Failure modes of the United States, part 4a

  “The U.S. population might become apathetic and gullible to the point of civic dysfunction.”

 
At first glance, polls like this recent one of self-proclaimed Republicans makes one wonder. (Is there an equivalent poll for Democrats?) The rhetoric at the Tea Parties has been a little, well, out to lunch, not to mention the deliberate use of, uh, falsehoods by major Republican personages, like Senator Grassley. Fox News, meanwhile, is a national disgrace, and every recently Keith Olbermann has drifted in a similar direction, to the point where my wife hates his show. (Jon Stewart recently reigned him in.)

But then you just need to sit and think about it for a moment. With just a little bit of historical perspective, the fear drops away. Consider the history of health-care-related rhetoric in the United States.  (Click the link.)  Pretty crazy stuff, no?  Then consider the stuff the New Left used to say, at much higher volume than the marginal and muted lefties of the Bush Administration era.  Yet the Republic survived. Meanwhile many people worry about the decline of civic participation, the 2008 election uptick notwithstanding. It is something to be worried about ... but when you think about what real high-participation elections were like back in 19th-century America, it isn’t something to inspire nostalgia.  Consider:

On the morning of November 2, 1859 — Election Day — George Kyle, a merchant with the Baltimore firm of Dinsmore & Kyle, left his house with a bundle of ballots tucked under his arm. Kyle was a Democrat.  As he neared the polls in the city’s 15th Ward, which was heavily dominated by the American Party, a ruffian tried to snatch his ballots. Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry; his brother, just behind him, had been struck. Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket.  He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet.  George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote.  Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress ... lost to the American Party’s Henry Davis.  Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election ... Davis’s victory was upheld on the ground that any “man of ordinary courage” could have made his way to the polls.

Apathy has its charms.

That said, I see two problems, one potential and unlikely, one with us right now. The potential and (IMHO) unlikely one is that the internet and cable news will somehow interact with America’s ideological cleavages to produce a dysfunctional electorate. I really have my doubts that there is anything to worry about here, but I can of course be convinced otherwise by a good argument.

The other problem is that too many voters do not realize that America’s constitution has shifted over the past few decades. We now live in a world of parliamentary parties. Yet too many Americans persist in believing that the candidate matters in elections for the federal legislature.  Even Doug Muir believed this. (I doubt that he still does, but Doug doesn’t admit error much. Partially because he’s rarely wrong.) More discussion here.

I had a very worrying discussion along these lines with family members at my niece’s recent wedding. (No, not a long discussion. There was dancing! With my wife! And little kids, lot of! For her to play with! Which she liked! A lot! Erm, gulp.) Americans want to believe that the person matters more than the party, which is simply not true.  If it were, the GOP would not have been able to muster the quite odd unanimous party-line votes that it recently did in favor of defaulting on U.S. debts and removing all limits on Congressional spending. The WTF-moment those votes inspire clarifies itself and makes perfect sense when you realize that we live in a parliamentary republic these days.

There seems to me a large risk that the disjunct between voter perceptions of the political system we live under and the reality of that system could lead our government to go off the rails. Especially with the recent emergence of the Senate supermajority norm.  Will voter perceptions catch up? I mean, if even Doug Muir was reluctant to abandon the idea that the Senators from Maine were different, we might be in trouble.

(BTW, for the record, on the thread linked to above?  Faeelin right, me wrong.)

Thoughts?

Comments

[Henry Cunha]

The problem, I'm beginning to believe, is twofold: you have only two parties, and uncompetitive corruption. A proper republic needs a multiplicity of parties, and the ability of the executive to bribe enough parties and individual representatives into coalitions and payola. It's worked wonderfully for governability elsewhere (I'm thinking particularly of Lula's alliances, for example).

[Andrew R.]

The one reason that I don't entirely buy the whole party-not-person business is that if this were the case, BHO would not not not have increased troop levels in Afghanistan twice, proposed loans for nuclear power, and similar.

[Bruce]

Well, it only really applies to the _Republicans_ so far. The Democratic Party still hasn't established any great level of party discipline (not that they have any clear "party line" to discipline people towards)

[Noel Maurer]

Andrew: the key phrase that you missed in the above post was, "for the federal legislature."

Full sentence: "Yet too many Americans persist in believing that the candidate matters in elections for the federal legislature."

Your point refers to the federal executive.

Does that clear it up and move you into agreement, or is there something that I've missed or misinterpreted?

[Noel Maurer]

I'll add that I also agree with Bruce's point. Are loans for nuclear power or increased troop strength in Afghanistan against the Democratic Party line? Well, neither is against the party platform.

Moreover, and more relevantly, many rather radical environmentalists support nuclear power despite the fact that it makes no economic sense in the absence of a carbon price, and many rather bleeding-heart foreign-aid pro-multilateral types favor doing everything possible to stabilize the Afghan government.

It is true that the Democrats have much less of a "line" than the GOP. (Although I'd love to know who writes the GOP marching orders; it isn't clear, although the unprecedented unanimity makes it clear that the order are being written by somebody.) I'd bet on that changing over time, especially if the Democrats lose their majorities.

[Andrew R.]

Okay, coming back several weeks later, I think that what you're saying does clear things up a bit. I still think that it might be more accurate to say that the Republican party is in full-on parliamentary mode, while the Democrats are still not quite up to speed on reaching that stage of the evolution of American politics.

[Luke]

Andrew,

That's certainly a possibility; the GOP enforces greater party cohesion, at least in the Senate, so there's less opportunity for lone wolfing like Bayh or Lieberman.

A secondary thing that I've been batting around is the evolution of parties in Nixonland. Part of it is evolution around constituencies after '64 or so, so that the Democratic Chorale is more chaotic than the Republican counterpart, but also the interaction between the formation of party leadership and the way that cable has natioanlized and warped narrative structure and thinking forward; the prepetual defensive crouch of "I'm a liberal don't hurt me" is a consequence of this.

Interestingly, under Noel's theory of Parliamentification, then Bill Frist or Boehner or McConnell need to be better qualities of player than they are; Frist lost out after one term and left his seat, and the maximal party cohesion offered by the 2002-2007 GOP cost them a ton of seats.

Again, toying. More anon.

[Tzintzuntzan]

Responding to this, too, embarassingly late for the same reason:

I think you have a point about the charms of apathy. US punditry goes through a cycle: either they're complaining about how the country is so polarized and partisan (2004, 2008...) or they're complaining about how the country has two nearly-identical parties that never discuss real issues and produce snoozer elections (1996, 2000...)

The potential failure mode here is that the US electorate somehow manages to be both partisan and apathetic at once. An electorate that has very strong (and hostile) feelings, but convinced that nothing ever matters because The Man will rig every election anyway, so why bother. That's worse than being either one on its own.

Or...well, comparisons between the USA and the dying days of the Roman Republic are way over-used, and have been since 1776. But one comparison can be made for this failure mode. What if, like late Rome, a small portion of the electorate is extremely partisan and vicious, but the vast majority says a plague on both your houses and just supports whoever seems more likely to win (and thus, more likely to end the endless political fights that they don't want to hear about any more?)