Polarisation in US politics

Tuesday, 04/09/2012

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POLITICAL polarisation in the United States is at an all-time high and partisan divisions in the country now cut across a range of issues affecting the American people. As the country faces a host of socio-economic challenges that deserve critical attention of US lawmakers and unstinting cooperation between the White House and the Capitol Hill, the prevailing political atmosphere in Washington DC does not seem able to ensure any of that. The Republicans and the Democrats hold entirely different ideological views and stand on opposite poles concerning some of the most pressing issues affecting the country.

Since the financial meltdown starting in 2008, America is having the slowest recovery since the Great Depression of the 1930s and sharp differences persist between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on how to bring the country’s economy back on track. The Bush-era tax cuts will expire by the end of this year, bringing forth what is being called the “fiscal cliff”. Unavoidable spending cuts will require a reform of America’s fiscal management. With the unemployment rate in the country remaining constant at over 8 per cent, there is an overall sense of pessimism over the disharmony and non-cooperation between the two major political parties and between the government and the Congress. A general feeling seems to pervade that political elites in Washington are geared rather more towards political one-upmanship than towards the task of problems which demand a consensual and cooperative approach.

A gridlock over critical socio-economic issues like healthcare, jobs, social safety nets, and the imminent debt-ceiling continues to trump any chance of a compromise, yielding little to look forward to in the days to come. Regardless of whether Romney wins the Presidency or Obama gets a second term, fiscal problems and issues of debt management will dominate in the coming four years. A lot will depend on the power relationship between the White House and the Congress and, at this juncture, it is impossible to predict the political complexion of the next Congress as 2012 is also a year of Congressional elections.

There is only one certainty: Politics in America is polarised and more partisan than ever before, and that is not a situation for good policy-making. Compromises between the two parties are important for arriving at deals vital for the governance of the country and moderates in both parties have had a big role to play there. But more Republicans are now calling themselves conservatives, and more Democrats, though relatively fewer in comparison with the Republicans, are calling themselves liberals, and the ‘middle’ in American politics is getting slowly poisoned. The decreasing space for moderates in both parties is giving fodder to more disagreements and diminishing consensus in policy-making.

According to opinion polls by respected organisations like the Pew Research Center and Gallup, polarisation along ideological lines has reached an all-time high in the last decade during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Apart from appealing to undecided voters, the on-going electoral campaign is even more about the candidates keeping their traditional support bases secured and getting their stories right to appeal to their core voters in Red or Blue states.

In fact, a Gallup poll early this year showed how far the two main political parties have diverged in their views as to how America should be governed. An average of 80 per cent of Democrats approved Obama’s job performance while only 12 per cent of Republicans approved of the same. The rise of the Tea Party Movement, which wants a radical curtailing of the federal government’s role and desires reduced taxes, has pushed the Republican Party further to the right, increasing the influence of the conservatives within the party and sidelining those with moderate views. The traditional bases within both the Republican and Democratic parties have been critical of their respective parties not living up to their core ideals, thus increasing the incentives for members in adopting extreme positions.

Polarisation is also being accentuated by aggressive lobby groups, Political Action Committees, campaign fund-raisers and a media that has its own biases. Huge sums of money are being spent on campaign ads, many of which have been declared highly negative and distasteful. Moreover, uncompromising stands on basic beliefs and values across different levels of state and national politics create a logjam over contentious issues. Steep differences continue to freeze policy-making regarding the scope and role of the federal government, management of the economy, social safety nets and healthcare, etc.

The rising income inequality in the United States has given birth to a potent debate over the issue of equal opportunities in the country. The “rich vs the rest” debate has given rise to even more partisan bickering over tax cuts. There are basic divergences between the Republicans and the Democrats as to how far the American government should go to care for the needy who are not able to fend for themselves. The Republican Party sees such a role for the government as going against the American ideals of individualism and self-reliance. While both parties have become more homogeneous and are increasingly being taken over by their respective Conservative and Liberal cores, an increasing number of voters are calling themselves Independents. But this does not tell the whole story as many of the so-called Independent voters are actually found leaning towards one or the other of the two main parties, thus accentuating the polarising process. Further, polls taken by Gallup and NBC News and the Wall Street Journal sh

ow a minimal number of undecided voters, and both the Obama and Romney campaigns seem to be of the view that they have more to gain by cementing their traditional hardcore voter bases.

Many American analysts are saying that the increasing polarisation and the resultant gridlock in Washington DC are at the centre of America’s dysfunctional politics. Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently opined that “…. this dysfunction is worse than we have ever seen …., and it is not limited to Capitol Hill. The partisan and ideological polarisation from which we now suffer comes at a time when critical problems cry out for a resolution, making for a particularly toxic mix.”