Why The Great Divide?

In news today…my foundation bottle slipped out of my hand, fell to the bottom of the sink, and shattered…the metro trains were running late…I looked the wrong way crossing the street because part of my subconscious still exists in England-tube-land… I ran various errands and learned new office skills…a guy armed with various weapons wandered around the Capitol a few hundred feet below where I work…I ran into Jared, the ward organist, on the metro and chatted pleasantly...

This concludes your Carrie-ticker for today. Now for your regularly scheduled analysis of political events.

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"Are you a Democrat, or a Republican?"
"--Oh! You claim you’re independent. Then let me modify the question slightly. Do you lean liberal, or conservative?"

And thus begins endless threads of conversation – whether at work, public events, meeting friends, or vetting dating prospects, we Americans love the topic. Ahh, politics. That one controversial subject which every etiquette event counsels you to never bring up in polite discourse, but always surfaces anyway. With every media outlet updating us hourly on the presidential primaries, lets face it, the subject is unavoidable.

What fascinates me about these everyday conversations, however, is the strict dichotomy which exists between the reality of the discussions, and the entrenched fantasies of the ideologies. From all sides, we tend to come to this conclusion that the Democrats and Republicans are two fundamentally different institutions, with completely different demographic coalitions, engaged in an eternal clash of ideologies. (Does this rhetoric sound familiar?) With this, we make broad sweeping statements, like my own from a few days ago: “No matter who they choose, the Republicans hardly stand a chance in November.” Pundits analyze the total numbers of each side represented in Congress, convinced that alone will predict the outcome of various bills. Then, when in times of crises, the parties actually work together – like the famous Gang of 14 which prevented the nuclear option – the media acts as if this is an olive branch, a surrender, a capitulation on all the rhetorical intolerance these parties stood for (a la Colbert) by actually (gasp!) compromising.

But, as your personal lives demonstrate every day, this perception is undeniably false. In classes, church, and work, we’re surrounded by people with different political views. So we discuss them, sometimes getting slightly heated, but not so much that we don’t fetch dinner afterwards and gossip about our dating lives.

In fact, I think college students would almost-universally acknowledge (well, universally in political terms, meaning, more than 55% of the voting population) that such diversity of opinion is good for us. In classes we get variously annoyed with the extremes of either side, including our own (particularly when they don’t know how to be quiet), and entertained (when they offer Ron Paul-esque sound bites). But as the Michigan Affirmative Action case acknowledged, the sheer variance of background, experience, opinion, etc. benefits educational environments. It’s how we’re all supposed to be classically trained in debate – start with your own arguments, then conduct in-depth research as to your opposition’s arguments, then use those to come up with even better counter-arguments, until you’re strategy is almost impeccable. Then, once you have it worked out in theory, try it out on someone real, and see where you start to fall apart. It’s how corporate spokesman prepare for presentations, why peer-reviewed science journals mean so much, even how my political thought class last semester demanded I write essays.

If you want true opposition in government, go fly across the pond (perhaps not right now – the delays at Heathrow could inhibit a joyful experience) and walk the grounds of Parliament. Parties sit on opposite sides of the chambers, all offices switch when new majorities form, and cabinet and shadow ministers verbally duke it out in front of the speaker, surrounded by heckling from the green benches. Party loyalty is strictly enforced, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. But even there, in cafes and corridors, acquaintances and alliances across the divide begin to form.

As “broken” as our current candidates may think Washington is, it’s really not –that– horrendous. (I also say this after only a week’s experience, so I reserve the right to reverse my opinion at a later date). In fact, in the major branches of government, the Supreme Court appears to know how to work around their divisions fairly effectively, even though they’re clearly there. Members of the Senate have offices spread across three buildings, but not in any sort of party order. I could walk upstairs and around the corner to Obama’s office if I wanted, into an office much closer to Lugar and Brownback than Bayh. Different offices, different parties – they’re in contact all the time, cosponsoring important legislation. As I was somewhat surprised to discover two years ago while writing a paper, but have since realized is far more common than expected, the now-controversial Real ID illegal immigration act from a few years ago? It passed the Senate 100-0.

