It seems like deja vu all over again. Remember in 2011 when the Congress squabbled about the debt ceiling? At least back then, Congress passed a budget resolution so that the Government didn’t shut down. But, the shenanigans resulted in a downgrade of the Government’s credit rating and increased the government borrowing costs by an estimated $1.3 billion. Now, Congress is at it again, and the animosity seems even worse this time.
All this caused me to start thinking that our political system is about to self-destruct. The decisiveness in Congress seems exceptionally extreme and outside the norm. Really, you would allow the Government to default on its debts just to gain some political advantage? I begin to believe that the inability of Congress to function had reached an unprecedented level.
Then, I had an argument with myself that went something like this: Congress has always been like this. It just seems worse now for a variety of reasons. What about in the early days of the Republic when members of Congress yelled at one another, called one another names, etc. History might show that what we are experiencing now is just a little blip but not outside the overall pattern of political discourse (or lack thereof) that is characteristic of our Nation’s political system .
However, I couldn’t convince myself that the situation is ‘normal’. I’m not a historian, and although I ain’t old, I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve never seen it this bad. So, I sought additional evidence about the situation. I found a book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism”. The book doesn’t really conclude that the situation is worse than it’s ever been, but as the title suggests, it is worse than it looks, and to me it looks pretty bad.
I recommend this book; it provides some prospective of what’s been happening these days.
The authors, Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, are scholarly types with PhD’s from the University of Michigan. Mann works at the Brookings Institute (left leaning) and Ornstein is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (right leaning). Because they don’t really share the same political views, I thought their book would provide a somewhat balanced view of the current political situation.
To me the divisiveness of Congress seems to be caused mostly by the far right wing of the Republican party, such as those who are allied with the Tea Party conservatives. Mann and Ornstein agree and concluded that the Republican Party has become,
an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
The vitriolic political rhetoric seems exacerbated by constant barrage of inflammatory talk we hear on TV, radio, and through the social media. And the king of inflammatory “news” is Fox News. I don’t watch Fox News, but it quite easy to hear about frequent reports of outlandish statements, distortions and extremely partisan rhetoric that emanates from Fox News. There is little question that Fox News has a great business model, as pointed out by Mann and Ornstein:
In 2010, Fox News returned a net profit of $700 million, more than the profits of the three network news division combined, and one-fifth of Newscorp’s total profits, despite the fact that Fox nightly news shows get around two million viewers, compared to the twenty million combined for the three network nightly newscasts.
The Fox business model is based on securing and maintaining a loyal audience of conservatives eager to hear the same message presented in different ways by different hosts over and over again.
For viewers, there is reinforcement that the only dialogue in the country is between polarized left and right, and that the alternative is cynical public relations with no convictions at all. The new business models and audiences are challenging the old notion that Americans can share a common set of facts and then debate options.
Pew Research Center studies have found that the audiences for Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are sharply different with it comes to partisan identity and ideology. Another survey also noted differences between Fox viewers and the general public on attitudes and facts: “When compared again the general population, Fox News viewers are significantly less likely to believe that [President] Obama was born in the US, and that one of the most important problems facing the US is leadership….Fox viewers are significantly less optimistic about the country’s direction.” There is little doubt that Fox News is at least partly responsible for the asymmetric polarization that is now such a prominent feature of U.S. politics. (My emphasis).
The Republicans seems extremely unified in their opposition to President Obama. Anything that President Obama is for, the Republicans seem to be against. Mann and Ornstein agree with this assessment and provide an example of this behavior. In 2010 a resolution was brought before the Senate to create a deficit-reduction task force to provide ways to solve the Nation’s debt problem. The resolution was co-authored by a Democrat and a Republican and had substantial bipartisan support. However, the Senate blocked the resolution because only 53 members voted for it, not the necessary 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Opposition to the resolution included 2 Republicans (John McCain and Mitch McConnell) who spoke in favor of the bill, and 6 others who were co-sponsors. Why? Mann and Ornstein explained:
Never before have cosponsors of a major bill conspired to kill their own idea, in an almost Alice-in-Wonderland fashion. Why did they do so? Because President Obama was for it, and its passage might gain him political credit.
