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Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America
An eye-opening look at how and why America has become so politically polarizedMany continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened.Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society.Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 27, 2018
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January 2, 2019
Polarized is a good academic discussion of American polarization and it proves it’s story in a myriad of ways: American parties used to be pluralistic, geographically dispersed under the New Deal System created in the 1930s, but Democratic dominance led to a splintering and slow polarization brought to a head in 1994.
This polarization started in the electorate, first appeared in the presidential elections, and finally set Congress on its current dysfunctional path.
Ultimately, there seems to be no realistic solution to this problem. Campbell throws out “education” and “journalism”. I don’t know if he has ever heard “the on going education crisis” or “journalism is dead” but he doesn’t really have any other ideas. The disease has been diagnosed in excruciating detail, but there is no medicine.
This polarization started in the electorate, first appeared in the presidential elections, and finally set Congress on its current dysfunctional path.
Ultimately, there seems to be no realistic solution to this problem. Campbell throws out “education” and “journalism”. I don’t know if he has ever heard “the on going education crisis” or “journalism is dead” but he doesn’t really have any other ideas. The disease has been diagnosed in excruciating detail, but there is no medicine.
August 9, 2016
It’s everywhere. Pick up a newspaper, browse the web, or turn on the television and gaze upon the polarization in our political climate. Storylines are recycled, media narratives reused, the same stories rehashed ad infinitum. Everyone agrees that no one can agree on anything. Republicans hate Democrats and other Republicans while Democrats hate Republicans and other Democrats. Nothing gets done because nobody gets down to doing anything. The words “compromise” and “bipartisan” are missing from the Washington lexicon. This is the worst kept secret in politics: political polarization is a mainstay of political discussion, and you better start liking it.
With our political house divided so many times against itself, it’s a mystery to many how we got to this messy and discomfiting reality in the first place. James E. Campbell’s “Polarized” sorts out our disunited Union by mapping the tectonic shifts that brought the parties to their farthest distance from each other in recent history. Campbell argues that our polarized political conscience is nothing new. The seeds of our divisions were sown a half-century ago, watered by cultural upheaval and nurtured by social change. The shoots and leaves of our political tensions pierced the surface in the 1970s and 1980s, reaching its height in the brume of today’s political scene.
With strokes of brilliance, a devotion to the research, and a scrupulous attention to nuance, Campbell has composed a hugely informative-and sure to be provocative- window into why we all just can’t get along.
The Grand Political Canyon
Polarization is not a figment of our political imaginations. It does not take place solely in the bubbles of Congressional floor debates or on the screens of cable television networks. Polarization is real and palpable, found wherever there are kitchen tables, classrooms, or water coolers. It is also not a recent construction- its roots dig deep into the twentieth century. “The polarization of the American electorate is real and widespread,” writes Campbell. “It is not an artifact manufactured by polarized political parties, manipulative politicians, rabble-rousing talking heads, myopic interest groups, or mischievous gerrymanders.” It is not confined to a narrow set of hot-button issues, nor does it exist only in the minds of the most active or politically engaged. “Political divisions in American politics are now deep and real.” So polarization is not new. It is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolets.
Today, polarization is at an all-time high. The most liberal Republican is still more liberal than the most conservative Democrat. The chasm between the parties is very wide; both sides are bifurcated by the raging currents of ideological difference and mutual disdain. And it isn’t only confined to the two parties. Campbell argues that polarization inhabits the general public, especially the most politically educated. His provocative thesis is that parties are the conduits for people’s personal ideological identities. Parties don’t shape public ideology, they respond to it in order to survive. Too many political analyses get this direction wrong. The public is in the driver’s seat, not the parties.
One of the greatest developments in recent political history noted by Campbell is the delicate dance done by parties to keep in lockstep with voters. When the footing gets rough, the public and the parties fall into a state of misalignment. To get the dance going again, the latter must catch up to keep pace with the former. This is what Campbell calls political realignment, and these periods are generally rare. But understanding the process is critical for understanding the state of our current system.
