Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wal-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
—Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist
MOST OF THE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS, EDITORS, AND REPORTERS who cover modern politics have never worked in anything other than a polarized environment. Most of the older reporters, who at least experienced periods of conciliation and comity, are retiring or have died. It is a cliché, but no less true, that conflict sells, and if harmony broke out, newspaper sales would drop and ratings, especially on cable TV, would decline sharply. Both of us have been called by TV bookers and then rejected because our views were not extreme enough. The networks think people will watch only if they are guaranteed a verbal smack-down.
Why? Because conflict brings ratings; and ratings bring profits. Those profits provide cable television and talk radio personalities with salaries that are among the highest of any profession. Keeping those big salaries is dependent on maintaining good ratings. If conflict ensures ratings success, and ratings success ensures a good income, then on-air talent will provoke all the controversy they can. It is a vicious cycle. Some media outlets, especially talk radio, were created almost entirely for the purpose of exploiting political polarization.
The right argues that conservative talk radio was a response to big media shutting out conservative views and values. Conservatives have a range of programming options today that were not available a decade ago. They can bypass the big media and go to conservative media outlets where their beliefs are being heard and “getting through” what they believe to be a liberal media filter.
This backlash has had many upsides for conservatives, but the one downside is that many people never have to consider any ideas but their own. They can tune in and listen only to what they already believe. It might be argued they get the “other side” in the mainstream media (Rush Limbaugh calls it the “drive-by media”), but most conservatives do not trust what they hear from the mainstream network newscasts between “good evening” and “good night.”
The left argues that conservatives have used the so-called liberal bias of the mainstream media as a flimsy rationale for the proliferation of alternative conservative media outlets. They are convinced that the right creates allegations of bias merely as a marketing tool to attract an audience. In some cases that is true, but the success of conservative media formats indicates that a substantial market exists for the product it is selling.
Still, the left believes these outlets are where the real bias exists, and that bias is against the left. Liberals feel outgunned, particularly on talk radio, yet attempts at liberal talk radio formats have met with limited success.
In this contentious environment, political reporting increasingly resembles sports reporting. The focus is on the horse race and the outcome: who won, who lost, and who gets to wield political power. Ideas and thoughtful, reasoned analysis have virtually disappeared. Yes, PBS still engages in lengthy debate and discussion on important subjects, but most conservatives believe PBS tilts left, so few watch.
Increasingly, the Internet is the source for political “news” for polarizers on both the right and left. The proliferation of politically oriented blogs and websites has been enormous, and millions surf them for political information. Most mainstream media organizations (many of which initially hated to recognize the potential of the Internet) have now invested millions on web pages of their own. Newspapers, especially, which have suffered a substantial loss in daily readership, have turned to the Internet to regain readers and advertisers. A growing number of “net-only” newspapers and magazines have followed the pioneering Internet magazine Slate.
Many TV and radio pundits, including Arianna Huffington on the left and Ann Coulter on the right, have used their exposure to launch successful websites. Most talk radio and cable-TV political hosts use their web pages to blog and simulcast their shows. Every legitimate candidate for president (and most other political offices) has a web page that provides a daily blog; most with streaming video content. But the greatest impact from the Internet on political news and commentary is coming from daily blogs written and produced by people who never had exposure in either broadcast or print. Their sites are highly partisan, with endless polarizing commentary and chat. Younger people, especially, now go to the net for virtually all their political information.
The impact of the Internet on politics is growing exponentially, but not always in favorable ways. Balanced, nonpartisan, nonpolarizing sites on the net are few and far between. Newsweek, Time, the big-four networks, and prominent daily newspapers will argue that their sites are balanced and their news impartial. But for political junkies, partisan extremists, and other polarizing communities, mainstream media outlets are not their first (or even last) stop for political information. Conversely, the left and right blogs are rarely visited by impartial, undecided voters, and certainly not by each other. These sites often portray themselves as news sources, but are in fact forums with partisan editorial views.
