The polarization of American politics is evident from the way that Republicans and Democrats seem to loathe each other. They scream at their counterparts; they rant for the cameras; their surrogates in the press besmirch each other as worse than foreign enemies. Indeed, the fact that John McCain, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for president, in his concession speech urged his followers to support Barrack Obama as president, was seen as a betrayal by Republicans. And the fact that President Obama has tried to reach out to moderate Republicans at times is seen as a betrayal by the Left, and an attempt to colonize and domesticate the center of American politics by the Right. (Let’s ignore, for the moment, that broadening your base is smart politics, and frankly what any smart president or national leader should do. The fact that George W. Bush made no attempt to reach out beyond his narrow, partisan base, save in the dying days of his administration, is merely one of many pieces of evidence that confirms my belief that he wasn’t a smart president. It has also left his party in dire straits.)
Now, American politics has always been a blood sport, right back to the conflicts between Jefferson and Adams, Hamilton and Aaron Burr, or Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. I can remember the first presidential election I was old enough to be aware of, Eisenhower versus Stevenson in 1956, where the popular jingle that made the rounds was crudely partisan: “Whistle while you work; Stevenson’s a jerk; Eisenhower’s got my power, so whistle while you work.” (My folks were Republicans.) But what’s happening today is much worse, dangerous to Americans and the rest of the world as well, and it all comes back to something we learned about in high-school social studies: gerrymandering.
The art of gerrymandering
Gerrymandering is the art of re-drawing electoral districts for the express purpose of benefiting a specific group, whether political, racial, economic, or otherwise, and it’s not a pretty concept. It basically seeks to screw those that do not fit into the group being favored by isolating them in a district whose boundaries make it difficult or impossible to defeat the representative of the favored group. Hence, a district that elects a member of the U.S. House of Representatives which has boundaries that effectively make it a safe seat for the Democratic Party disenfranchises all Republicans (and others) in that district, because only Democrats will be elected. And gerrymandering is being actively practiced in drawing the boundaries of members of the House of Representatives, with the connivance of both Republicans and Democrats, and with the limited approval of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled in 2006, hypocritically in my opinion, that it is OK to bias elections in the favor of Democrats or Republicans, but you cannot bias them on the basis of race. I’m sure this makes sense to someone (like the Supremes), but it makes no sense to me. However, my opinion counts for nothing, so gerrymandering is the law of the land in American national politics (and many states as well). What’s more, computer analysis and detailed demographic data has allowed the political parties to draw exquisitely precise district boundaries to create as many safe seats as possible (and to look as grotesque as you can imagine). Hence, in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, something like 96% of all incumbents who chose to run were re-elected – a record that The Economist newsmagazine said would have done credit to North Korea.
So what?
Now let’s look at the implications of this. First, it artificially polarizes American politics, and disenfranchises those Americans who are moderate – which, depending on how you look at it, is close to a majority. In a Republican safe district, the Republican incumbent cannot be defeated by a Democrat; he (or she) can only be defeated by another Republican in the primaries. This means that the entire political spectrum for anyone wishing to be the Republican nominee is from the center to the extreme right-wing. Likewise, in a Democratic safe district, the Democratic incumbent can’t be defeated by a Republican, only by another Democrat, which means that their political spectrum is from the center to the extreme left-wing. As a result, Republicans naturally move away from the center to the right, and Democrats naturally move from the center to the left, leaving those in the moderate middle of both parites unrepresented, and polarizing the House of Representatives.
As an aside, the Senate is not directly polarized in the same way because there are two senators for each state, and since state boundaries were fixed long ago, no gerrymandering is possible. However, state party machines are polarized, which tends, indirectly, to move senators away from the center.
This polarization leads to confrontational, “gotcha” politics, more intent on scoring points against the other party than formulating intelligent policy, or serving America’s broader interests. If you can make the other guys look bad, even if it harms America, you’ll probably do so because you need to be elected, and that’s the name of that game. And that means that the American Congress often creates dangerous, harmful policies, even when American legislators, as a whole, know it’s the wrong thing to do. That makes it dangerous for the rest of the world, because economically as well as militarily, America is still the only superpower, and what it does affects everyone.
A more dangerous side effect
But there’s another, subtler and potentially even more dangerous side effect. While most of the districts from which the members of the House of Representatives are elected are gerrymandered to be safe, there are some that are not or cannot be. This often gives the representatives in those “unsafe” seats the deciding votes in a close issue where votes matter. By the nature of House politics (whose members are up for election every two years, and hence are effectively always running for re-election), this means that they can ask for almost anything, and get it. Hence, if one such district has a lot of, say, widget manufacturers who are being hurt by cheap widgets from China, or religious fundamentalists who despise the distribution of condoms to teenagers, the representative from that district can make a trade: she gives her vote on, say, a budget appropriate bill in exchange for protectionist legislation against Chinese widget manufacturers, or a prohibition against funding contraception counseling in Third World countries. Meanwhile, this may well provoke retaliation, or poison a sensitive foreign-policy relationship. As a result, American policy on a broad range of issues is, at times, being made by widget manufacturers, or fundamentalists, or some other group that is only interested in its own narrow, parochial interests, and couldn’t give a damn about broader issues, or America’s broader interests.
So, what can be done about this? Well, some states establish independent tribunals to set Congressional district boundaries, and there is some faint hope that this idea will spread, and return (some) sanity to American politics. But truthfully, the backroom pols of both parties much prefer the present system, especially because it’s so difficult to explain, and doesn’t fit a 30-second sound bite. They like exercising power behind the scenes, and will fight – dirty, if possible – to make sure that no one takes it away from them by making it understandable. Therefore, an enlightened and active electorate is the only solution.
Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest.
© Copyright, IF Research, August 2009.