Another observation I’ve made about the political discourse in the country relates to viral emails about political topics. Almost all of the these emails (and I have received quite enough of them to provide a sample size big enough for me to make generalizations), are mean-spirited, filled with exaggerations and outright lies, and are seemingly devoid of rational thought. I have been kind of puzzled that all of these emails come from my conservative friends and all take a far, far right political view and are aimed at maligning the Democrats, President Obama, or anyone on other side of the political spectrum. I don’t believe I have ever received such an email from one of my left-wing friends. I occasionally reply to some of the emails with a link to Snopes or a fact-checking website that debunks the essence of the email. My experience has been that even if you point out to some folks that the email they just forwarded is full of lies, they are unabashed. For example, one of my high school classmates said, after I had questioned one the emails she forwarded to me, “I don’t believe anything that Snopes says anymore.” Really! I suppose the truth doesn’t matter.
Pardon me, but I will make another generalization, which, as I said before, is based on a fairly large sample size. Folks who forward inflammatory emails are not interested in the truth. Otherwise, they would take a few seconds to Google the subject and learn what might be true. I believe they only want to advance their own version of reality, even if it is based on lies. This is disturbing to me, because I don’t think the folks who send me e-mails full of lies, are liars. Yet, they are quite willing to perpetuate lies by forwarding e-mails full of made-up garbage.
Mann and Ornstein confirm my observations.
Viral e-mails and word-of-mouth campaigns are expanding sharply, mostly aimed at false facts about political adversaries. As the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi notes in a article titled, “The e-mail rumor mill is run by conservatives,” they are overwhelming coming from the right and are aimed at President Obama and other liberals—and they are powerful:
Grass roots whisper campaigns such as these predate the invention of the “send” button, of course. No one needed a Facebook page or an e-mail account to spread the work about Thomas Jefferson’s secret love child or Grover Cleveland’s out-of-wedlock offspring (both won elections despite the stories, which in Jefferson’s case were very likely true).
But it has become a truism that in their modern, Internet-driven form, these persistent narratives spread far faster and run deeper than ever. And they share an unexpected trait: Most of the time, Democrats (or liberals) are the ones under attack. Yes, George W. Bush had some whoppers told about him—such as his alleged scoffing that the French “don’t have a word for ‘entrepreneur’”–but when it comes to generating and sustaining specious and shocking stories, there’s no contest. The majority of the junk comes from the right, aimed at the left.
We’re not talking here about verifiable inaccurate statements from the mouths of politicians and party leaders. There’s plenty of that from all sides. And almost all of those statements are out in the open, where they get called out relatively quickly by the opposition of the mainstream media.
Instead, it’s the sub rosa campaigns of vilification, the can-you-believe-this beauts that land periodically in your inbox from a trusted friend or relative amid the noise of every political season.
This sort of buzz occurs out of earshot of the news media. It gains rapid and broad circulation by being passed from hand to hand, from friend to relative to co-worker. Its power and credibility come from its source…
Of the 79 chain e-mails about national politics deemed false by PolitiFact since 2007, only four were aimed at Republicans. Almost all the rest concern Obama or other Democrats. The claims range from daffy (the White House renaming Christmas trees as “holiday trees”) to serious (the health-care law granting all illegal immigrants free care).
The impact of all this is to reinforce tribal divisions, while enhancing a climate where facts are no longer driving debate and deliberation, nor are they shared by the larger public.
Mann and Ornstein are somewhat optimistic (more so than I) that politics will improve given enough time, and they provide some suggestions for voters:
- Punish a party for ideological extremism by voting against it. (Today, that means the GOP.) It is a surefire way to bring the party back into the political mainstream.
- Promote the essential norms of the republican form of government (respect for opposing views, acceptance of the opposition party’s legitimacy, bargaining, and compromise) by demanding that elected representatives and their parties adhere to the norms and punishing those who don’t.
- Consider carefully which presidential ticket (the candidates, party, and platform) you prefer to lead the country. Then entrust that party with the majority in the House and Senate. It makes more sense than divided government in these times of partisan polarization.
- Challenge the legitimacy of Senate filibuster and holds. The framers of the Constitution had no such devices in mind. A vocal backlash against obstructionism by the minority will do much to overcome gridlock and permit those in government to work more effectively and responsively. Filibusters and hold are not just arcane rules; they undermine the legislative process and make government less effective.
- Finally, beware of nonprofit political groups bearing independent presidential candidates and balanced, centrists tickets. Americans hate political parties in general but the parties are essential vehicles to represent their values and views and to give direction and purpose to government. A democracy cannot float above politics; politics—and parties—are critical components of our democratic DNA.
So, it’s worse than it looks, and may be worse than it has ever been. In fact, it seems like it is so bad that the only way to go from here is up. Mann and Ornstein conclude that the political extremism that inhibits Congress from solving our Nation’s problems comes mostly from the right—the Republicans. Maybe things will get better. But, probably not until some of the Republican extremists are voted out of office.
