Poll numbers for Congress and President Barack Obama may be heading south but a USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll finds one thing is gaining lots of ground in popularity as a good thing: polarization.
Yes, the polarization that in American politics was once seen as a negative because it made it harder to reach consensus that created policies having a larger base of support than just one party’s power politics. The polarization which usually involves divisive rhetoric that sets one group off against another and makes the other side look like an enemy versus a political foe. Unlike Obama and Congress it’s notably on the upswing:
The sharp political divide that Americans say they hate may be becoming the new normal.
A USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll taken this month, the fourth in a year-long series, shows no change in the overwhelming consensus that U.S. politics have become more divided in recent years.
But sentiments have shifted significantly during the past year about whether the nation’s unyielding political divide is a positive or a negative. In February 2013, Americans said by nearly 4-1 that the heightened division is a bad thing because it makes it harder to get things done.
In the new poll, the percentage who describe the divide as bad has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points, to 55% from 74%. And the number who say it’s a good thing — because it gives voters a real choice — has doubled to 40% from 20%.
Why? USA Today has a theory which makes sense but may not be a total explanation:
The shift in public opinion toward Egurrola’s view may reflect broadening acceptance of Washington’s polarization as an inevitable fact of life. Skepticism about the government’s ability to solve big problems, fueled by concerns about the Affordable Care Act, could play a part as well. It sets a landscape that could boost Republicans in the November elections, minimizing the impact of Democratic charges that GOP forces have been obstructionist.Now, Americans say it’s more important for their representative in Congress to stop bad laws than to pass new ones. On that, there is no partisan divide: 54% of Republicans and 51% of Democrats say blocking bad laws should be their priority.
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who conducted the poll in conjunction with Republican pollster Whit Ayres, cautions that seeing the political divide as a good thing is still a minority view, but he acknowledges it seems to be a growing one. “There’s a feeling on the part of many people that in this environment where they don’t see a lot of good that’s happening, their goal is to have their member stop bad things from happening, and they see polarization as a way to do that,” he says.
For many in the GOP, Ayres says, attitudes toward President Obama and the perception that he’s unwilling to compromise are driving the shift in views. “Republicans in particular realize that the best they’re going to do with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate is stopping bad things,” he says. “They believe that if you can stop the stimulus bill or stop Obamacare, that may be the best we can do — and that is a function of the divisions.”
Republicans split almost evenly, 49%-47%, on whether the sharper partisan divide is a bad thing or a good thing. Democrats call it bad by 62%-35%, independents by 56%-38%.
But there are likely other factors.
One is that our political culture — with lots of money in play on several levels — is now set up to foster polarization, not consensus. Congress: in his must read eBook book Lesterland
, Lawrence Lessig documents how consultants actually market creating gridlock. It is a political t-o-o-l that groups and corporations will and can pay to create.
Blocking the other side is now a lot of what American politics is about, not offering an affirmative, specific alternative to what the other side offers. It also now includes outright disinformation.
And then there is the bulk of the political talk industry, which makes big bucks on radio and television and is thriving. Few radio and cable political talk hosts get their gigs and increase their ratings by trying to offer reasonable and reasoned talk about issues (one of the few is Sirius XM radio Michael Smerconish, who recently got a show on CNN and will guest host on Piers Morgan next week). His show on Sirius is worth paying the satellite service subscription price.). They increase their audiences and income not by trying to look for common ground or where consensus is on an issue. They increase it by whipping up partisan home team feeling and resentments against the opposing political team. There’s a whole industry with a vested interest in keeping polarization alive. Ditto on the Internet where a website or blog that takes a strong, identifiable, unfettered position can have a built in ideological constituency that links to it, and the more partisan and shrill it is, the more hits it could get from like minded blogs linking to it.
So the old media, broadcast and cable media and Internet all feed into nurture polarization and market it as a good thing to protect ideological and partisan interests (or the very survival of the Republic).
Given that, those who aren’t for polarization are painted as a bunch of wusses by those advocating it.
And the poll shows the wusses are rapidly losing ground — in a century that is still young…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.