E-mail a friendRon Brownstein
original airdate November 8, 2007
Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein is political director for Atlantic Media Company, publisher of The Atlantic and National Journal. He was previously political correspondent and a columnist with the Los Angeles Times and chief political correspondent for U.S. News and World Report. Brownstein has received several journalism awards and was named one of Washington's 20 "best and most influential" journalists by Washingtonian Magazine. He's the author/editor of six books, including The Second Civil War.
Ron Brownstein
Tavis: Ronald Brownstein is political director for Atlantic Media and a columnist for the "National Journal." He's also a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the 1996 and 2004 elections. His acclaimed new book on politics is called "The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America." He joins us from Washington. Ron, nice to have you on the program.
Ron Brownstein: Glad to be here.
Tavis: Let me start by saying, as one who lives and works in L.A., even though it's been a little while now, I miss seeing your byline in the "L.A. Times" right now.
Brownstein: Well, the column is still on Fridays, so.
Tavis: Of course, the (unintelligible), absolutely.
Brownstein: That's still there. That piece is still there, and I feel a strong connection to California, myself.
Tavis: Yeah, well, we love reading you on Friday, but missed seeing that byline the other day. But nice to have you on the program. This title, "The Second Civil War," provocative, got my attention. Where did you get it?
Brownstein: Well, it came to me as I was watching the partisan battle here in Washington. We have evolved, I think, Tavis, over the last generation toward a political system that is in many ways more divided than the country. Obviously, we have our differences as Americans on Iraq, on social issues, on lots of things. But it's hard to look at the country and say that the American people are more divided than they were in the 1960's, much less the and the 1890's or the 1860's.
What's unusual about today is the political system is more divided than the country. Rather than narrowing our differences, it accentuates them, and both parties see an advantage, I think, in accentuating them, and that obviously is making it tougher for us to make progress on the day-to-day problems that most concern the American people.
Tavis: Tell me more about why it is the politicians rather than the people who are divided, and if, in fact, you're right about that, how do the politicians make that work if the people allow themselves to be exploited in the process?
Brownstein: Well, what's really happened is we've had what I call in the book a great sorting-out of the American electorate. If you look back to the decades immediately after World War II, which was the period I think that most people would look back on as one in which politics was more consensual; there were lots of problems with that system.
It was not one we would want to recreate today. Among other things, it protected state-sponsored segregation in the South. But in the first decades after World War II, both parties had coalitions that were very diverse ideologically and in many other ways. And what we've seen, really, in the 40 years, really, since the mid-1960's is this sorting out, in which liberals have left the Republican Party and moderates in large number, conservatives have left the Democratic Party.
And each side has become more uniform and homogenous, and that's been reflected in the kind of elected officials they send to the House and Senate as well. And the result is that while we may not be more divided in our underlying views on issues, the disagreements that we have are sorted out in a fashion that makes it harder for us to resolve them because the dominant view on each issues is now represented in one of the parties.
And what you have is sort of this centrifugal pressure on each side that makes it hard for either side - in many ways, more difficult for the Republicans - to reach out and build consensus solutions that I think the majority of Americans would still support.
Tavis: So then contextualize for me, that said, this red state, blue state matrix that we're forced to grapple with around this time of the political calendar.
Brownstein: Yeah. We see, in a lot of ways, the political system has rigidified over the last generation. One thing that makes it tougher for Washington to work is that there is a growing parallel between the way states vote for president and the way they vote for the House and Senate.
First of all, the way states vote for president is becoming more predictable. Thirty-four states have voted the same way in each of the past four presidential elections, which is very high by historic standards. And as I say, we're also seeing a growing parallel between the way the states vote for president and the way they vote in the congress.
So it's becoming tougher to get elected, in effect, behind enemy lines - tougher for Republicans to elect senators and House members in blue states, tougher for Democrats to elect senators and House members in red states. That's important, I think, because historically, the bridge-builders in Congress have been those from divided constituencies.
The Northeastern moderate Republicans, the Southern moderate Democrats who represented voters who often voted the other way in presidential elections. We're seeing fewer of them, and as a result, there are fewer people in Congress who have an electoral incentive to bridge the differences between the parties. And that's sort of an overriding point I think I very quickly make. It's not just a question of whether politicians personally get along with each other, whether they spend social time together, and that is obviously down over the last generation.
That's a factor. The biggest reason I think we have a more polarized politics is because the electoral incentives push in that direction and it takes a concentrated leadership that is focused on reversing it to slow this trend.
Tavis: I want to challenge you. I'm not saying you're wrong about it, but I want to challenge you just to push you on this a little bit. I can't recall a time ever, Ron, in our nation's history where there was not partisanship, where there was not a paralysis in Washington, where America was not polarized. But when you say more partisan, more paralyzed, more polarized, tell me when those good old days were when that wasn't the case.
Brownstein: Right. There really - Thomas Jefferson in 1797 talked about men who have been intimate all of their lives turning away on the streets so they did not have to tip their hat at each other. So obviously, partisan conflict isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, I talk about in the book the early years of the 20th century were very much like our own, in which there was a philosophy of governing that focused on maximizing unity within your own party and minimizing influence for the other side.
But I would argue to you, Tavis, that we did move away from that for most of the middle of the 20th century. It was a flawed system in many ways, but it was one that required whoever was in power to bargain with whoever was not in power. And primarily because neither party had a reliable majority in Congress because of the internal fissures on each side - the moderate Republicans, the conservative Democrats - meant that no matter which side had the majority, they couldn't always rely on the votes of their side.
