Vox Blogoli Revisited
The other day I
wrote a post for Hugh Hewitt's Vox Blogoli (or is it Bloguli?--
Why ask? Hugh can't spell real words, why should we expect him to be able to spell made up ones?--ed) concerning a Jonathan Rauch article in the Atlantic which contained (in the last paragraph) some comments about religious conservatives which seemed rather offensive.
Hugh had Rauch on his show later that same day, and I was struck by his insistence that no insult had been intended and his forthright admission that if his article had been perceived as insulting, then it was his fault for poor writing. Very few mainstream writers would make that admission. Rauch said that his intent was to write a piece revealing how little difference there really is between Red and Blue America and asked that readers judge the whole piece rather than just the snippet at the end. Hugh has been granted
permission to post the entire article on his blog.
I have now read the entire article, and I have to say, there is a great deal that I agree with. Rauch's thesis is that the American people are not as separated from each other by culture as much as they are by politics and that they have become less divided over time with the exception of political partisans.
This is something I have remarked on in the past. Many folks seem to think that politics has never been so nasty and divisive, which is absurd. Read the Lincoln/Douglas debates sometime if you want to see a pair of politicians go at each other hammer and tongs. Rauch points to the collapse of the smoke-filled room and the increasing democratization of the nomination process as central to the increasing polarization of the partisans, a theme I have returned to on many occasions.
However, there are some places where Rauch displays his own partisanship.
It is interesting to wonder how much less polarized American politics might be today if John McCain had won the presidency in 2000. Instead we got Bush, with his unyielding temperament and his strategy of mobilizing conservatives.
My guess is that American politics would be about 0.1% less polarized under McCain. I honestly do not understand the continuing fascination of the Democrats with McCain, but I can guarantee that it would disappear about 20 minutes into any McCain Administration as he began to staff his Cabinet with, gasp, conservative Republicans!
Even more divisive was the fact that one party--”the Republicans”--has controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress since 2003. In a fifty-fifty country, shutting one party out of the government can only lead to partisan excess on one side and bitter resentment on the other.
Well, we'd like to get the Democrats some sort of representation, but they keep messing things up with their partisan, angry campaigns. And the Democrats for many, many years in the 1930s through the 1960s controlled both the presidency and both houses of Congress without it leading to a bitter divide. Of course, part of that was that the Republicans of that era tended to accept their status as a minority party, while the Democrats still insist that they're relevant.
But overall, this is a thoughtful, intelligent analysis of the political/cultural scene today with only a few real blind spots.
