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Last weekend I wrote critically about Obama's denial of Jimmy Carter's claim that racism has played a role in the vitriolic opposition that's been expressed to him and his agenda, which has been particularly focused on health care reform the last two months. I'll have more to say about Obama's misguided attitude later this weekend, but my purpose is much broader. I want to argue that we're involved in a conflict of worldviews that's quite different from the New Deal era, at the same time that policy initiatives such as the stimulus package, health care reform, and combating global warming are all grounded to some extent in the dominant New Deal paradigm-whether Obama can admit it or not. There is complex confusion about what the current political options actually are (regardless of questionable convention judgments of viability), and I want to try to clarify them. In a nutshell, my perspective is as follows:
(1) During the New Deal (Fifth Party System) Era, the dominant ideology was New Deal liberalism, which revolved around activist government with a broadly economic populist thrust. The various forms of opposition to it were fragmented and often politically incoherent. The most politically successful Republican counter-move was toward imitative liberalism, which claimed to do a better job of implementing/administrating New Deal-style programs-such as Eisenhower's championing of the Intestate Freeway system. At the same time, the most base-stirring counter-move was the authoritarian jingoism epitomized in full flower by McCarthyism-which had virtually no policy content whatever, but consisted almost entirely of demonizing its perceived enemies.
(2) Tellingly, Richard Nixon, who as a tactical and strategic master of authoritarian jingoism, was the pivotal politician in ending the New Deal Era and introducing the Sixth Party System, which revolved around strategic deployment of political power, with ideology and pragmatic policy both relatively submerged. Nothing much interested Nixon aside from power itself, and demonizing outgroups was his most basic stratagem, which over time came to dominate the Sixth Party System--even though overturning structural bastions of Democratic power was beyond the GOP's reach. Today's Democrats are split like a funhouse mirror reflection of Eisenhower/McCarthy. There are more differences than similarities between the two parties and the two eras, but the fact of the split, and the dominance of the least representative faction are similar.
(3) The historical challenge is that (a) only New Deal liberalism has a template for pragmatic problem-solving (albeit in need of updating), but (b) Obama accepts Sixth Party System framework of politics, including the Nixonian demonization of New Deal liberalism, which effectively eliminates all his realworld pragmatic options, (c) even as he vainly promises to end the demonization-driven polarization that's the very essence of the Sixth Party System. (d) Instead, the polarization only gets worse--the more Obama runs away from big government programs that can work, the more he's accused of being Hitler/Stalin/Big Brother-(e) while his denial of reality on how to confront such polarizing demonization repeats the most self-defeating stratagem of Democrats from throughout the Sixth Party System, and even as far back as the 1940s.
I refer to the above as "my perspective," because I do not presume to argue for it comprehensively in this diary or its follow-up. Rather, I claim that having that perspective in mind helps to make sense of the material I'm about to present, and that no contradictory perspective I'm familiar with can do as good a job. In this diary miniseries, I want to do two things: In Part One, I introduce some new information about the role of authoritarianism in driving polarization, particularly as it is manifested in the health care debate, and compare this with earlier movements toward increased polarization during the Sixth Party System. In Part Two, I pick up on a link from Digby about the role of ritual defamation, and discuss how ritual defamation is an essential stratagem of the GOP in establishing its strategic dominance during the Sixth Party System. If we are to break out of the current holding pattern, and successfully initiate a Seventh Party System that breaks dramatically and necessarily with the past, we must learn to effectively counter and decommission the ritual defamation as a routine political practice.
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| The Authoritarian Setup
In the past, I have repeatedly referred to both Robert Altemeyer's work on rightwing authoritarianism (RWA) and to social dominance theory, developed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, which includes an individual attitudinal factor, social dominance orientation (SDO). Roughly speaking RWA can be thought of as characteristic of authoritarian followers, SDO of authoritarian leaders. But we're not just talking about top-level leaders with SDO or low-level footsoldiers with RWA. It's more complicated than that-made more complicated by the fact that some people exhibit high levels of both. In addition, there are a number of other factors that researchers have studied over the years that also play into making people more rigid, close-minded and authoritarian. All these factors also tend to contribute to group bias in various forms, including racism, sexism and homophobia. I've also written about how beliefs that blacks are to blame for their lower economic status correlate with lower support for social spending across a wide range of issues. I'd now like to add some new information to all the above.