Before the Other Shoe Falls
The public ideological divide can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Society was caught up in the rough-and-tumble of social and cultural change, animated by the creep of the Vietnam War, an emerging front on civil and gender rights, and a counterculture. The turmoil of the 1960s replaced the tranquility of the New Deal era. The growth and consolidation after the Great Depression and the peace dividend after World War II gave way to protest, cultural decay, and economic anxiety. This began the process of the public’s polarization.
Meanwhile, the political parties were relatively heterogeneous and non-polarized. The tensions that contributed to student protests or the civil rights movement were largely absent in the chambers of Congress and in the statehouses. The Democratic Party in particular was insulated from these developments, maintaining a diverse but loosely knit coalition of southern conservatives and northern progressives. For a while, they could prevent the changes in public sentiment from shaking the highest branches of political power by looking the other way.
Coupled with the public political unrest in the 1960s and 1970s, the pastiche of different interests held together by the national parties were in danger of breaking loose. The unstable coalition that grew out of the New Deal years was cracking under the weight of shifting public opinion. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the whole thing came tumbling down.
The Big Sort
Campbell argues that the staggered alignment that followed the public tumult during the ‘60s and ‘70s was one of the most important, albeit protracted, periods in modern political memory. He boils the shift down to a few steps, starting with the Democratic super-majorities and the landslide win of Lyndon B. Johnson. A Democratic lock on the Congress saw the passage of civil rights legislation and the subsequent shift of more African Americans into the party’s fold. Whereas only 68% of blacks in 1960 voted Democrat, by 1964 the number was 94%. This was not without its consequences. Huge swaths of estranged southern white Democrats exited the party, coalescing around a new Republican party. New Englanders also switched political sides. The New Deal coalition was no more; out of its ashes emerged a new competitive landscape of pro-civil rights Northern and Midwestern Democrats and Southern Republicans beholden to a disgruntled white conservative base.
By the early 1980s, the dust began to settle. The parties still were not aligned perfectly with the public as indicated by the number of split-ticket voters, more third-party activity, and less party identification. The public was lost without a proper outlet to voice its concerns. While national parties were adjusting to changes in public sentiment quite smoothly, state and local parties lagged behind. Democrats still controlled many southern congressional seats, and the rise of Democrat Jimmy Carter from the South delayed the conservative shift from Democrat to Republican south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Watergate scandal also scared plenty of potential Republicans from switching parties.
Enter Ronald Reagan. The California governor was the shock needed to organize the party system and clarify ideological differences. Reagan expanded the Republican tent by drawing in “Reagan Democrats,” expanding the party’s appeal and broadening its base. The Reagan Revolution was completed in the 1994 congressional elections, the critical breakthrough below the presidential level that Republicans waited decades for. Speaker Newt Gingrich’s barnstorming of the Washington establishment was the last stage of the political realignment. Long, arduous, and painfully protracted, the process beginning in the late 1950s was finally finished by the mid-1990s. “This was not your great-grandfather’s realignment,” Campbell summarizes.
Who’s to Blame for Today’s Polarization?
Campbell argues that, while the realignment period was messy and tumultuous, it was a necessary reflection of a shift in the public’s ideological identification. It was also a symmetric process, one that did not disproportionately favor one party over the other. Campbell debunks the claim that Republicans moved out of mainstream with their hardline positions in recent years. The party was responding appropriately to the ideological shifts of the median voter. The party became more conservative because the public was becoming more conservative.
Before the Republicans shifted to the right, Democrats veered to the left despite a more conservative general public. Campbell thinks this is why we have more polarization: Democrats, by not moving to accommodate a more right-leaning audience, amplified the division between the parties. In order to compensate, Republicans moved farther right along with the public. While Democrats did move in contradiction to the conservative shift of the public, Republicans moved a greater difference along the political spectrum. This is why the party is viewed as too conservative, however the degree in difference is just an illusion. The asymmetric adjustments moves resulted in symmetrical polarization. “The idea that the Republican Party grew from its minority status to being at parity with the Democrats while the Democrats maintained a mildly liberal position and Republicans veered off to the far right,” he writes, “just does not add up.”
