Republicans Today: The Choice Their Leaders Face

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In this kick-off conversation for 2018, I am asked to comment sympathetically on the current Republican Party in the United States of America. As one who in partisan elections frequently votes for GOP candidates and who for nearly forty years has worked or volunteered with Republicans, I seem a likely suspect.  I am pleased to take up this obligation, perhaps particularly now one year into the presidency of someone who only recently identified with the party, and whose primary voters nominated him against the considered judgement of nearly all the established party leadership.  One year into the presidency and after making progress on some traditional GOP issues, the party establishment has to decide whether to take new steps and adopt quite different trade and infrastructure ideas of the Trump agenda, or try to keep Trump voters attached to the party by more symbolic, and problematic, means.  

The charge to comment on “the current Republican Party in the United States” seems simple enough. In fact, it involves the layered structure of our governments, the separation of powers at most levels of those governments, the decentralized characteristics of American parties, and the division between established party leaders (those who hold elected office or whose profession is to perpetuate the party) and the pools of voter courted by party leaders.  This essay starts with my basic approach to American government and politics, as it shapes my expectations of American political parties and their leaders and voter pools. 

Friends and Foundations

First impressions influence lifetime party affiliations. I was raised in rural western Michigan in the ‘60s and ‘70s, in a Reformed Christian farm family that was active in community life through church, non-profit and public schools affairs.  As engaged citizens, we sometimes met and befriended local partisan elected officials, nearly all of whom were Republicans, and who seemed to serve admirably and faithfully. As a Hope College undergraduate in the late ‘70s, I first encountered the Institute for Christian Studies, and soon the work of the Association for Public Justice. Both sources provided rich resources to think about Christianity, government and political parties as I moved to Washington, D.C. in 1980 and started a 15-year career as a Republican Capitol Hill staff person. A part-time graduate student, I finished seminary in 1984 and started at the Catholic University of America, concentrating on American government but also taking courses in political theory. 

Readings in and out of classrooms introduced me to subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty, shaping my Christian perspective on politics. It also reinforced my Republican views, however uncomfortable some of the GOP’s leaders and positions were to me. As many readers know, sphere sovereignty claims that each sphere of life has distinct responsibilities, authority and competence, standing equal to other spheres and in direct responsibility to God. An all-encompassing God-created order includes topical task-oriented communities, such as those for education, worship, civil justice, economy and labor, marriage and family, and artistic expression. No one area is sovereign over another. Particularly, neither institutions of faith (e.g. churches) nor civil justice (i.e. governments) has any particular superiority. Rather, the main job of each level or branch of government, and government as a whole, is to protect the boundaries among the spheres. It is as if government is the internal and external walls of a home, and the really important work happens within the house’s many rooms, each room more or less authoritative over what happens in it. In a complementary way, subsidiarity argues that the most local competent authority best handles matters of public concern. It has thick notions of human responsibility and sociability. Localized institutions such as the family, church, and voluntary associations link and empower individuals, and assigning duties to them fulfills their callings.

The Christian notions of sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity have a variety of government applications, particularly the American version. Both limit government (as well as church) reach, fitting well with American federalism and separation of powers. Based on Christian insights into the nature of human possibility and sin, they serve as strategic guides to maximize well-being while minimizing sin, the latter particularly prone to large institutions such as the church and state organized and operated by well-meaning but still fallen individuals.

These two streams of Christian political thought shaped my views of both the limits and possibilities of government and of Christians operating within it. My major takeaways were that government has a limited role, the church has little special insight, and that the real moral activities of life were outside of the church or the state, and in the spheres (or rooms, in my house analogy of above), and not in the boundaries between the spheres. Governments and Christians should respect both localism and human responsibility and dignity.  