The authors of a new book, Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics have weighed in in favor of Carter's interpretation, writing at the Washington Post shortstack blog the week before last:
Our research favors Carter's interpretation and adds some hard data to the debate. In fact, the partisan divide today is even more troubling than if it was driven by race alone.
Americans' views of political issues and their partisan attachments are being increasingly shaped by gut-level worldviews. On one side of many issues are those who see the world in terms of hierarchy, think about problems in black and white terms, and struggle to tolerate difference. On the other are those who favor independence over hierarchy, shades of gray over black-white distinctions, and diversity over sameness.
We call this dividing line an authoritarian one, and we find that what side of the line people fall on explains their positions on a wide ranging set of issues, including race, immigration, gay rights, civil liberties, and terrorism. This is because what lies behind these preferences is a larger difference in worldview, where people understand reality in starkly different ways. This, in turn, leads to rancorous and irreconcilable-seeming political conflicts.
In short, these authors are making the same sort of argument that I have over the years-it's not racism per se in isolation, but racism as part of a larger authoritarian gestalt.
Authoritarianism & Health Care
They go on to focus on health care:
As evidence of the link between health care and racial attitudes, we analyzed survey data gathered in late 2008. The survey asked people whether they favored a government run health insurance plan, a system like we have now, or something in between. It also asked four questions about how people feel about blacks.
Taken together the four items form a measure of what scholars call racial resentment. We find an extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform.
Among whites with above average racial resentment, only 19 percent favored fundamental health care reforms and 57 percent favored the present system. Among those who have below average racial resentment, more than twice as many (45 percent) favored government run health care and less than half as many (25 percent) favored the status quo.
No such relationship between racial attitudes and opinions on health care existed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton effort.
The only thing surprising to me about the above is the last sentence. I haven't seen their raw data, so perhaps they only mean that nothing like the current striking relationship existed. It seems highly improbable to me that there was no relationship at all, given the long-standing relationship between racism and hostility to the federal government.
Earlier Evidence of Authoritarian Polarization
What's more the move toward polarization around worldviews has been underway for a long time, as can be seen by these charts based on General Social Survey data, showing how views on abortion have changed over time. This is an ideal indicator measure of authoritarian attitudes, since it has to do with the control of other people's bodies, and the denial of their own free will. The two charts below break GSS data up into three time-frames, the first of which is more reflective of the New Deal era (Fifth Party System) coalitions, showing how they coalitions have changed during the Sixth Party System. Both charts register support for abortion in 4 cases involving a woman's choice-because she's unmarried, because she's poor and can't afford another child, because she doesn't want more children, or for any reason whatsoever. The four bars in the charts represent, in descending order, support for abortion all four cases, three of four cases, two of four cases, or just one case. The first chart is organized horizontally by party, then ideology, from liberal Democrat to conservative Democrat, then liberal independent to conservative independent, etc. The second is organize by ideology, then party, from liberal Democrat to liberal Republican, then moderate Democrat to moderate Republican, etc.
This first chart makes it clear that independents of all three ideological orientations were more supportive of abortion than Democrats of similar orientations during the first time period. By the last time period, their views were virtually identical for liberals and moderates, while conservative independents were considerably less supportive. One can also see a significant decline in Republican support, which is particularly sharp among conservative Republicans.
