Stephen B. Young, The Daily Record Newswire
The big news about the election is that there was — deep down — no news. It was the same old, same old. The American people are divided, seriously divided, and the election just confirmed this.
President Barack Obama won re-election, but not with an optimistic campaign of hope and change and bringing us together. He barely edged out Gov. Mitt Romney in many swing states, and Romney, like Al Gore in 2000, did very well in the popular vote, putting a damper on Obama’s success.
The election as run by both presidential campaigns has left us in the oozing mire of polarization, division, and deadlock in governance.
The division is deep; we disagree over who we are as a people, not over superficial preferences about issues. We are divided between two different visions of America, and a house so divided cannot long stand.
The sad news in all this is that in a profound sense, nobody won in the election, and America lost in the solidification of our division into Red and Blue. Winning by a narrow margin and having to govern a divided culture is not a good kind of victory. It was a credible tactical success for the Obama team but not a strategic advance for the country.
Actually, we Americans are divided three ways: Roughly one-third of us align with an exceptional America, a “City Upon a Hill” that sees itself as a world leader in values and righteousness; one-third of us align with a more ordinary America that demands less of its people and more of its government; and one-third of us are not comfortable personally aligning with either of those identities.
But in a national election like this one, the one-third who are unaligned have trouble choosing between the two rival dreams of what America should be. Unable to get traction for their point of view, they must choose one vision over the other.
We are in the middle of a national identity crisis in which particular issues — gay rights, taxes, debt, illegal immigration, abortions, foreign policy — are actually metaphors for what we should be as a country. Positions on issues reflect an underlying choice as to our identity.
The Republican vision of America is the traditional one, descending from the Puritans, solidified by Lincoln in the Civil War and centering on a proud patriotism that calls on Americans to be heroic and steadfast. It is the America that honors self-reliance put into a work ethic. It is the home environment for whites in particular.
The Democratic vision of America belittles and in many ways stridently rejects the premises of the Red America. Blue America is a coalition of special interests and outsiders to the tradition — minorities — who expect the country to be there for them. It puts government at center stage as an equalizer of social disparities and a provider of opportunity; it does not call on individuals to be the masters of their fates. The buzz words for Blue America are “entitlements,” “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” all reflecting an America that embraces deviance from the norms of Puritan rectitude. Blue America is more interest-based in its values than is Red America, which looks to a single set of moral principles as the core of national identity.
Red America rallies behind slogans of less government and low taxes; Blue America’s sloganeering is of the opposite sort: It wants activist government and higher taxes, mostly on the wealthy. Behind the policy slogans are identities held by people. Red identities privilege the individual and the private sector; Blue identities privilege subgroup status and the need to be protected by government interventions.
We argue over policies of small or big government, over taxes and health care, but behind our arguments lie the primordial power of how we identify our personalities.
Red America is more parochial and Blue America is more cosmopolitan. Red America’s nationalism is more jingoistic and bellicose; Blue America’s nationalism is more idealistic, caught up with concern for human rights and staying in synch with international opinion.
Identity differences are hard, perhaps impossible, to compromise. They are the powerful psychological forces that drive religious wars and ethnic conflicts. They are deeper and more pervasive within us individually than issues are. Identities, in addition, tie us to others in community; they anchor us socially and culturally and give us important security as persons. Identities give ideologies their terrible power to mobilize militants to rise up against those who are seen as the “other,” as incapable of validating our sense of self and therefore a threat to be treated without compromise or mercy.
Generally speaking, issues can be compromised; identities can’t. Until the culture war broke out among baby boomers in the 1970s, Americans could reasonably well compromise their differences over issues — with the exception of slavery — within a more comprehensive shared sense of what American stood for, what its core dream was.
The emergence and rise of the Blue identity has taken decades. Republican insensitivity, narrow-mindedness and cultural rigidity in expanding its appeal to nonwhites contributed in great measure to the success Democrats have had in winning solid support for the Blue stance on American goodness.
If Red Americanism has its base among whites and Blue America has its base among minorities and liberal whites, the demographic shift in who we are as Americans is away from a white majority. Thus, the future of the Republican party will be one defeat after another at the national level unless it reforms its politics of American identity.
Blue identity arose as a challenge to and rebuke of traditional Americanism, which was criticized as too exclusive and too demanding. In defending the old verities of what George Washington called the “experiment entrusted to the American people,” the Red vision of America grew too defensive and insufficiently engaging of immigrants, other minorities, the young and those who are too vulnerable to failures of free markets. Stridency and self-righteous prudishness — intolerance and a tin ear on social issues — were given too big a role in the politics chosen by the Republican base to defend traditional Americanism.
Tradition is usually on the defensive as cultures modernize. Advocates of Red Americanism are somewhat the defendant in our culture war, having to fend off criticisms and demands for new values around families and sexuality and government entitlements. But being on the defense does not mean one has to be exclusively defensive. Reaching out to acknowledge values and beliefs of those who are unsettled about staying with traditional ways is necessary to incorporate them into one’s more traditional vision of what America is and who Americans are.
The presidential election may well have demonstrated that our political leaders are now incapable of resolving our division. They are prisoners of their identities, followers of conventions and stereotypes that animate our emotions about what “good and right-thinking” people are supposed to believe.
This is nothing more than the dominance within both Republican and Democrat parties of the perceived imperative of “playing to the base.” Obama’s team put this tactic into action with its “ground game” of getting out the core vote to “stop” Romney from winning.
Each party’s base voters articulate the core parameters of that party’s vision of American identity. When you play identity politics, you can’t afford to be seen as a trimmer or as a compromiser on any of the symbols that convey identity definition. In such politics, you can’t go after moderates and independents with conviction, as that demands moving away from certainty and dependability as a champion and paladin for your identity group.
In identity politics, the role of a candidate is not to think but to emote, to reinforce a favored character type, to stand by selected verities that legitimate and elevate the group’s identity in its own mind.
Candidates must be “authentic” above all else. They must pass litmus tests. They must be determined and faithful to the faithful.
Identity politics is inherently divisive. The rise of identity politics is not good for America.
I take no comfort from our election that we will easily find a way to overcome our identity politics.
Each side almost won the presidency. The losing Republicans will be loath to seek common ground with our next president, believing that “next time” they can or will win, that they must not lose their base, that they must not submerge their identity in muddled policy compromises. Defeat often works on our souls to harden our hearts with bitterness and so keep us in line with our identity. Defeat can even intensify our dedication to our identity.
The next big news from the election, which is old news, is that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have earned the right to have their version of the American dream adopted by all Americans. Roughly by playing to their respective bases, both parties have marginalized themselves to about one-third each of the American people. By alienating the remaining one-third of the people, both parties have conceded national legitimacy for their core vision of what America means and stands for.
To win real legitimacy, a party must bring over those who are moderate or independent. Or a party must move itself to the middle and recast its vision in terms that are acceptable to independents.
Evidence for this conclusion came during election night as commentator after commentator opined that “It’s a close election,” “It will be a late night,” “We have to wait until the last minute to see how all the votes break one way or another.” It was the moderates and the independents who decided the winner as they split their votes between President Obama and Gov. Romney. In swing states, they broke for Obama after flirting with Romney in the election’s closing days.
Yes, playing to the base can be entertaining, but it is not the way to serve the country.
