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With the recent elections and the clash of the new Democratic majority against President George W. Bush, American politics seem to be ever polarizing. But is America really as polarized as all the political pundits claim? This very issue was addressed in a panel discussion last Thursday by a distinguished group of political science scholars from some of the top institutions in the nation.
The panel was comprised of William Galston, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy; Hahnie Hahn, assistant professor of social science in the department of political science at Wellesley College; Alan Wolfe, Boston College political science professor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life; and Marc Landy, another BC political science professor and American politics expert.
The panel, addressing an eager audience of about 40, discussed the causes of the widening gulf between red and blue states and commented on how deep they believed this polarization had truly become.
Galston began the discussion by defining political polarization as "a drift away from the center and towards the extreme." He drew particular attention to the great divide in America particularly over foreign policy, citing a Pew Research Center survey that asked Americans to express approval or disapproval of the statement "American is a force for good in the world." Fewer than 20 percent of democrats agreed with the statement that compared to just over 50 percent of Republicans.
Galson classified both President Bush and the Iraq War as extremely polarizing and further qualified his comments to include a bold declaration that the current war in Iraq is "the most polarizing issue since the Civil War."
This trend stands in stark contrast to the political climate of the mid 20th century, Galson remarked, when Republicans recognized the necessity of government involvement in the economy, formally a Democratic platform.
In fact, the parties were so similar that a group of students reading the transcripts from the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates had great difficulty in deducting who had said what.
Galson noted, however, that such unanimity is scarcely observed today. "In my adult lifetime, I have never seen such a profound weakening of a shared framework of assumptions about the way the world works," he said. Such polarization has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, polarization offers America more choices, and makes for a more intelligible and accountable political environment. On the other hand, it also tends to erode public trust.
Hahn attempted to place this growing trend of polarization in its historical context. She too drew attention to the latter half of the 20th century as a period of unusual bipartisanship, asserting that it is this preceding period which is the real historical anomaly.
Politics have always been polarizing, Hahn claimed, ever since the time when politicians settled their disagreements over duels and party platforms.She drew a parallel between the political polarization at the turn of the 20th century and polarization today. The divide appears to be over similar issues, whether it be transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial economy or from an industrial economy to a globalized, computerized information economy.
In each era, there were also profound differences among parties as to what America's role in the world should be, in light of 20th century American expansion or the post-Sept. 11 War on Terror.
Hahn observed that this increase in polarization seems to have coincided with an increase in participation. People are choosing to get involved in politics through partisan media and rallying for single-issue groups, both of which tend to come from the extreme wings of the two parties.
"Even though people dislike the 'talking head' shows, they still find them interesting," she said, referring to a study examining America's response to polarized media.
Both Wolfe and Landy, however, approached the issue from a religious perspective. Wolfe drew attention to the recently formed alliance between all conservative religious sects, a kind of unity not found among the liberal religious community. Still, relations among religious sects in the latter half of the 20th century were far from cordial.
Wolfe took the opportunity to remind the audience that just after the ruling was handed down on Roe v. Wade, Southern Baptists came out in favor of the court's decision, perhaps because Catholic leadership had come out vehemently against it.
Ten years later, however, Baptists had changed their position and lined up alongside Catholics on the anti-abortion side of the abortion debate.
He also commented on the dangerous implications of politicization of religion, questioning the true meaning of one's faith if it must be qualified by and judged upon a certain political stance.
Landy noted the interesting irony of conservative evangelicals. Though the moral creed of evangelicals is quite conservative, the methods of evangelicals are quite the opposite.
"There's nothing less conservative than born-again Christianity," said Landy, referring to the radical methods of conversion that were popularized during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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