The “news” components of these sites are the most troubling. Bloggers on the net are not subject to editorial review, nor are they subjected to any form of fact-checking procedures to ensure the accuracy of the daily information they provide. This leads invariably to abuse of the Internet by polarizers and their followers. News is presented as fact, and the viewer simply accepts the content as factual. Generally, visitors to these various sites are not looking for fair reporting, but rather political information from sources whose political philosophy they share. It is unlikely that many liberals visit Rush Limbaugh’s site; the same with conservatives’ rare visit to the Huffington Post.
Polarizers, who can say whatever they want, dominate the Internet in contemporary politics. Many produce nonstop and usually unsubstantiated rumors. The good news is that the Internet audience for political information, though growing, is not the source for political information for the vast majority of voters. The bad news is that this vast number of polarized sites encourages more polarization. The result is sort of a “polarizer’s gas station.” It is where people on the right and left go to get their minds filled and fine-tuned with whatever polarizing agenda the sites are presenting, and when they leave they are primed for battle.
The Money Changers
Unlike the younger operatives who run the day-to-day campaign operations, political fund-raisers tend to be older people with successful careers. They have large networks of friends and associates, which provide a built-in source for political contributions. Many have had the experience of raising money in a more civil political climate before polarization infected politics. Most will admit that raising campaign money is much easier in a polarized climate.
That is the dirty little secret about the role polarization has played in the massive increase in campaign contributions over the last two decades. Money is easier to solicit with a negative approach to the other candidate. Absent a strong negative, it is more difficult to raise money for a candidate who runs a positive campaign, and has only an optimistic vision and positive agenda. Polarization allows fund-raisers to play off fear, and fear in politics is a mighty motivator.
According to the Federal Election Commission, the 2006 midterm elections broke all records for political contributions for a non-presidential election. When it began to look like the Democrats could win the House, the money poured into Republican and Democratic campaign committees. The business community, which had enjoyed twelve years of support from a Republican House, raised millions to protect the GOP majority.
It wasn’t a tough sell. The possibility that the next chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee could be the liberal, African-American Charlie Rangel from Harlem, and not the big-business-loving Bill Thomas of California, sent shivers up the spines of corporate America. When the Senate suddenly came into play in October, big-business lobbyists couldn’t get their checkbooks out fast enough. When asked about the fear factor, one prominent fund-raiser told us bluntly, “Fear is a wonderful thing.”
But if you think the Democrats raised money in 2006 from a wellspring of hopeful anticipation, and not fear, you’d be wrong. Every union, liberal-issue group, environmental organization, and New York and Hollywood deep-pocket liberal, not to mention thousands of trial lawyers, got the same message: “If we don’t win it now, we’ll be shut out for at least another decade.” Fear is a wonderful thing in the political fund-raising business.
Fund-raising for the party in power (and incumbents in general) has become a “protection racket,” right out of the organized-crime handbook: “Give me money and I’ll protect you from the guys who want to ruin your business.” For the party out of power (and challengers in general), fund-raising has taken a page from the military manual on successful guerrilla warfare. In a year like 2006, the fund-raising message for Democrats was the equivalent of “Give me resources while they’re weak, and we can attack before they regroup.”
Even today’s social life in Washington divides along partisan lines. Social occasions (as we shall discuss further) once provided civil settings for discussion and the building of consensus between political opponents. Now people patronize the fancy restaurants or bars that cater to their fellow liberals or conservatives. Call it political segregation. At the dinner parties that remain in Washington, hosts generally avoid inviting people with clashing viewpoints for fear the china might be broken.
Polarization has infected every aspect of politics from press coverage, to fund-raising, to where politicians eat. The goal of polarizers is to make these changes permanent. The key to realizing that goal is to sell the notion that polarization is ubiquitous and ingrained in the body politic. To make that sale, polarizers have relied heavily on two myths, and they have done a masterful job of selling both. As former members of the polarizing sales force, we want to break down the sales pitch for you.
