NEW YORK, 3 December 2003 — Every weekday afternoon on CNN, a program called Crossfire pits a Democrat commentator against a Republican. In what passes for debate, they raise topical issues in rapid succession and bellow over each other in an attempt to score cheap points and earn applause from the studio audience.
The overriding impression is one of mayhem, machismo, bluster and braggadocio. The aim is not to win anyone over but to shout them down. Those who clap do so not because they have been convinced but because their views have been confirmed. A few years ago this would have resembled little more than a device for a knockabout show on a channel with more airtime than news. But with the presidential election less than a year away, Crossfire is beginning to serve as a metaphor for the state of US political discourse.
A nation riven between those who adore President Bush and those who abhor him is in no mood for reasoned discussion. Having rallied around the flag after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and then again (though less so) when the troops went to war, people are now retreating to their political affiliations. And all the indications are that they intend to stay there until polling day. The presidential elections of 2004 will be decided not by who can sway the center but rather who can shore up their base.
For every sign that some are desperate for regime change at home, there is proof that a similar number have undying faith in the president. In a recent Time CNN poll, 47 percent said they were likely to vote for George Bush and 48 percent said they would not; 79 percent of Republicans said they believed he was a president you could trust, 75 percent of Democrats said they thought he wasn’t; 68 percent of Democrats believed he had been “too quick to interject his own moral and religious beliefs into politics”, 67 percent of Republicans believed he hadn’t. Break down the response of almost any question along party lines and the nation appears irrevocably split — separate outlooks roughly equal in size.
“National unity was the initial response to the calamitous events of Sept. 11 2001,” argued the Pew Research Center in a report, The 2004 Political Landscape: Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized. “But that spirit has dissolved amid rising political polarization and anger. In fact, a year before the presidential election, American voters are once again seeing things largely through a partisan prism.”
And what is true in the polls is reflected in popular culture. Dude, Where’s My Country?, the latest book by the leftwing polemicist Michael Moore, may be No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, but when it comes to children’s toys, the George W. Bush elite force aviator doll — a 30cm figure of Bush in the military garb he wore on the USS Lincoln when he declared the war was over - has set a sales record for collectible action figures on the KB Toys website.
It is a far cry from Bush’s inaugural speech, in the wake of Florida’s vote-counting debacle three years ago, when he pledged to “work to build a single nation” and “seek a common good”. Instead he has created divisions so deep that Americans take one look at him and, depending on their political persuasion, see two completely different people. Asked to describe Bush, Republicans were most likely to use the words “decisive”, “determined” and “strong”, while Democrats described him as “cocky”, “arrogant” and “boneheaded”.
This gulf is already having far-reaching political consequences. For if the two sides are evenly balanced, as it appears they will be, the election will be shaped as much by logistics as politics. There will be no equivalent to the Reagan Democrats or Clinton Republicans in this election - just voters who love Bush and voters who loathe him.
This explains the insurgent success of the former Vermont governor Howard Dean in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination. His anti-war stance and promise to reverse tax cuts were initially dismissed as alienating to swing voters. But as the political landscape becomes ever more polarized, the issue is not whether you can influence the doubters (who are dwindling) but whether you can energize the devout (who are growing).
Dean has benefited not just from the rage that Democrats harbor against Bush’s excesses, but from the frustration at their own party’s inability to effectively challenge them in Congress. In order to run against the president, he must first run against the Democrats’ party establishment.
Bush faces a different dilemma. With the ban on partial-birth abortions, a hawkish foreign policy and extensive tax cuts, he has already motivated his base to vote for him. His primary desire now is to do as little as possible before election day to further antagonize the Democrats’ traditional supporters, who might otherwise stay at home.
The Medicare bill, passed with much arm-twisting last week, was aimed not at helping the elderly (by and large it won’t) but at neutralizing an issue where the Democrats do well, relating to an electorally important group (the elderly) who lean toward the Democrats.
Similarly, after backing a legal challenge to affirmative action in the supreme court, the White House has gone out of its way to look good to African-American voters.
In June, the administration banned federal law enforcement officers from racial profiling in routine police work. A month later Bush went to Africa and branded slavery “one of the greatest crimes of history”. He knows few black Americans will vote for him, but he hopes that, by appearing sensitive to their concerns, they will not vote against him.
For all the president’s efforts, however, the Democrats are making almost all the headway. The increasing financial and human costs of the war in Iraq, and the state of the economy (a statistical recovery without jobs will not help the Republicans), have sent Bush’s ratings into a four-month decline that shows few signs of reversing.
The trouble is, when it comes to logistics the Republicans win hands down. First, they have a candidate. The Democrats do not even have a clear frontrunner and will only get one after a bruising, costly, crowded battle likely to run at least into spring.
Second, the Republicans’ most loyal supporters — the Christian right — are far better organized, motivated and ideologically cohesive than those of the Democrats — African-Americans. Since the war the Democrats have won only one election —1964 — without needing black support.
Finally, and most importantly, the Republicans have far more money. The Democrats are talking about giving up on the South altogether (with the exception of Florida) because they can’t afford to fight in a region where they are unlikely to win any states.
Meanwhile, the Republicans have sufficient funds to talk about mounting a serious challenge in California - a state they have not won since 1988.
The good news for the Democrats is that the basic message, that Bush is doing the country more harm than good, is finally getting through. The bad news is that the next election will be decided less by who has the best message than who has the biggest megaphone, whether they know which direction to point it and whether anyone at the other end is listening. On all three counts, the Republicans are ahead.