That had the effect of encouraging each side to negotiate with the other and take into account a broad range of views in formulating policy. So you can look back, whether it's the support Lyndon Johnson won from Republicans for the great society or Nixon, of all people, his work with Democrats in creating most of our major environmental and occupational safety agencies, or even Ronald Reagan's cooperation with Democrats on tax reform and Welfare reform and reform of Social Security.
There was a tradition living amidst lots of intense partisan conflict of the parties understanding that they needed to put a boundary on that conflict. That, I think, is what has broken down over the last 20 years.
Tavis: I guess what I'm getting at, Ron, is that when you go back - I can take any one of those and we could go toe-to-toe on any one of these. But you take the Reagan example, just as an example here. Reagan, Tip O'Neill, Reagan, as you said, working with House Democrats to get X, Y, and Z done. But one could argue that the Reagan years, as we are looking in retrospect at now - and again, I -
Brownstein: They were pretty partisan at times.
Tavis: Exactly. Partisan and vis-à-vis the public policy, I'm not sure what so many Americans actually got for that. So if the argument is less polarized, less this, less that, what does it mean to everyday people in America?
Brownstein: Well, right, and I think that really is the key question for me and where I started in writing this book. I would argue to you that we are already seeing intense disagreements within and between the parties on a wide variety of issues - immigration, energy, health care, foreign policy, entitlements. But I think there is an overriding issue that sort of connects all of them, and that is whether we are going to be able to build a broader consensus that allows us to move forward on any of these fronts.
Right now, we are in a situation where the dominant view in each party is comfortable only advancing solutions that are acceptable to their side. Ultimately, we're not going to solve these problems that way. I think any president is going to need to ask for sacrifice and for contribution from all of American society, and the only way you get the credibility, the moral credibility to ask for sacrifice from interests outside of your coalition is to ask for it from interests inside of your coalition.
And I think that really is the challenge, I think, that unifies all of these issues. We're not going to see progress unless we're willing to do things that in many cases make activists and interest groups on each side uncomfortable.
Tavis: But here's the rub. The rub is that I could, for the rest of the conversation we have - four minutes and 30 seconds - if I wanted to, if you and I wanted to play this game, we could go back and forth, I suspect, Ronald, with me giving you reasons why I could argue that this problem isn't going to go away. Now, I don't want to win that fight for obvious reasons. I want to believe that you can disabuse me of the notion that there is a way to turn this around, but I could throw, for the next five minutes, all kinds of reasons to you why I think this problem doesn't go away.
Brownstein: Absolutely. Right, and in fact I don't think it completely goes away, either. I don't think we're going back to the era of good feelings that they called the beginning of the 19th century, or even the Dwight Eisenhower administration, where his approval rating was routinely 60% among voters in both parties.
As I said, there are deep, structural reasons why our politics is more conflicted and polarized today than it was 40 and 50 years ago. Rise of interest groups, the sorting out of the electorate, changes in congressional rules that make it easier for each party to demand discipline from its members. All of those things are real, and they're not going away.
But Tavis, there is a long way between where we were under Dwight Eisenhower and where we are now. There's a lot of space between this kind of hyper-partisanship and some remembered ideal. I don't think we're going back to that, either, but I also don't think we are condemned to be locked into this cycle of intense division, this kind of 51-49 politics that makes it very difficult for us to move forward. I think a president can make progress on that front.
Tavis: All right, so since we're talking about a president making progress on that front, we're just weeks away from the first primary vote and just a year away from electing a new president. Let's spend the last two minutes of our conversation with what you think, then, we ought to do about this mess.
Brownstein: Well look, I think that the first thing I think we have to do is acknowledge that we're in it. I think President Bush was the first president to believe that he could profit from polarization rather than trying to roll it back. I think he was too comfortable functioning, in effect, as the president of half of America, unifying his own party while offering very little to the 49% of Americans who didn't vote for him.
I think the next president has to make a conscious effort to try to reach out beyond it. As I say, I think the first step is offering policies that ask for some sacrifice from interests inside your own coalition as the way of asking it from interests outside of it. In effect, saying to Americans that what unites is more important than what divides us, and that we all have to give something if we are going to move forward on these problems like healthcare and energy that we all care about very much.
And I think, in a kind of positive note, you are hearing a variety of candidates in both parties - certainly Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, to some extent; even several of the Republicans - Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani - talking in brought terms about the need to move past these politics. The rubber doesn't always meet the road in terms of their policies, but I think people understand the American people are exhausted with the level of division we see in Washington.
Tavis: Here's the exit question, then. Tell me - again, I'm not a cynic, but tell me - let me back up. You know that the right wants Hillary Clinton. They want her. I don't mean the Democrats. The right wants Hillary to be the nominee, and they're trying to fiat that into reality. So they want her badly for all of the reasons we both know. They want a Clinton on the ballot for all the stuff they're going to throw at her.
If Rudy Giuliani is the nominee is, in fact, the nominee for the Republican Party, this guy is about as divisive as you can get. In New York, his racial politics. So I'm trying to see that if we're talking about Hillary and Rudy - we don't know that.
Brownstein: That is going to be a brutal election.
Tavis: Well, how do we get past this if those to people are the nominees?
Brownstein: Well, I don't think - look, no matter who is the nominee, I think we have a hard time getting past it in this election. I think if we are going to start to move away from this, it will be through the actions of the next president once they are in office. And as I say, we can't roll it all the way back, but we are not doomed, I believe, to being in a situation where we are now, where each party lines up against each other in Congress on every issue, where we have a 70, 75-point gap in the way voters in one party and the other look at the president.
The country doesn't have to be that divided, and I think we can move away from it, but it's not likely until a new president comes in and makes that a priority.
Tavis: Ronald Brownstein, the new book, "The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America." Ron, nice to have you on the program, all the best to you.
Brownstein: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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