This morning I read an excellent article by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic about conservative intellectuals who support Trump. In it, he quotes WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan: "There's a kind of soft French Revolution going on in America, with the angry and blocked beginning to push hard against an oblivious elite." The quote calls to mind images of angry white people at Trump rallies and the Republican National Convention screaming for America to be "great again." But it also calls to mind Bernie Sanders supporters protesting for radical change in American politics, change that would bring about greater equality through a form of socialism that the failed candidate represents. That one candidate failed, and the other is behind in the polls, does not change the fact that something significant is happening at the extremes of the two traditional parties.
We live in a time of relative peace and prosperity (emphasis on the word "relative.") Sure, there have been horrific mass shootings and daily gun violence in American streets, but overall violent crime is down compared with past years, and the alleged insecurity of our borders has not changed that. Our military continues to fight battles in far away lands, but on a smaller scale than in past wars and with all-volunteer forces. Economically the country has steadily added millions of jobs since President Obama took office, and our housing and investment markets have come back from the precipice of the financial crisis. The principal economic problem is one of a growing inequality, but most Americans are better off, if only slightly, than they were seven years ago.
So what is driving the powerful populist movements that propelled Sanders and prop up Trump? I have my own theory that the cause of our bipolar extremism has been the inability of government leaders to compromise, and I lay most of the blame on the intransigence of the Republican leadership in Congress - namely Mitch McConnell, who in 2009 articulated as his first priority making the newly elected Democratic President fail, and the leaders of the Tea Party movement, whose more ambitious agenda was to make government of any kind fail. These are the same forces that drove more moderate Republicans like Ohio representative and Speaker of the House John Boehner out of government, who cared more about making the targets of their cynicism fail than making the nation succeed. The effect of the legislative stalemate sponsored by these leaders has been to eliminate rationality from the legislative process, and to push those who might have been willing to meet their opponents in the middle to the extremes. Picture a balloon, squeezed in the middle - the air is pushed out to both ends. That is what has happened to American democracy.
Democracy without compromise breeds extremism. The right criticizes Obama for being monarchical, using Executive Orders to accomplish what should be accomplished through legislation. But what choice has he really had when Republican legislators refuse to work with him? Recognizing that this Republican Congress rejects compromise of any sort, not simply because they disagree with Democratic policy, but because they are unwilling to support any policy set by this President, the President has had to do promote his agenda and the agenda of those who elected him through other means. This has had at least two effects: first, left to his own devices, he has attempted to enact policies that inevitably are more liberal than they would have been had the Republicans engaged him in a traditional legislative process, and second, he has resorted to a mechanism for enacting his policies that tests the limits of his constitutional powers. (Unlike what I expect the reaction would be of the Republican candidate under similar circumstances, however, President Obama accepts the decisions of the judiciary regarding whether his methods pass constitutional muster.) Republican refusal to engage, in other words, has pushed an already liberal agenda further to the left, and has created the very concerns about the abuse of executive powers that the right decries.
It also has demonstrated to American voters that our government isn't working to solve their problems. It isn't addressing gun violence, growing economic disparity, racial injustice, illegal immigration, or a host of other issues that cry out for solutions. Sanders supporters saw in their candidate the political revolutionary who was prepared to tackle the tough issues (although they seemed unconcerned with understanding how he would push his extreme agenda through a Republican-controlled Congress). Trump supporters see in their candidate the reactionary who will protect them from America's growing liberalism and restore American security and prosperity to that of an imagined past. Each of these movements was made possible by legislative gridlock of Republican design, which eschewed compromise in addressing voters' concerns and created the conditions for an increasingly frustrated populace to look elsewhere for salvation.
I hope that America's political leaders on both sides have learned from this experience, and that it is not too late. If some semblance of political stability can be restored after November's elections, both parties would be well served to engage in critical self-reflection to better understand their roles in allowing political extremism to flourish. And they should pursue a new era of engagement and compromise, recognizing that this is a diverse nation with equally diverse demands, and that the most effective way to meet those demands is by working together, perhaps not always agreeing on the "best" solutions, but more often arriving at the "least worst" solutions to our common problems. A continued failure to engage and compromise with one's political opponents will only allow American discontent to fester, and will threaten the established political parties with the potential for future hijackings, like the one that this time around has weakened the Democratic candidate and very nearly destroyed the Republican party.
