There’s something about this current election cycle that feels disjointed. We’re entering the part where the horse race becomes real, but it still feels as if the parties are running on two completely separate tracks.
I’m obviously not the only one meditating on how the country got so divided. In the middle of our nation’s most stage-managed political event, our President sounded a note that rang with an almost wistful honesty:
“A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country — different regions, different attitudes, different interests. That’s one of our strengths, too. Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, fiercely, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and the imperatives of security.
But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice. It doesn’t work if we think that our political opponents are unpatriotic or trying to weaken America. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise, or when even basic facts are contested, or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest.
Too many Americans feel that way right now. It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.”
-President Barack Obama, State of the Union 2016
It’s hard to tell if that statement is supposed to be a revelation or a reminder. In it, I hear the echoes of this moment, one of the most unintentionally revealing of Obama’s first presidential campaign:
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
-Candidate Barack Obama, April 2008
At the time, Clinton blasted Obama for being elitist and out of touch. Today, we have the absurdist spectacle of an elitist and out of touch billionaire tapping into the same frustrations that so rankled Obama, even in his “Yes, We Can!” phase. This piece from Janell Ross traces the persistence of that particular strain of voter anger, particularly among economically struggling white men.
Last night, someone asked me to explain what a “chip on your shoulder” means. Applied broadly, it means this: We’re all spoiling for a fight. There are a lot of people in this country who feel entitled to power, as if their birthright to the American dream has been stolen by those they feel have no claim. There are just as many people in this country who feel shut out from power, as if the American dream has become a jealously guarded trophy, shiny enough to remain tempting, but forever out of reach.
That leaves me wondering when the reality check will hit. Past the seemingly interminable primary phase, when we finally have two nominees facing each other for the right to call themselves the Leader of the Free World, will one of them finally admit that the real issue is too many citizens don’t feel free? Income inequality isn’t a buzzword of the left; it’s a destructive reality. Security concerns aren’t a scare tactic of the right; they’re the inevitable consequence of a world in which force and fear too often rule.
There’s a middle ground. The question is whether or not anyone is willing to occupy it.
We could turn our national politics into a game of trench warfare, secure behind the battlements of untested assumptions about the way the Other behaves. The trouble is all those assumptions are barbed. Battling your way past them requires the courage to stand, bleeding, in no man’s land, accepting that you don’t have the answers.
Not that many politicians have that kind of courage. That’s natural – we don’t look for doubt from our leaders. Humility, on the other hand, might be achievable. I’d settle for an acknowledgment of complexity. Us vs. them isn’t a dichotomy that is capable of moving our country forward. It’s time both parties recognized that.
Elizabeth DeOrnellas 