Myth One: Red State/Blue State This!
Let me raise a red flag about the “red and blue states,” which is the reigning theory of U.S. politics. All those blue states (heavily urban and mainly on the East and West coasts) voted for Al Gore. The red states (more rural, Southern and Western) voted for George Bush. Presto, the map defines us. We’re a country geographically “polarized” by values and lifestyles. This is a masterful explanation for the increasing nastiness of politics, with only one big drawback. It’s wrong.
If the country were more polarized, you’d expect to find it in the polls. You don’t. After scouring surveys, sociologist Paul DiMaggio of Princeton University concluded: “the public actually has become more unified in attitudes toward race, gender and crime since the 1970s.” One standard poll item asks respondents to react to this statement: “I don’t have much in common with people of other races.” In 1987, 23 percent agreed; by 2002, only 15 percent did. Of course, strong disagreements (on abortion, for instance) remain. But these disguise large areas of consensus (80 percent of Americans regularly support environmental regulation). What’s even more absurd is the idea that regions have—after jet travel, interstate highways, air conditioning, TV and mass migration—become more different. Texas and New York have more in common now than in 1961.
—Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
During presidential elections extending back to the 1988 contest between Michael Dukakis and George H. W. Bush, all visual media coverage has used the same color coding to illustrate which presidential candidate had won a state’s electoral votes—red for states captured by the Republican candidate and blue for states won by the Democratic candidate. The imagery quickly became the standard not only for characterizing how states vote for presidential candidates but for defining the politics and values of the entire state.
Red state/blue state has become a widely used stereotype for our political differences. To characterize an entire state as Republican or Democrat based on the popular vote for a presidential candidate (giving the state’s entire electoral vote to one candidate) is absurd. Perhaps the media’s intent was to limit the color designation to presidential races. If so, and we doubt it, they failed miserably. What they did accomplish was to provide a visual image that produced a public relations windfall for polarizers.
Once tagged red or blue, a state inherits the simplistic definition associated with the two colors. Depending on which side you talk to, people in “blue states” have loose moral values, while those in “red states” promote family values; or the “red state” mentality is intolerant and mean-spirited, while the “blue state” mind-set is intellectually tolerant. Therein lies the problem. As a political theory, the red/blue division, at least among average Americans, is largely a myth. Life is complicated; the political philosophies, morals, and ethical standards of real people are just not that black and white (or red and blue for that matter).
Ohio is a prime example of this flawed labeling. Because it voted for the Republican presidential candidate in several election cycles, Ohio has inherited a “red state” designation, and thus, to the casual observer of politics, it is presumed to be a solid Republican state. The red color of presidential politics allows for no distinction between national politics and state and local politics. Even the presidential designation is misleading. In 2004, 49.5 percent of Ohio voters cast ballots for John Kerry, 50.5 percent for George Bush.
The result is that Ohio, an evenly divided state, joins such heavily Republican states as Mississippi, Utah, and Wyoming under the same red designation, and all that it implies. It is irresponsible and laughable that red/blue has become commonplace in America’s political vernacular and is taught as serious political science in many high school civics classes. Not only does Ohio have several Democrats in its congressional delegation, in 2006 it elected a Democratic governor and dumped a Republican incumbent U.S. senator and replaced him with an unabashed liberal. Using a more accurate standard, Ohio should be considered a swing state that is leaning blue.
Nor is Ohio unique. Michigan and Minnesota are considered “blue states.” During the 2004 presidential elections, John Kerry won each state by a 51 to 48 percent margin. That’s fairly weak for states colored all blue. Iowa was designated a red state after voting for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, yet a majority of Iowans voted for the Democrat in the three previous presidential elections. It has a conservative United States senator, Chuck Grassley, yet he serves alongside Tom Harkin, who is among the most liberal in the Senate. In 2006 Iowa elected a Democratic governor, and defeated twenty-two-year Republican House veteran and chairman of the House Banking Committee, Jim Leach. Is Iowa really a red state? Politically bipolar might be a better designation.