The fact that independents were more supportive of abortions than Democrats were during the first time period is particularly noticeable in the first time period of the second chart set, giving the top chart its pronounced wave-like appearance. Note in particular how much more supportive conservative Republicans were than conservative Democrats:
By the last time period, the wave-like appearance has been transformed into an almost perfect (monotonic) decline-except for the fact that moderate Republicans are more supportive than moderate independents. Thus, a polarization process around "social issues" which are associated with authoritarianism has been well underway for some time. What's been observed around health care reveals how that polarization is both trickling down into more specific policy areas and intensifying-in short, how it's becoming increasingly ubiquitous politically. In short, a reflection of coherent worldviews.
The New Deal era gave us a party system with a much less coherent arrangement-albeit one that was driven by coherent pragmatic concerns. The Democrats were a much larger party than the Republicans, defined by support for welfare state and activist government, but divided somewhat by race, which was generally submerged as an issue. The Republicans were much more fragmented, with a liberal wing that accepted the New Deal, but offered to manage it better, and a variety of different conservative and ultra-conservative factions. The Sixth Party System can be seen as a period in which a different set of concerns became more salient, altering the parties' makeup and trending toward a more coherent division of the political space-but not necessarily one that's anywhere near as pragmatically effective.
Summary Argument
The very brief post concludes:
It would be silly to assert that all, or even most, opposition to President Obama, including his plans for health care reform, is motivated by the color of his skin. But our research suggests that a key to understanding people's feelings about partisan politics runs far deeper than the mere pros and cons of actual policy proposals. It is also about a collision of worldviews.
Viewed through that lens, it is not at all surprising that Rep. Joe Wilson blurted out "You lie!" following a reference to illegal immigrants, another object of grave concern to the more authoritarian.
Beneath the arguments about government intrusion into the health care market, death panels, and such, a much more emotionally-laden dynamic is at work. Views about race along with a suite of other visceral matters are linked to people's opinions about health care reform, which likely explains why the present debate has caused a much stronger uproar than it did in 1994.
Obama ran on, and continues to believe in a vision of transcending, even "healing" the culture wars. For him, this is fused with his promise of "change we can believe in." But this vision seems fatally flawed in two regards: First, the culture wars are intensifying, trickling down from the shift in abortion views as a broad indicator to the evidence on health care reform, a much more specific policy view. Second, the kind of pragmatic government activism Obama promises is inherently liberal, as the New Deal era showed, but Obama instinctively and ideologically rejects the very sorts of solutions that could work, because he is stuck in the Sixth Party System culture war frame that such policies are "too liberal."
Politically, Obama has tried to finesse this contradiction (quite unconsciously, in all probability) by switching the meaning of "pragmatic" from referring to the real world-in which politics is just one part-to referring to the political world of Versailles as it currently exists, which has largely been defined by conservative hegemonic dominance. Even if this strategy were to "succeed" in the passing of legislation, it would ultimately prove no more pragmatic in the real world outside of Versailles politics than anything that the conservatives & the GOP have done since 1995--a period marked by remarkable chaos and policy failure.
Obama's denial of the role of racism may be tactically "smart" within the political framework he has assumed, and that fact that he has assumed that political framework has afforded him a certain degree of media peace. But it cannot change the fact that his core vision is doubly flawed, as described above, and cannot ultimately deliver what it promises, anymore than George W. Bush could. Obama was elected by going outside and beyond the existing political framework of Versailles, and many of his supports implicitly assumed that he would govern similarly. Indeed, this seemed a given to many. Instead, Obama has not only shut down his own grassroots operation, he has cancelled the 50-state strategy, discouraged outside progressive grassroots pressure, supported a group of conventional, appointed Senators, and praised the very Senators who did the most to neuter his stimulus package, and ensure continued budget crises at the state and local level.
In the book, Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics, the authors present this striking chart showing the strong relationship between support for corporal punishment of children and votes for Bush in the 2004 election:
I'll have more to say about it in Part II, tomorrow. But for now, I'll simply note that it's a striking demonstration of how clearly a fundamental attitude about personal life translates directly to the realm of politics. Given that the attitude in question relates directly to parenting styles, that should pretty well put an end to all objections to George Lakoff's grounding of liberalism and conservatism in contrasting family models. |
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