Despite negative connotations associated with polarization, Campbell argues that political division is a necessary development. He finds that polarization has not prevented the enactment of important laws, and actually finds that the number of historically important laws passed is higher in today’s polarized environment. Polarization has not impeded lawmaking, so it goes. It contributes to the vitality of political institutions. Political conflict, he writes, is “necessary and functional in a democratic political system.” Conflict and contention are the lifeblood of party politics. Remove them, and competitive democracy ceases to be both competitive and democratic.
While Campbell glorifies the messy nature of political division, he laments the substitution of constructive debate for ideological insulation and intolerance. “My way or the highway” is a common refrain in political circles, breeding distrust of political opposites, disparagement of compromise, and excessive confidence in the authority of one’s beliefs. Campbell calls this conflict unnecessary and destructive. Often times, it isn’t the polarization that is most glaring; it’s the polarized people, in Campbell’s words, “being a bit too pig-headed, narrow-minded, unrealistic, disrespectful, and ill-informed.” If we can only dial down our rhetoric, we can minimize our disputes and solve more problems.
Looking Ahead
Campbell’s political analysis is extremely informative, especially for our existing presidential race. Donald Trump, by defying the Republican establishment and promoting his own platform, might be forcing a new realignment in politics. The internal divisions within the party between business conservatives, social evangelicals, and working-class whites might have been too big of a gap to bridge. Trump exploited these holes by focusing less on the affluent, pro-immigrant donor base and focusing on disgruntled, blue-collar, median-income conservatives felt left behind by party. Perhaps the party does not adequately represent the public, the former too committed to being the “party of Reagan” thirty years afterwards. Trump might be the candidate to usher a new period of party politics in America.
In conclusion, Campbell’s work shows us how the public works through parties. The process starts at the bottom, with the public working through political parties to reveal their ideological identities. Often, the two can become disjointed, requiring a realignment period by the party to restore its connection to voters. Polarization is a natural outgrowth of such a process. Rather than taking its cues from party platforms or officials, the public drives the debate. And because parties reflect the ideological complexions of the voters, they are important representations of their underlying democratic base. Parties need the public more than the public needs the parties. In this realm, disagreement is inevitable. But as Campbell argues, it is necessary and part of a functioning democracy, but certainly not new. It is a historically vital organ of our political system.
So those sounds you hear on cable television or the articles you find in the paper? Take solace in knowing those are the sounds and sights of democracy at work.
Note: This review was reproduced from my personal blog, which can be found here:
https://gristforthemull.wordpress.com
With our political house divided so many times against itself, it’s a mystery to many how we got to this messy and discomfiting reality in the first place. James E. Campbell’s “Polarized” sorts out our disunited Union by mapping the tectonic shifts that brought the parties to their farthest distance from each other in recent history. Campbell argues that our polarized political conscience is nothing new. The seeds of our divisions were sown a half-century ago, watered by cultural upheaval and nurtured by social change. The shoots and leaves of our political tensions pierced the surface in the 1970s and 1980s, reaching its height in the brume of today’s political scene.
With strokes of brilliance, a devotion to the research, and a scrupulous attention to nuance, Campbell has composed a hugely informative-and sure to be provocative- window into why we all just can’t get along.
The Grand Political Canyon
Polarization is not a figment of our political imaginations. It does not take place solely in the bubbles of Congressional floor debates or on the screens of cable television networks. Polarization is real and palpable, found wherever there are kitchen tables, classrooms, or water coolers. It is also not a recent construction- its roots dig deep into the twentieth century. “The polarization of the American electorate is real and widespread,” writes Campbell. “It is not an artifact manufactured by polarized political parties, manipulative politicians, rabble-rousing talking heads, myopic interest groups, or mischievous gerrymanders.” It is not confined to a narrow set of hot-button issues, nor does it exist only in the minds of the most active or politically engaged. “Political divisions in American politics are now deep and real.” So polarization is not new. It is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolets.
