Where has the political middle gone?
The US political system is not perfect. Certainly,
we have our positives. We allow women and minorities to vote, the government
has a system of checks and balances and people actually get a say in their
leaders. It’s more than you can say for many countries, but it doesn’t mean
that we don’t have room for improvement. Our government and two-party voting system
is in need of a revamping if we want our country to continue being successful.
Over the course of history, the Democratic and Republican
parties have changed their voter base many times. No matter what the time
period, however, most voters struggle to some degree with choosing whom they
are voting for. Various movements have
sprung up throughout history to capture how these disenfranchised voters are
feeling, with the most recent movement being Mark McKinnon’s “No Labels”
movement. The dramatic changes of the demographics of both the Republican and
Democratic parties over time has led to increased polarization within the
two-party system and by analyzing the No Labels movement, it is possible to see
what can be done to combat the problem.
The point the
Democrats and Republicans are at now is a result of a series of party changes
that have occurred over the span of our political history. Looking back in
time, it is possible to see how much these parties have changed
demographically.
A typical Republican
voter in the 19th century was northern
Protestants (and any blacks who were allowed to vote). It was founded as a
North-only party. The North was known for its liberal politics and they
were not typically slave states. These states stayed with the Union during the
Civil War and were viewed as extremely progressive by the Democratic Party's base, sometimes united but sometimes deeply
divided, that consisted of white Southerners and big-city Catholics. Things
started changing dramatically for the demographics of both parties during the
1960s. Blacks since 1964 have voted
about 90% Democratic while the biggest partisan shift for Republicans was among
white Southerners. The Democrats are now known as a much more diverse
party, while the Republicans still hold the majority of southern states today.
Through these voter changes, it is clear that the Republicans and Democrats
have changed their philosophies over the years and have essentially flipped the
demographic groups they cater to.
Catering to these
specific groups, however, is what has polarized the Republican and Democratic
parties in the first place. By focusing on policies that only these groups will
vote for, they isolate groups that are on the fringe. Groups on the fringe
would be people who aren’t in one of the majority categories or the remaining
percentage (i.e. the 10% of Blacks voting Republican) of the majority voters in
the parties. Focusing on these groups, however, isn’t the main reason why the
two-party system is failing us. It’s the lack of SUCCESSFUL movements that
incorporate moderate viewpoints that have put voters at a disadvantage.
The most recent
attempt at moving people towards the center and incorporating moderate
viewpoints is Mark McKinnon’s “No Labels” movement. The movement was started by
“the politically homeless” and
includes members from both major political parties, including former Hillary Rodham Clinton adviser Kiki
McLean and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum. The movement is
focused on the issues of elections, not which candidate belongs to each party.
Their mission states that their movement is "about people around the country standing up and saying what is
acceptable, who don't want to live in the extremes, who want leaders who put
solutions first."
While the movement
started out as the “No Labels” Party, it has since switched to the problem of
GOVERNMENT, not the electoral system. The electoral system, which allows for
two parties, is too big of an animal to be fixed right now but they hope that
changes to government will help to make it possible for a moderate candidate to
run and win for President one day.
To help fix the
government, No Labels has come up with some solutions to the problem of
increasing polarity of the parties. Their current campaign is called “Make the
Presidency Work!” and is an 11-step program to make the presidency more
successful and make it more moderate. The
idea is to cut through some of the institutional obstacles to decisive
leadership that have challenged President Obama and his recent predecessors. It
is clear that although the No Labels movement seeks to lessen the impact of the
two-party system that they are also aware that it is quite a lofty goal. So, in
the meantime, here are some of their solutions on how to make government more
bipartisan.
Some of the best
features of this plan include:
-hold monthly news conferences and twice-a-year
citizen news conferences
-meet quarterly with the Congressional
leadership of both parties
-submit to 90-minute question-and-answer
sessions each month on the floors of Congress
These three points
will most definitely make the President meet each party in the middle. As the
leader of the country, it is important to facilitate an open stream of dialogue
between both sides. Having required meetings between the leadership groups of
each party would force them to at least hear each others voices, since currently
in the news it seems that all they do is scream at each other.
Listening to each side
would also allow the President to come up with creative solutions. Two heads
are always better than one and having the chance to hear both parties and what
is important to them would ultimately lead to more compromise. Crossing party
lines often has to be done in order to solve a problem, so why fight it? Have
it be a built in responsibility of the President and people will just have to
learn to get along.
Involving citizens in
the process is also ideal because we are the people actually affected by all of
the decisions Congress makes. By having monthly news conferences, it allows
everyone to be informed of what is going on and would act as a status update.
The 90 minute Q&A also gives Congress members more interaction with the
President in order to help keep the lines of communication open.
For as many good ideas
as the No Labels campaign proposes, there are just as many bad ones. Among the
worst ideas:
-the president be given expanded authority to
send individual items in spending bills back to Congress for up-or-down votes.
-
allow the president to send legislation to Congress twice a year that could not
be amended but only approved or rejected
These are among the
worst ideas because they give the President even more power than he already
has. It degrades the foundation of checks and balances that our nation has run
on since our founding. The whole purpose of Congress is to be able to amend
legislation, and by taking that power away from them (even if it is just twice
a year), it is creating an unequal distribution of power. If the President
wanted to have that power, he should have been a Congressmen.
The suggestions also
allow the President to have more leeway regarding the spending bills. This is
not good at all because Republicans and Democrats have extremely different
views on government spending and economics. Having such a polarizing issue be
able to be controlled by the president, who would essentially be able to take
out parts of the spending bill that he doesn’t agree with to be sent back to
Congress, would give the more power to the two-party system. It goes along with
the power of appointing Supreme Court justices- if a president of a certain
party gets the opportunity to appoint any new judges, it risks tipping the tone
of the court to Republican or Democrat. It is not effective to give the
President yet another opportunity to be able to change the tone of government.