The so-called red state of Colorado has two senators who are polar opposites—Wayne Allard, a conservative Republican, and Ken Salazar, a moderate-to-liberal Democrat. In 2004 Bush carried the state 52 to 47 percent, at the same time as Democrats were making gains at the state level. Previously serving senators were William Armstrong, a conservative Republican, and Gary Hart, a liberal Democrat. In 2006 Colorado elected a Democratic governor. How can one paint Colorado a single color?
New Hampshire, the most reliable red state in New England? In 2006 New Hampshire reelected a Democratic governor with 74 percent of the vote, and the New Hampshire legislature became Democratic for the first time in history. Don’t put that paint can away!
What of the bluest of blue cities, New York? The last two mayors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, have been Republicans, though liberal. Blue state? Blue city?
Are such states suffering from voter split personalities, or is it simply that the voters in these states select their leaders based on factors other than the stereotypical labels and perspectives advanced by political extremists and the media?
To the average American, the divisiveness of the red state/blue state theory makes no sense. Most people (whether in red states or in blue states) like their neighbors and their community. They carpool together. Their kids play together. Some of them actually go to the same church together. They realize their state has committed voters in both parties. They also know a voter who is a “blue” in one election might switch to red in the next election. Alternatively, a voter can split his or her ticket, voting for some Democrats and some Republicans.
While they may know neighbors who are members of another party, they are also aware that they all live in the same state and that it takes working together to ensure a quality of life that promotes the common good. What “color” does that make them—purple? It gets a little confusing.
What is the motive behind the promotion of the red/blue divide? How could you take advantage of a network graphic that has turned into a political theory, dividing a nation? How could you further refine the message to get maximum value from it? Conservative Republicans were first to mine the red/blue division with a refining message that was emotional, personal, and threatening, and that resonated with “red” voters. They believed the “values issue”—by which they meant God, abortion, guns, same-sex marriage, bad movies, and worse TV—belonged to them. They saw (and see) themselves as the defenders of the Father Knows Best families, even though according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, “traditional families” have slipped to just under 50 percent of the population.
That government alone, or even government principally, was not responsible for whatever “values” had been lost was a concept Republicans misplaced in their hunger for a base of voters that might lead them to the electoral promised land. They began to paint all who disagreed with them as godless heathens bent on destroying the country only Republicans truly loved. There was no doubt in the minds of GOP extremists that if you opposed a Republican policy, it was the same as being a terrorist because you were in favor of weakening the country. If your neighbor disagreed with you, he was on the “other side,” which often meant he must be working for the devil.
Not to be outdone, liberal Democrats jumped on the “red state” message to rally their base. “Blue state” partisans used the “red” message to underscore the intolerance of extreme conservatives. Theirs was a defensive, but no less polarizing, message. They accused Republicans of being “moral interventionists” who wanted to dictate values and morality. This became a particularly frightening message to the left after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. Polarizers on the left charged that Republican extremists in Congress were trying to legislate morality and deny individual liberties, especially “a woman’s right to choose.”
The irony is that for years conservatives charged that the (then majority) Democrats were “government interventionists.” The right alleged that the Democratic Congress wanted the government to intrude on state and individual rights and, in the process, undermine “traditional” American values.
This is the same thinking that gave birth to the term culture war.
Myth Two: The Culture War
In a speech to the Republican National Convention in Houston on August 17, 1992, Pat Buchanan declared that America was engaged in a culture war. Buchanan was addressing the Republican delegates as an insurgent candidate challenging the incumbent president of the United States, George H. W. Bush. It didn’t take Buchanan long to make his point:
My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.