Today, polarization is at an all-time high. The most liberal Republican is still more liberal than the most conservative Democrat. The chasm between the parties is very wide; both sides are bifurcated by the raging currents of ideological difference and mutual disdain. And it isn’t only confined to the two parties. Campbell argues that polarization inhabits the general public, especially the most politically educated. His provocative thesis is that parties are the conduits for people’s personal ideological identities. Parties don’t shape public ideology, they respond to it in order to survive. Too many political analyses get this direction wrong. The public is in the driver’s seat, not the parties.
One of the greatest developments in recent political history noted by Campbell is the delicate dance done by parties to keep in lockstep with voters. When the footing gets rough, the public and the parties fall into a state of misalignment. To get the dance going again, the latter must catch up to keep pace with the former. This is what Campbell calls political realignment, and these periods are generally rare. But understanding the process is critical for understanding the state of our current system.
Before the Other Shoe Falls
The public ideological divide can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Society was caught up in the rough-and-tumble of social and cultural change, animated by the creep of the Vietnam War, an emerging front on civil and gender rights, and a counterculture. The turmoil of the 1960s replaced the tranquility of the New Deal era. The growth and consolidation after the Great Depression and the peace dividend after World War II gave way to protest, cultural decay, and economic anxiety. This began the process of the public’s polarization.
Meanwhile, the political parties were relatively heterogeneous and non-polarized. The tensions that contributed to student protests or the civil rights movement were largely absent in the chambers of Congress and in the statehouses. The Democratic Party in particular was insulated from these developments, maintaining a diverse but loosely knit coalition of southern conservatives and northern progressives. For a while, they could prevent the changes in public sentiment from shaking the highest branches of political power by looking the other way.
Coupled with the public political unrest in the 1960s and 1970s, the pastiche of different interests held together by the national parties were in danger of breaking loose. The unstable coalition that grew out of the New Deal years was cracking under the weight of shifting public opinion. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the whole thing came tumbling down.
The Big Sort
Campbell argues that the staggered alignment that followed the public tumult during the ‘60s and ‘70s was one of the most important, albeit protracted, periods in modern political memory. He boils the shift down to a few steps, starting with the Democratic super-majorities and the landslide win of Lyndon B. Johnson. A Democratic lock on the Congress saw the passage of civil rights legislation and the subsequent shift of more African Americans into the party’s fold. Whereas only 68% of blacks in 1960 voted Democrat, by 1964 the number was 94%. This was not without its consequences. Huge swaths of estranged southern white Democrats exited the party, coalescing around a new Republican party. New Englanders also switched political sides. The New Deal coalition was no more; out of its ashes emerged a new competitive landscape of pro-civil rights Northern and Midwestern Democrats and Southern Republicans beholden to a disgruntled white conservative base.
By the early 1980s, the dust began to settle. The parties still were not aligned perfectly with the public as indicated by the number of split-ticket voters, more third-party activity, and less party identification. The public was lost without a proper outlet to voice its concerns. While national parties were adjusting to changes in public sentiment quite smoothly, state and local parties lagged behind. Democrats still controlled many southern congressional seats, and the rise of Democrat Jimmy Carter from the South delayed the conservative shift from Democrat to Republican south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Watergate scandal also scared plenty of potential Republicans from switching parties.
Enter Ronald Reagan. The California governor was the shock needed to organize the party system and clarify ideological differences. Reagan expanded the Republican tent by drawing in “Reagan Democrats,” expanding the party’s appeal and broadening its base. The Reagan Revolution was completed in the 1994 congressional elections, the critical breakthrough below the presidential level that Republicans waited decades for. Speaker Newt Gingrich’s barnstorming of the Washington establishment was the last stage of the political realignment. Long, arduous, and painfully protracted, the process beginning in the late 1950s was finally finished by the mid-1990s. “This was not your great-grandfather’s realignment,” Campbell summarizes.