So, if after all that, we still have a
polarized system, what can we do? How can we use the foundation of the No
Labels movement to move politics towards the center?
First, it is important
that some of the ideals of the movement are put in place at the state level.
The movement was encouraged by the progress made by California and Florida
during the 2010 mid-term elections. California
became the third state to reform its primary elections so that the top two
vote-getters-regardless of party affiliation-advance to the general election. If
every state would enact legislation somewhat like this, we would be able to
move farther away form the two-party system and have elections focused more on
issues. It would bring a variety of candidates to offices at the state level,
making for a Congress that was more representative of the people. Florida also
made progress towards the center by approving
a constitutional amendment that requires voting districts to be drawn without
regard for party or incumbency. Redrawing the lines NOT based on party or
incumbency gives voters more of a say because it forces every vote to count. If
you aren’t drawing voting districts based on partisanship, there will be less automatic
wins for political parties.
What if every state
was to enact rules like California or Florida? Well, Washington would look like
it took a nice step towards the center. It is small little changes like this
that will allow the political scene to look less like an alligator-filled moat.
This alligator-filled moat is what allows people to continue
to feel isolated by the two-party system. For example, if you support Romney’s
tax plan but also support Obama’s stance on gay marriage, who do you vote for?
Many people in both the Republican and the Democratic party recognize the
conflicts people have, but no one has been able to successfully solve the
problem. Politicians who vote based on issue and do not vote within party lines
are rarely successful. As Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican who
worked with Democrats on financial reform was warned at a recent town-hall
meeting: "While you may raise your hand across the aisle ... we, the
people at the ballot box, will amputate it."
This exact attitude
towards moderate politicians is what needs to be fixed about the political
system. The extremists have their voice heard- why can’t people who have more
down-the-middle ideas also have their voices heard? It can be seen clearly
throughout the battle with health care and the debt deficit in the last few
presidencies that Republicans and Democrats have become more and more polarized
from each other. The Republicans threaten to repeal Obamacare and the Democrats
refuse to meet Republicans in the middle regarding tax cuts. Most moderate
politicians have been voted out of office or simply retired because they didn’t
want to put up the fight anymore. Don’t believe it? Look at Arlen Specter, a
former Republican who switched to the Democratic party in 2009 after being a
Republican since 1965. He had a firm spot as a moderate in the Senate but went
on to lose his reelection campaign in 2010. Others, such as the Blue Dog
coalition (named for their Republican values that have been “choked blue” by
Democratic ideals) have raised their hand to try to compromise across the aisle
only to have it “amputated” by the people at the ballot box.
While many of the
moderates were voted out of office, just as many have left office on their own
volition. Simply put, it became too much to continue putting up a fight. It is
the same reason why the majority people feel isolated by the political process.
According to a recent poll, 70 percent
of Americans would like Republicans in Congress to compromise with Obama and
congressional Democrats. It is a widespread issue that has only gotten
bigger as the presidential race is wrapping up and the Republican and
Democratic parties have evolved to a point where they barely even seem to be
coming from the same world.
It appears, however,
that this alligator-filled moat is what gets politicians elected. Look at Mitt
Romney for example. Mitt Romney started out his career as a very moderate
politician. On the issue of abortion, Romney was firmly pro-choice. While Republican candidates across the
country were rallying around Representative Newt Gingrich's "Contract With
America," Romney distanced himself from it. "If you want to get
something done in Washington," he said in a debate during the campaign,
"you don't end up picking teams with Republicans on one side and Democrats
on the other." During his presidential run in 2008 and now again in
2012, Romney made a shift to the right. He has now taken on a stringent
Republican platform, embracing the
party's anti-tax consensus, reversing his decades-long support for abortion
rights, and taking a much harder line on entitlement spending.
When you have a
presidential candidate who had to leave the center and run strictly within
their party lines, it is clear that you have a problem. It is clear that
moderates don’t get elected because they are considered “weak” by their party,
unpredictable and flighty. It is hard to rely on a moderate for a specific vote
because their votes depend on the ISSUES. And it is this lack of coherence that doomed the centrists.
Clearly, as seen by
Romney, it is impossible to be elected if you are a moderate. If you stray from
party lines, you will not be elected because you are seen as weak and without
an opinion. But as the No Labels campaign points out to us, a change in
government roles can be the solution.
The No Labels movement
is something that needs refining but overall is what we need to help solve the
problem of polarizing politics. Their ideas about forcing the President to
interact with both parties and allowing for more open communication between the
people and their leaders is exactly what we need to get people involved in
politics again and for them to not feel left out of the process. Changes need
to also be made to the electoral systems at a state level. As seen through the
examples of California and Florida, it is possible to make changes to those electoral
systems. It is a long time out before changes to state level electoral systems
fully affect the electoral system of the country but it is one of the steps
that needs to be taken. In order to have leadership representative of what
voters think about the ISSUES rather than what they think about the POLITICAL
PARTIES, we need these changes to be enacted.
Overall, politics are
polarizing and need to be drawn more to the middle. The solution to the problem
is slowly changing the electoral process while making positive changes to the
presidency that allow for more channels of communication to be open. Making
these changes will allow us to have a more inclusive political process and
allow for more work to be done in Washington that will ultimately benefit all
US citizens.
Works Cited
http://library.cqpress.com.libproxy.usc.edu/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2004043000&type=hitlist&num=66
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