Buchanan, a controversial character by anyone’s definition, was in his element. He is a long-standing member of the reactionary pundit club. His roles have included White House speechwriter for Richard Nixon, columnist and television commentator, communications director for President Reagan, talk radio host, author of several controversial books, and ardent conservative warrior. For the record, we both know Buchanan, Bob from appearing with him on CNN’s Crossfire, and Cal as a colleague over many years.
The leaders of the Republican Party had not wanted Buchanan on the podium that night. He had already embarrassed President Bush by finishing a strong second to him in the New Hampshire primary. Despite being soundly defeated by Bush in later contests, Buchanan refused to abandon his insurgency before the Houston convention. He had attracted a small but ardent following among social conservatives with his cultural values message. Buchanan was determined to use the national spotlight provided by the convention to proclaim the culture war message to a large television audience.
Never known to shrink from confrontation, Buchanan enjoys a good fight. With his communications background, he also knew that cultural division was an issue that guaranteed controversy and press coverage. We are not suggesting that Buchanan invented the culture war for political purposes. He had been talking about the subject the year before he faced Bush in New Hampshire. Buchanan has told us that one of his inspirations for announcing the culture war was sociologist James Hunter’s 1991 book, Culture Wars. Hunter suggested the cultural divide is so deep in America that actual physical violence was almost certain to break out at any moment. The term caught on as descriptive of a widely held belief among mostly conservative Republicans.
Pat Buchanan didn’t invent the culture war, but he is a firm believer that a war exists and that the stakes are enormous. He is not alone. Millions of political extremists on both the left and the right believe in a culture war and they have enlisted in it. The culture war is primarily being waged over the issues of abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and, more recently, stem-cell research. Because of the prevalence of these issues and the controversy and fervor they have generated, the term was embraced by the press corps, which pursued the story with the ferocity of a pack of lawyers chasing an ambulance.
With its endless potential for controversy, excitement, and political intrigue, “culture wars” makes for good ratings and high interest. The culture war gets covered with as much intensity as Paris Hilton or World War II on the History Channel. It never ends because the media won’t let it end. Politicians from the polarized left and right do not want to see it end either, as long as there are votes and contributions that can be gained by the war. There is one small problem…the so-called culture war is really a small battle, being fought between polarizers on the right and left, while the vast majority of Americans refuse to be involved.
The cultural war is crucial to the proponents of the red state/blue state theory. The conclusion is that Americans are divided along cultural lines, with red states committed to traditional cultural norms, and blue states to tolerance and individual expression. That is simply not true.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: The so-called culture war is being fought on the fringes between ideologues from the right and left. It does not divide the majority of Americans, and it certainly does not divide along state lines.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey on August 3, 2006, about Americans’ attitudes on key cultural and social issues. The study is titled “Pragmatic Americans Liberal and Conservative on Social Issues.” In the summary of its findings, Pew reported, “Americans can not be easily characterized as conservative or liberal on today’s most pressing social issues…the public remains reluctant to move too far from current policies and practices on many key social policy questions. Despite talk of ‘culture wars’ and the high visibility of activist groups on both sides of the cultural divide, there has been no polarization of the public into liberal and conservative camps.”
To Pat Buchanan and his like-minded fellow Americans on the right, this war is serious business. They have come to see the “moral issues” (in addition to those mentioned earlier, they include flag burning, illegal immigration, and keeping “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance) as central to the continued freedom and prosperity of the nation. To their opponents on the left, the stakes are equally grave. They see the culture warriors on the right bent on stripping away their constitutional rights. These include the freedom of individual choice (abortion), lifestyle (gay rights), expression (flag burning), and separation of church and state (school prayer).
The passions among culture warriors are deep and profound. The confrontations are often mean and sometimes violent, both rhetorically and sometimes physically. But these small incidents of violence are not on the scale that Hunter predicted in his book. However small (although if you accept DiMaggio’s 30 percent, there still are millions in the war), they are loud enough to garner endless press and political analysis. And this attention encourages the extremists and their financial supporters to keep the battle going. The extremists on both sides need each other. If one side were to win, the other would go out of business. Success is the great enemy of culture warriors.
