“A Sinking Tide”

A famous, and optimistic, economic maxim says that “ a rising tide lifts all ships.” Unfortunately the opposite is also true. But a sinking tide is interesting for other reasons. As any beachgoer can tell you, when the tide goes out you can see what was previously covered--all the detritus that the waves bring forward is brought into view. Bottles, wood, seaweed.

In much the same way, an economic downturn uncovers things about our democracy and our society—many of them unsightly. What were previously only disagreements start to come to a fever pitch. Partisan gridlock starts to bring Congress to a halt. It’s not hard to think of specific examples. Like gun control. For one segment of society guns are the tools of criminals and the policeman who chase them. Their existence elsewhere poses an unnecessary risk to children and the mentally unstable. For others, guns are a heritage passed down from generation to generation, all the way back to the founding of the country. They provide a means of recreation and protection.

Or take health care. For some, the creation of universal health care approaches something akin to a moral obligation. America’s failure to provide health care already, when so many other less wealthy countries have been able to do so, is seen as an indictment of US values. To others, the very idea of introducing more government bureaucracy into health care is ill advised. Government programs already exist to cover many people in need. Further involvement will only lead to a loss of overall quality and an increase in government involvement in the lives of people who neither need nor desire it.

Or take border control. Many people see those coming over the border illegally, fleeing desperate poverty and sending massive amounts of money home to wives, children, and parents, and shudder at the idea of treating them like bank robbers and burglars. Others are shocked both by the immigrants disregard of the law and their governments indifference to enforcing it. They see thousands of people streaming over the border, adding to the millions already here, and worry what the effect of such a large group of people will be on a country they care deeply about.

Of course, in a country as large as the U.S. there is room for a variety of viewpoints. One great American strength is the ability of differing, even contradictory, views to coexist peacefully—so long as each party believes that the other has the country’s best interests at heart. But it is exactly this faith that is currently in short supply. The problem is not that the two sides disagree, but that there is mutual incomprehension. That black divide is a fertile breeding group for suspicion and animosity. And there, as Auden said, yawns a divide that embraces cannot bridge.

This rancor and partisanship has not gone unnoticed. To the contrary, both its amount and its severity have been commented upon extensively. What has received less attention is what should be done about it. When Evan Bayh, a giant of the Senate, retired he identified the extreme level of partisanship as a cause and suggested that monthly luncheons of each parties Senators could alleviate some of the ill will. While that suggestion surely has merit, it’s worth considering whether there are other, more fundamental issues that have to be addressed.

Indeed, it is worth asking whether or not certain facets of our democracy are partially to blame. One culprit could be gerrymandering. In many states, the party in power redraws the voting districts every ten years to include populations it knows support their views. This not only makes elections less competitive, it also makes politicians less compromising. After all, if your most serious reelection challenge is likely to come from the radical elements within your own party, why provide ammunition for a sharp primary battle by crossing party lines?

Another possible offender is the primary voting system itself. For the majority of the history of the Republic, primaries didn’t exist. Indeed, even when Robert Kennedy ran for President in 1968 only sixteen states held them. Though they have come to be a settled part of our electoral landscape there has been little public discussion of whether their overall effect has positive. It’s settled political strategy to move to the left or right during a primary campaign and then to move to the center for the general election. But why should we countenance a system that requires a candidate to espouse one set of views to one group and then requires them to give a different account of their views to another group only shortly thereafter, thereby practically requiring deception? Is it any surprise, then, that there has been a push for unwaveringly pure candidates that disdain compromise and who, once elected, will surely serve only to further the partisan gridlock that already consumes our capital?
I don’t mean to suggest that these are the only, or even the foremost causes for the acrimony that currently dominates our public debate. I do suggest that the current acrimony has deep structural roots that need to be addressed. When the tide comes back in it will be easy to put these divisions out of mind. But the water only conceals, it does not repair. If we fail to act, then when the tide goes out again, we are likely to find that our situation has worsened considerably.