Essay #4

This essay is the fourth (and last) in my series of possible future histories, and I expect it will be the briefest. Most premises have been explored, and the effects of most causes predicted. In Essay #1, I argued that the Clinton-Bush “era” will not be remembered as such, but simply as a continuation of bipolar national politics, with essentially no change. In Essay #2, I presented a case for an era of Republican ascendancy, and in Essay #3 I laid out one way the Democrats could reverse that trend and put themselves in power.

Essay #1 made, I think, faulty assumptions of parity. As shown in the next two essays, the country has generally tilted strongly one way or the other, at least in Washington. All of American history from Jefferson to Reagan can be neatly split into three eras – two Democratic and one Republican. Since this type of theme can only truly be seen in hindsight, I posed two distinct possibilities of how the next few decades could shape up (and thus how the current time will be considered by history).

A reader may ask, Why the obsession with ‘future history’? Isn’t everything that happens history, and everything that doesn’t happen imagination? The answer to these questions is of course yes, in a factual sense. But consider President Woodrow Wilson. He was only the second Democrat elected president since the Civil War, and he only won because Roosevelt and Taft split the vote. History remembers him as one of the most progressive and intellectual presidents ever – a man so far ahead of his time that he failed to engage those of his own time. Imagine how different Wilson would be portrayed by history if his ideas had truly caught on, if the League of Nations had been successful in preventing a Great Depression and a Second World War; if Wilson, not FDR, had been the Democrat to revolutionize American polity and create a new world order under American hegemony.

President Bush faces an enormous question mark on the pages of future history. The success of the Iraq adventure is his biggest uncertainty, but the question these essays have sought to answer is how his two elections will be remembered and of what trends they are indicative.

Here We Go Again

Much has been made of “blue” and “red” America. As much as this is an exaggeration created by the cute maps they have on network television, there is an underlying reality of increased polarization by both left and right. The “bell curve” of American polarity has been stretched and flattened in the last twenty or thirty years, denoting that the right is moving further right and the left is moving further left.

This trend, it can be reasonably expected, will self-perpetuate to a degree, as young people find themselves forced to choose between two ever-more-sharply differing worldviews and align themselves more firmly and earlier than did previous generations of voters. Moreover, there is not yet seen any counter-culture of depoliticization that could (and probably eventually will) end this trend. However, as long as we see deeper polarization in the electorate, we can expect to see deeper rifts in Washington, more pronounced policy swings when power changes hands, and tougher fights over everything from spending bills to judicial appointments.

The “Bush-Clinton Era” will be remembered as the beginning of a half-century or more of increased geographical polarity, to a degree not seen since the 19th century. The Bible Belt will become more and more Republican – not only voting that way in presidential elections, but electing state and local officials on party lines as well. The coasts and big cities will move the other way, ousting Republican governors (as New Hampshire did this year) and putting state legislatures in the hands of liberals.

For the Republican Party, this new alignment began as far back as Barry Goldwater. Whereas Eisenhower was put in place by the traditional “Eastern Establishment” of the G.O.P., Goldwater – and then Nixon and Reagan – bucked the Easterners in favor of a more robust, outspoken, Western Republicanism. Since then, the Christian Right has joined the Republican fold, making it a tough, unified coalition with a coherent set of objectives. The Democrats, as shown previously, are behind the times. By losing candidates’ home states of Tennessee and North Carolina during the last two elections, they have been forced to give up entirely on the South. However, even in a clearly won election in a Republican’s favor, the Democrats found new strength in their established areas. New Hampshire switched to Blue, and the Dems are coming to believe they truly have a replacement for the old “Solid South”.

So what does the future hold? On the presidential level, the results may look much like those from Essay #1. The president will be the man with the best personality and leadership skills and will be elected based on his own merits, as has been the case since World War II. Dig a little deeper, though, and the differences emerge. This is no longer “business as usual” – instead we will see a geographically divided legislature, and at least 40% of the country will hate the president at all times. Third parties will wield disproportionate power by operating in smaller and smaller margins. One party or the other may take a chokehold on the House or Senate (or both) and not let go for years, but it will not represent a mandate so much as a margin. Redistricting will become as important as Supreme Court nominations, and constitutional amendments will become a thing of the past.

Conservative Democrats – a la Zell Miller – are already extinct. Liberal Republicans, such as Arlen Specter and Jim Jeffords, are being slowly phased out. We might as well start carrying color-coded identity cards as well, because you’ll know when you go to a bar whether it’s “red” or “blue”, and your church, your community association, your town government, and even your family will be firmly in one camp or the other, and increasingly intolerant of dissent. It’s a bleak picture, but it’s by no means a new one. Humans have been aligning and realigning themselves over pedantia since the beginning of time.

Here we go again.