One of the more astute warriors in the culture crusade is Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh stokes the fire of resentment in his listeners, attacking liberals who Limbaugh believes are trying to destroy certain virtues that have made America great. That, of course, is not the intent of liberals, but every dog needs a fireplug on which to relieve himself, and Limbaugh sees liberals as that fireplug and himself as that dog.
Rush Limbaugh—the country’s king of talk radio—is a subject on which we disagree. Cal believes Limbaugh is the greatest thing since the Founding Fathers because he gives voice to a significant number of people who have long felt disrespected and disregarded by the elite. Cal also believes that Limbaugh simply comments on what liberals say and do, exposing their agendas in ways that were not possible before he and others managed to circumvent what Limbaugh calls “the drive-by media.”
Bob thinks Rush is the greatest self-promoter of his generation. He admires his ability to attract millions of listeners a day with, in Limbaugh’s words, “half my brain tied behind my back,” thus explaining the type of listener Rush attracts. Bob also thinks Limbaugh could care less about cultural issues and simply uses them as a platform to keep his audience riled up, thus perpetuating the culture war for ratings and profit.
We both agree that talk radio—left and right of the dial—has a special interest in keeping the war going. They make gobs of money off the conflict.
Despite the millions of Americans on either side of the culture battle, we stick with our view that it is nevertheless a myth. It is a myth because its proponents insist that the entire country is on one side or the other of the culture divide, despite the fact that most Americans refuse to take sides. As the Pew study suggests, the majority of Americans are firmly rooted between the combatants. They understand the cultural issues, and believe there is a middle-ground (and thus a common ground) solution to the divisions. What people on both fringes of the political spectrum don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) is that gradualism will more likely help them reach their goal than a “neutron-bomb” approach; that cooperation produces greater and more felicitous results. But culture warriors are not seeking cooperation or consensus, and “gradualism” is not in their vocabulary.
We realize that it was the Supreme Court that dropped its legal “neutron bomb” on the country with the Roe decision in 1973. Until that 7–2 decision, some states were modifying or eliminating abortion restrictions with no interference from Washington, but not rapidly enough for the pro-choice movement or for women in states where abortion remained illegal. More than any other ruling—even more than the prayer-in-schools decision a decade earlier, or Brown v. Board of Education a decade before that—Roe has becoming the biggest divider and loudest rallying cry on the right and left. Abortion has become the penultimate polarizing issue. Both sides consider any compromise on abortion, or any of the other social issues, to be politically traitorous.
The cultural warriors refuse to accept that most Americans are conscientious objectors in the culture war; which is not to say most Americans don’t care about social issues. They do, but they believe sensible common ground solutions are preferable.
“What are those people in Washington doing? All they do is yell at each other about a bunch of stuff no one out here gives a rat about. I’m a conservative, but as far as gays…so what? Leave ’em alone. They ain’t bothering anyone.”
—A white male, forty years old, Independent, Kansas City,
Kansas, during a focus group interview by Beckel
“I think abortion is killing, but I don’t go out and shoot abortion doctors like some of ’em has been doin’. That’s murder, too. We don’t want that Roe thing, but it’s the law and not changing. Let’s get as much for the unborn as we can, get real.”
—A white female, fifty-six years old, registered Republican,
Kansas City, Kansas, during a focus group
interview by Beckel
Regrettably, these pleas for restraint, which are reflective of the majority opinion, fall on deaf ears with polarizers in the culture war. To be fair, most participants hold their views strongly and with conviction, but many secular polarizers simply prey on these emotions to continue the climate of polarization we have witnessed over the last twenty-five years.
How did it come to this? Why did American politics, which has produced so many great leaders, and the world’s oldest democracy allow the muck of polarization to gain center stage? When did it all start? The storm clouds that produced the climate of polarization were a long time coming, but many of us either missed them or chose to ignore them.