So here is my fundamental question: why has the White House not gotten the memo? (I know! It overwrote the email archives that contained it!) And I’m not just talking about Bush’s already lame duck administration, I mean the entire executive branch, spanning the past several decades. Somehow, in this branch, passionate devotion to one ideology, plus some minimal intelligence and experience, is the only qualification necessary to serve. Does anyone not realize how much groupthink this fosters? How rapidly down an undesirable path it takes the country? Whatever happened to the idea of actually critically examining the opposition for their valid points? Then discussing the issues with them in depth? I'm not saying the executive branch is alone in this selective blindness -- other people and groups certainly can be -- but at least the Courts and Congress are forced to interact with each other and hear alternate opinions on the floor. The White House has the "luxury" of avoiding almost all of that if it so chooses.

The Bush administration, in the words of more experienced people than I can count, has decided to exist within a bubble. It refuses to talk to those who could help them, like, say, tenured professors of Middle East studies at top-notch research universities because those people might have a liberal bias and want to thwart plans in Iraq. When members within the party try to offer some straight talk – including Colin Powell – they find themselves forced out of positions of influence. At all levels of plebeian life and politics, America can look beyond differences to work together in peace. But at the top of one of our most important institutions, the Republican vanguard won’t even speak with suspected Democrats.

We need to find a way of applying James Madison’s vision of “ambition made to counteract ambition” to the executive branch. His ideals have worked fairly well in bringing a moderating influence to the legislative bodies – thus avoiding extremes and tyrannical majorities, creating the best overall course for the country. Now I wish I could pass some sort of act saying “there must be opposition in all things, (including the President’s personal advisors), else happiness could not be brought to pass!”

For this reason, more than any other, I think the top attribute I want in my next president is to appoint a few, just an eensy few, respectable people with different political thoughts to his (or her, I apologize for the lack of a singular third-person gender-neutral pronoun) Cabinet. They can even be from his same party, just traditionally leaned toward the other side.

Today, I stumbled across a few articles in the papers that illustrated my point. To begin with, the celebrity crush of my life, Reza Aslan, wrote a piece for the Washington Post on how unqualified Obama is to handle Middle East crises. To a large extent I agree. But, I don’t entirely think that will sway voters – not when Obama’s message of post-partisanship politics is gaining such traction. One source today reported on Obama’s eyeing some traditional red states out West to tilt the balance in his favor, saying “the Obama camp is currently implementing a plan to attract Mormon Moderate Republicans to their camp as a second choice to Romney, assuming he doesn't get the Republican nomination.” This doesn’t strike me as crazy, because it’s almost exactly how I’ve been thinking. Romney may be swinging back into my radar, but for a while my favorite candidates have been McCain and/or Romney, followed by Obama. And based on conversations with friends, lots of young Republicans are thinking along the same lines.


The Washington Post today had a column discussing potential running mates once the contests solidify. I liked the analysis, and some of the propositions, particularly the idea of Barack Obama selecting Gen. Wesley Clark as his running mate. The idea practically made me drool. I don’t care who the Republicans put up at that point – if that’s the ticket, I’m voting Democratic, no questions asked. And yes, that’s a completely biased decision because I had dinner with Wesley Clark and then two other friends and I chatted by ourselves with him for 15 minutes after his speech. But hey, in my opinion, that’s just further evidence of my original point – that likability and friendships can transcend any ideological boundaries.

Of course, as Gail rightly pointed out, John McCain did talk to Cheryl at a campaign stop in Michigan and tell her she had beautiful children. So…I might be tempted to vote for McCain if he were the Republican opposition.

Ultimately, though, I believe in following the Alexander Hamilton principle of elections. Needing to break the Electoral and House of Representatives tie in 1800 between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson (thank you, defective constitution, and the 12th amendment which fixed said problems), he ultimately decided to vote for Jefferson because at least he was a man of character. Thomas Jefferson proceeded to effectively combine the Democratic and Republican names (well, sort of) -- could Obama, a similar man of character, do the same?