Who’s to Blame for Today’s Polarization?
Campbell argues that, while the realignment period was messy and tumultuous, it was a necessary reflection of a shift in the public’s ideological identification. It was also a symmetric process, one that did not disproportionately favor one party over the other. Campbell debunks the claim that Republicans moved out of mainstream with their hardline positions in recent years. The party was responding appropriately to the ideological shifts of the median voter. The party became more conservative because the public was becoming more conservative.
Before the Republicans shifted to the right, Democrats veered to the left despite a more conservative general public. Campbell thinks this is why we have more polarization: Democrats, by not moving to accommodate a more right-leaning audience, amplified the division between the parties. In order to compensate, Republicans moved farther right along with the public. While Democrats did move in contradiction to the conservative shift of the public, Republicans moved a greater difference along the political spectrum. This is why the party is viewed as too conservative, however the degree in difference is just an illusion. The asymmetric adjustments moves resulted in symmetrical polarization. “The idea that the Republican Party grew from its minority status to being at parity with the Democrats while the Democrats maintained a mildly liberal position and Republicans veered off to the far right,” he writes, “just does not add up.”
Despite negative connotations associated with polarization, Campbell argues that political division is a necessary development. He finds that polarization has not prevented the enactment of important laws, and actually finds that the number of historically important laws passed is higher in today’s polarized environment. Polarization has not impeded lawmaking, so it goes. It contributes to the vitality of political institutions. Political conflict, he writes, is “necessary and functional in a democratic political system.” Conflict and contention are the lifeblood of party politics. Remove them, and competitive democracy ceases to be both competitive and democratic.
While Campbell glorifies the messy nature of political division, he laments the substitution of constructive debate for ideological insulation and intolerance. “My way or the highway” is a common refrain in political circles, breeding distrust of political opposites, disparagement of compromise, and excessive confidence in the authority of one’s beliefs. Campbell calls this conflict unnecessary and destructive. Often times, it isn’t the polarization that is most glaring; it’s the polarized people, in Campbell’s words, “being a bit too pig-headed, narrow-minded, unrealistic, disrespectful, and ill-informed.” If we can only dial down our rhetoric, we can minimize our disputes and solve more problems.
Looking Ahead
Campbell’s political analysis is extremely informative, especially for our existing presidential race. Donald Trump, by defying the Republican establishment and promoting his own platform, might be forcing a new realignment in politics. The internal divisions within the party between business conservatives, social evangelicals, and working-class whites might have been too big of a gap to bridge. Trump exploited these holes by focusing less on the affluent, pro-immigrant donor base and focusing on disgruntled, blue-collar, median-income conservatives felt left behind by party. Perhaps the party does not adequately represent the public, the former too committed to being the “party of Reagan” thirty years afterwards. Trump might be the candidate to usher a new period of party politics in America.
In conclusion, Campbell’s work shows us how the public works through parties. The process starts at the bottom, with the public working through political parties to reveal their ideological identities. Often, the two can become disjointed, requiring a realignment period by the party to restore its connection to voters. Polarization is a natural outgrowth of such a process. Rather than taking its cues from party platforms or officials, the public drives the debate. And because parties reflect the ideological complexions of the voters, they are important representations of their underlying democratic base. Parties need the public more than the public needs the parties. In this realm, disagreement is inevitable. But as Campbell argues, it is necessary and part of a functioning democracy, but certainly not new. It is a historically vital organ of our political system.
So those sounds you hear on cable television or the articles you find in the paper? Take solace in knowing those are the sounds and sights of democracy at work.
Note: This review was reproduced from my personal blog, which can be found here:
https://gristforthemull.wordpress.com
November 21, 2017
This was a very informative book that I read for a sermon I am writing on the polarized state of our nation. It broadened my understanding of conservatives and the distinctions between libertarians and conservatives. I also learned about the different aspects of polarization - electorate vs parties, ideology vs issues.
June 22, 2019
An informative read for a class on American Politics.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews