even proposals for reform are presented as something uniquely conservative, not as moves to the center.
I think that the explanation for this difference is that American conservatism sees itself as being in opposition to the "elites." William F. Buckley is generally agreed to be the founder of the modern conservative movement, and his first two books were not about New Deal policies, or labor union power, or policy towards the Soviet Union, but about Yale University and "McCarthy and his enemies"--that is, both were directed against what he called "our disintegrated ruling elite." That sense of alienation has grown as "elites" have moved towards the left. Consequently, conservative politicians don't feel much obligation to be "responsible"--they are just interested in expressing opposition.
I don’t think you’ll have much success explaining the current political environment with your current approach. Unfortunately people are badly misunderstanding the current political situation by looking at politics and policy in the US through a WWII-period lens, thus mistakenly using the peak of a cycle as the mean or baseline.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the Wikipedia map of control of Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress#/media/File:Combined--Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
The 1930s-1990s was a period of absolute dominance by Democrats in Congress. Between 1931 and 1995 Republicans held the Senate for just 10 of 64 years, or 16% of that time, 6 years of which were in the 1980s; the house was even more lopsided: Democrats commanded the house for a whopping 60 of 64 years between 1931 and 1995. So the "baseline" period of the 1950s is actually a time of total dominance by Democrats – the peak of the political trend.
Since Republicans finally wrested control of the house from Democrats in 1995 after a 40-year drought, we've experienced an unprecedented period of approximate equality in Congress with both houses of Congress changing hands much more often than they have historically and no party able to reach a 60% majority in either the house or senate since 1993 – compare that with the WWII-period, where Democrats held 60% of the House on a regular basis and even reached 70% of the House multiple times.
When people default to the WWII-period as a baseline, what constitutes “extreme” changes. Amazingly, it’s not “extreme” in some circles for the Biden administration to propose that the IRS have direct access to people’s bank accounts, but it is “extreme” to suggest elimination of the IRS – even though our national income tax, and all the massive bureaucracy that goes with it – is almost entirely a WWII-period phenomenon, built during Democrats’ peak of power. So, in fact, the WWII-period opened with major changes that all Republicans at the time viewed as “extreme” – the massive expansion of government called “The New Deal.”
So the appropriate question is not what has happened since 1990 or 2000. Nor is it whether current Republicans are “extreme”. The appropriate question is: what brought the Democrats’ long period of overwhelming dominance – the period of Democrat-driven “extreme” policies – to an end?