LOB Book Club - The Big Sort: Part IV
I am one who is known to get a wee bit frustrated with American politics from time to time, especially how maddeningly narrow the spectrum of acceptable opinion is in this country. Take the current health care debate. Poll after poll shows mainstream support for national health care among the populace; yet because of moneyed interests, it's off the table. Bill Bishop would doubtless disagree with me. What frustrates him is too much rather than too little partisanship. In Chapter 11, he uses the 2004 Presidential election as Exhibit A in his case that American politics has become too rancorous. Perhaps so, and there were enough differences between the candidates for me to plump for Kerry while I was living in a swing state. But let's also remember that 2004 pitted too aristocratic sons who attended Yale at virtually the same time and were both members of "Skulls and Bones."
So, what say you about American politics - too civil or not civil enough? Too extreme or too centrist?
posted by The Blue Devil @ 5:36 PM
2 Comments:
Unfortunately, I think Bishop's right about the independent middle shrinking and the parties becoming more polarized. The linking of party with religion (per the Republicans) is also highly distressing. Remnants of 9/11?
Well, there are two different spheres at work here that Bishop unfortunately tends to conflate throughout his book.
On the one hand there is mainstream political sphere, which appears at first to be quite extreme because of the highly partisan appeals to wedge issues (e.g., religion, sexuality, morality, gun rights/control, etc.) However, if you scratch the surface, you find a two party system that represents almost identical economic and political interests and an extremely narrow political spectrum. While in Europe, voters have the ability to vote for candidates along a spectrum that runs from fascist to communist, the only electable choices are the most centrist candidates within two centrist parties.
At the same time, the American public is, on the one hand, mainly focused on bread and butter issues that affect their families (unless stirred up by political interests) and at the same time are open to a wider spectrum of opinion.
I used the example of health care on the initial thread, so here's another one - immigration. In the last Presidential election, we had two candidates (Obama and McCain) who had identical policies on immigration: the guest worker program with a variety of amnesty options. However, the spectrum of opinion among the American public extends all the way from people who would like to deport about 12 million undocumented aliens currently living in the country all the way to people such as me who are in favor of completely open borders. Those on the right vote for reactionaries such as Tancredo while those of us on the left vote for Kucinich or Nader - both equally futile efforts given the "winner takes all" nature of American politics. We're essentially disenfranchised.
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