I laughed when I saw this AP headline: “Bush Speech Elicits Applause, Dread.” I guess that about sums it up.
I didn’t see the press conference, but just have been reading reactions. It is simply amazing to me how polarized the U.S. has become. This bodes ill for the ability of either party to govern in Jan. 2005.
Perhaps this question is going to be a sign of my own partisanship, but is it conceivable that one side is more at fault for the polarization than the other? Or are Republicans as much at fault for liking Bush’s speech as Democrats are for hating it?
Nat, yes, it is conceivable. Go look up Newt Gingrich’s list of words to use to describe Democrats if you would like to see the origin of our political polarization. I admit that the Democrats have now, to some extent, begun to fight back using the same tactics.
Matt Weiner wrote:
“Go look up Newt Gingrich’s list of words to use to describe Democrats if you would like to see the origin of our political polarization.”
Ah, so that’s when it all started. Before Gingrich, liberals and conservatives were holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”?
The nation, suffering from the breakdown of reasoned discourse that this event symbolized, tumbled onward toward the catastrophe of civil war.
liberals and conservatives were holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”?
I always wondered what polarisation meant. Now we have a putative definition: not that.
I’m inclined to think Matt’s right and Gingrich is largely responsible for the current round of polarisation. Although it may have been inevitable once the Dixiecrats crossed the floor - it meant there were fewer policy agreements between the parties. So maybe Gingrich was a trigger for an inevitability.
I think some polarisation is a good thing - it’s nice for people to know what they’re voting for when they tick D or R. The problem is that the need for moderate bipartisan cooperation is so ingrained in the system.
Having parties that hate each other can be fine. Having electoral boundaries chosen (and ‘independent’ inquries run) by a bipartisan body can be fine. The combination is a total disaster.
Of course Gingrich didn’t start polarization, but I think he aggravated it to a degree that has seriously damaged the ability of the U.S. to get along. Think of the Clinton Administration proposals that didn’t garner a single Republican vote, such as his first budget. I can’t recall any Reagan/Bush I proposal that was so monolithically opposed. Or consider the GOP senators who blocked every single Clinton judicial appointment in their home states. Or consider the shutdown of the federal government in 1995.
Hinderlands’ little history lesson is quite well to the point, as is the concluding comment that “now we are losing it, I think.” A case in point: this story
What we need now is a decent moderate to be President, to “change the tone” in Washington, if you will. Perhaps a “compassionate conservative” could do the trick.
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