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Parties Are Divided, Not Americans

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By DICK MEYER Special to the Los Angeles Times

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 29, 2008

As the nation's attention reluctantly turns to the political parties' conventions, with their scripted suspense and stage-managed sentiment, it is important to keep in mind that these are phony representations of American political life. But the slick video profiles, the teary appearance of a beloved party elder - these are not what is phoniest about the conventions.

This gathering of America's civic tribes - and the reporters who love them - in separate cities for days of synchronized cheering and jeering is the embodiment of a great American myth: that the nation is divided into "two Americas," polarized between "red" and "blue" camps that have fundamentally different values and moral outlooks. Each of the nominees will tell our allegedly divided country that he, and he alone, can manage to unite America for the next four years.

The idea that there is vast war over the moral and spiritual compass of the nation is a dramatic narrative, and it has dominated popular political analysis for nearly two decades. It makes for potent, inflammatory political commercials. It just doesn't have the added virtue of being true.

In 1991, a scholar at the University of Virginia named James Davison Hunter coined a term that has haunted us ever since in his provocative book, "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America." His argument was that America's history of religious pluralism had devolved into two antagonistic movements, one progressive and the other orthodox or fundamental. But Hunter also noted, "In truth, most Americans occupy a vast middle ground between the polarizing impulses of American culture." That was and remains the case.

But at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Pat Buchanan fired the phony war's first shot in anger. "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America," declared Buchanan in prime time. "It is a cultural war." The assembled media corps loved it. And red and blue bruises have distorted the American body politic ever since.

Poll after poll, focus group after focus group show that the vast majority of Americans - the Silent Majority, perhaps? - are pragmatic, independent and un-partisan in their basic views. They are eclectic: "liberal" on some matters, "conservative" on others. They are not slaves to that hobgoblin of small minds, consistency. On fundamental matters such as belief in equality for women and minorities, or how large a role religion and family play in individuals' lives, the consensus among voters is broad.

In his 2005 book, "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Stanford University political scientist Morris P. Fiorina showed that when you examine the actual views of Americans, "Voters are not deeply or bitterly divided." This held true even on the issues that are supposedly the most contentious: abortion, immigration and gun control. To analyze the most polarized recent presidential election, that of 2000, Fiorina divided the nation into Democratic-voting "blue" states and Republican-backing "red" ones - and found that voters in these supposedly warring camps had much in common. On immigration, for example, he found 41 percent of blue-state voters wanted it reduced, as did 43 percent of red-state voters; 43 percent of blue-state voters believed protecting the environment should trump protecting jobs, as did 42 percent of red-state voters. And 62 percent of voters in red and blue states believed that Americans should tolerate each other's moral views. Fiorina also has found that these patterns held through the 2004 election.

Extremists, however rare, are becoming more common and, importantly, more rabid. Still, as a percentage of the total population, the extremist factions - right and left combined - remain a small slice, 6.6 percent. These civic slivers obsess disproportionately on whatever issues are most divisive at the moment, while the majority of voters stick with basic economic and national security concerns.

But they are not us. Americans are a much more pragmatic, moderate and independent crowd.

Dick Meyer is the editorial director of Digital Media for National Public Radio and the author of "Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium."

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