Читать книгу American Presidential Elections in a Comparative Perspective - Группа авторов - Страница 17

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Walter Dean Burnham asserted that four primary characteristics had come to define the fundamental structure upon which the American political system stands: the decline of political parties as organizations of collective action, the emergence of the mass media as organizers of political campaigns, the professionalization of congress that enables the constant reelection of incumbents, and divided government. Burnham argued that the United States is in an interregnum state, a state in which public policy is disassociated from any based of popular support predominates.⁸⁴ Today the United States is experiencing the exacerbation of the political tendencies highlighted by Burnham more than two decades ago.

In the 2016 presidential election, the candidates once again distanced themselves from their political parties. Candidate-centered politics dominated the election. The candidates, not the parties, were the election’s main protagonists.⁸⁵ Trump used his own money to finance his presidential campaign, as Ross Perot had in 1992. However, whereas Ross Perot bought prime time television ads, Trump did not have to do the same: the media was happy to give him plenty of free airtime. When Hillary Clinton was paying 651 staffers in the final week of June 2016, Trump was only paying 68.⁸⁶ Rich people invested millions of dollars in both sides of the election, hoping to influence public policy according to their interests. American institutions facilitated this development. Citizens United, heard by the Supreme Court in 2010, allows the unlimited injection of money into the political process. Super PACs have become the preferred vehicle for pumping interested money into campaigns.

Being reelected to Congress seems quite easy these days. In the election of 1986, 1988, 2000, and 2004, 98 percent of House members were reelected. The 2016 election fell behind by just one point, with a reelection rate in the House of 97 percent. At the same time, Americans are not happy with the Congress they have. According to a poll conducted by Gallup from February 3 to 7, 2016, only 14 percent of those surveyed approve the behavior of Congress, while 81 percent reject it. After eight months of the Trump administration, the figures are similar. In a Gallup Poll conducted from August 2 to 6, 2017, 16 percent approved of the way Congress is performing its job while 79 percent disapproved.⁸⁷ Many feel that Congress has become a boxing ring in which the main priority of parties is to oppose each other rather than to search for consensus and create legislation. Political parties in congress privilege obstructionism, and the filibuster is increasingly used to delay or cancel debates and votes on legislation.

In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller was the last liberal contender for the nomination of the Republican Party. Since then, polarization has grown significantly in the United States. In January 2017, Gallup revealed that in 2016, 15 percent of Democrats declared themselves conservative, 40 percent moderates, and 44 percent liberals. The Republican Party showed a more conservative tendency, only 7 percent identified as liberals, 30 percent as moderates, and 63 percent as conservatives.⁸⁸ As Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Pool, and Howard Rosenthal have asserted, “conservative and liberal have become almost perfect synonymous for Republican and Democrat.”⁸⁹ These numbers do not capture the complexity of US polarization. In a country with increasing ethnic diversity, polarization is manifested not only in ideological terms but also regards to social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights; racial issues; health care; economic inequality; and the size and role of government. The South, a bastion of the Democratic Party since the New Deal Era when Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued the region with programs such as the Tennessee Valley Administration, is today a stronghold of the Republican Party.

Party polarization is not equally evident in the two political parties. The tendency to move away from the center is more evident in the Republican Party. The conservative base of the Party has become more conservative over the years, increasingly moving the party to the right of the ideological spectrum. Today, Bob Dole seems progressive when compared to Ted Cruz or ultra-conservatives in the “Tea Party.” Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, or Michael Novak were intellectuals who thought deeply about social, political, and international issues. These views have nothing in common with the superficial commentary of people like Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly.

Today, the Republican Party has welcomed the radical right. In the late 1970s, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab argued that radical right movements were fringe organizations that did not threaten American democracy. More than forty years later, the story is different: some radical right groups are no longer fringe movements. They are active political organizations that flirt with the Republican Party, menacing the health of American democracy. This is surely part of what Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson have in mind when they argue that party polarization is “unequal between Democrats and Republicans, unequal in its effects on the governing aims of liberals and conservatives, and unequal in its effects on American society.”⁹⁰

In addition to polarization, two particular aspects of the United States’ political system have attracted the attention of people in other countries. First is the length of American electoral cycle when compared to that of other countries such as Britain, where the longest election lasted thirty-seven days. The second is the complexity of the Electoral College system with its primaries and caucuses, and especially the role it plays in the selection of the president. The fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by almost 2.9 million but lost in the Electoral College generated major confusion in many countries. Many see the Electoral College as an anomaly or an antidemocratic incongruity that lies at the heart of the oldest modern democracy of the world. Professor Webb sustains that American’s Electoral College is a “system that continues to bamboozle many Britons despite the best efforts of the media to explain it.” The Brazilian press continues to debate the American electoral system. Citing the views of scholars in the United States, Brazilian media outlets have maintained that the Electoral College breaks down an important rule of any democratic system, “the notion of one person, one vote.” The indirect system,” one article argued, citing Douglas McAdam, a Stanford sociologist, “weakens the principle of political equality.”⁹¹ Stephanie Le Bars writing for Le Monde argues that the Electoral College “appears to many as a betrayal of the democratic principles of direct elections: ‘a man, a voice.’” She wonders why one of the “most solid democracies in the world is electing its president by indirect vote.” She explains the historical reasons the Founding Fathers had for establishing this institution and cites Texas A&M Professor George C. Edwards III who asserts that “this system is intolerable in a democracy. It violates political equality because not all voices are equal.” Le Bars highlights several arguments against the Electoral College, including President Trump’s, but concludes that it is “likely that the system will dominate the next election.”⁹²

In a country in which much of the media does not inform but rather sells sensationalism; in a world in which facts are not fact but fake news; in a world in which income inequality is egregious and growing; in a land in which rich people are influential and the poor are often ignored; in a republic in which money floods elections, making electoral competition uneven; in a nation in which political parties have little control over the electoral process, giving the candidates the freedom to lead and create outrageous campaigns; in an environment in which activists with extremists ideological principles can play an important role in or outside parties; in a polarized political system in which politicians have little incentive to negotiate; in a state in which institutions have difficulty creating real, durable links between civil society and the state; in a country in which the majority cannot rule and the president exercise his power via executive orders; in a nation in which political diversity has substantially expanded, changing the shape of the United States’ social fabric, provoking conflicts between the growing minorities and the majority; and a faltering political system that permit the election of an antagonizing figure who flirts with the far right, American democracy is at risk at home and abroad.