We live in a time of relative peace and prosperity (emphasis on the word "relative.") Sure, there have been horrific mass shootings and daily gun violence in American streets, but overall violent crime is down compared with past years, and the alleged insecurity of our borders has not changed that. Our military continues to fight battles in far away lands, but on a smaller scale than in past wars and with all-volunteer forces. Economically the country has steadily added millions of jobs since President Obama took office, and our housing and investment markets have come back from the precipice of the financial crisis. The principal economic problem is one of a growing inequality, but most Americans are better off, if only slightly, than they were seven years ago.
So what is driving the powerful populist movements that propelled Sanders and prop up Trump? I have my own theory that the cause of our bipolar extremism has been the inability of government leaders to compromise, and I lay most of the blame on the intransigence of the Republican leadership in Congress - namely Mitch McConnell, who in 2009 articulated as his first priority making the newly elected Democratic President fail, and the leaders of the Tea Party movement, whose more ambitious agenda was to make government of any kind fail. These are the same forces that drove more moderate Republicans like Ohio representative and Speaker of the House John Boehner out of government, who cared more about making the targets of their cynicism fail than making the nation succeed. The effect of the legislative stalemate sponsored by these leaders has been to eliminate rationality from the legislative process, and to push those who might have been willing to meet their opponents in the middle to the extremes. Picture a balloon, squeezed in the middle - the air is pushed out to both ends. That is what has happened to American democracy.
Democracy without compromise breeds extremism. The right criticizes Obama for being monarchical, using Executive Orders to accomplish what should be accomplished through legislation. But what choice has he really had when Republican legislators refuse to work with him? Recognizing that this Republican Congress rejects compromise of any sort, not simply because they disagree with Democratic policy, but because they are unwilling to support any policy set by this President, the President has had to do promote his agenda and the agenda of those who elected him through other means. This has had at least two effects: first, left to his own devices, he has attempted to enact policies that inevitably are more liberal than they would have been had the Republicans engaged him in a traditional legislative process, and second, he has resorted to a mechanism for enacting his policies that tests the limits of his constitutional powers. (Unlike what I expect the reaction would be of the Republican candidate under similar circumstances, however, President Obama accepts the decisions of the judiciary regarding whether his methods pass constitutional muster.) Republican refusal to engage, in other words, has pushed an already liberal agenda further to the left, and has created the very concerns about the abuse of executive powers that the right decries.
It also has demonstrated to American voters that our government isn't working to solve their problems. It isn't addressing gun violence, growing economic disparity, racial injustice, illegal immigration, or a host of other issues that cry out for solutions. Sanders supporters saw in their candidate the political revolutionary who was prepared to tackle the tough issues (although they seemed unconcerned with understanding how he would push his extreme agenda through a Republican-controlled Congress). Trump supporters see in their candidate the reactionary who will protect them from America's growing liberalism and restore American security and prosperity to that of an imagined past. Each of these movements was made possible by legislative gridlock of Republican design, which eschewed compromise in addressing voters' concerns and created the conditions for an increasingly frustrated populace to look elsewhere for salvation.
I hope that America's political leaders on both sides have learned from this experience, and that it is not too late. If some semblance of political stability can be restored after November's elections, both parties would be well served to engage in critical self-reflection to better understand their roles in allowing political extremism to flourish. And they should pursue a new era of engagement and compromise, recognizing that this is a diverse nation with equally diverse demands, and that the most effective way to meet those demands is by working together, perhaps not always agreeing on the "best" solutions, but more often arriving at the "least worst" solutions to our common problems. A continued failure to engage and compromise with one's political opponents will only allow American discontent to fester, and will threaten the established political parties with the potential for future hijackings, like the one that this time around has weakened the Democratic candidate and very nearly destroyed the Republican party.
Comments
Post a Comment