Recent Republican Established Leaders and Voter Pools

The separated and federalized American government is hard to coordinate. This problem quickly generated political parties in the republic’s early years to both accommodate and overcome these limits. Established office holders wanted broader public participation in elections to validate policy ideas. Mass political parties connected a more diverse pool of people to political activity, and socialized them into constructive government and electoral engagement. Parties encourage voting and other political acts, develop skills in helping people balance conviction and compromise to achieve public goals, and legitimate peaceful change in holding, monitoring and honoring the results of elections. The overwhelming pragmatism and constant changeability of the two major American political parties is both frustrating (and annoying to those with moral certainty) and key to their continued relevance.

The two national political parties, Democratic and Republican, are structured and led a bit differently from each other, but still each are federations of state parties held together by a few common and often vague principles and interests. Each divided by geography, ideology, class, and other ways, the party federations unite every four years to select presidential candidates. The high profile of presidential contests exaggerates party unity. In fact, party coalitions shift, sometimes quickly and drastically, particularly if party professionals despair of attaining governing majorities. 

Today’s Republican Party is entering a new phase of efforts begun in the 1970s by its leadership at the time to reverse what was clear minority status by courting non-urban and disproportionally southern former Democratic voters. Progress since then, as measured in electoral results, has been intermittent but impressive. The GOP has moved since then from obvious minority status to at least parity, partly from its own intentions and partly from the strategic counter moves of the Democratic Party.

A brief party history illustrates. Since its founding in the late 1850s, a mostly consistent GOP theme has been individualism. Founded largely to oppose American slavery and early on supporting women’s suffrage, Republicans encouraged Prohibition, aided individualized Protestantism over the hierarchical Catholic Church, and blessed government “nudges” to create private wealth over against more redistributive ideas. At times in its first seventy years the GOP was progressive, such as when it advanced abolition and women’s suffrage and led electioneering reforms.  Since the 1920s, however, the national GOP has been usually the more conservative party, resisting government encroachments on local governments, private activity, and charitable and religious institutions. In terms of social class, at least until the 1970s Republican support came largely from the upper middle class and above, and corporate and financial interests, as the party’s leaders generally favored freer economic markets and less government intervention in business. The Northeast, Midwest, and Plains were historic GOP strongholds, with the South and most of the nation’s major cities more Democratic. 

Today’s new dynamic began in the mid-1960s, when LBJ and the national Democratic Party leadership chose to use their large congressional majorities to expand the limited New Deal welfare state into a more ambitious Great Society and to advance voting rights for African Americans. Originally strongly supportive of some of these items, particularly African-American voting rights, the GOP’s establishment by the late 1960s began to see a counter opportunity in a “suburban strategy” that might be particularly effective in the Democrats’ previously “Solid South.” The three themes of the suburban strategy were: 1) a strong military (defined by increasing spending on defense and veterans programs), 2) general economic growth (defined by resistance to government regulation and support for global trade agreements without much compensation to displaced American labor), and 3) limits on the national government, articulated in support for religious liberty (defined by support for traditional religious faith expression and linked social issues such as private schools, traditional marriage and opposition to abortion) and invocations of the 2nd, 9th and 10th amendments.

The suburban strategy paid large dividends to Republicans, thanks in no small part to the Democratic Party’s own strategic moves, for quite some time. The “Reagan trinity” of economic, social and foreign policy conservatism in 1980 catapulted him into the White House and brought other strong GOP gains. The new president and Congress enacted the economic and military parts of the Reagan program—large defense spending hikes, smaller domestic spending growth, and major tax cuts. Despite lukewarm action on most conservative social issues and encountering some scandals, Reagan remained popular enough to pass on the presidency to George H.W. Bush, his vice president. The suburban strategy seemed successful. The twelve years of Republican presidents and more uniform GOP conservatism was adding more GOP support from the Solid South than the party was losing elsewhere. Conservatism and Republicanism became what Reagan presented—appreciation for free markets, muscular patriotic nationalism, and traditional reliance on self and locality rooted in religion.

Somewhat ironically, the GOP’s 1992 presidential loss cemented its new orthodoxy. Most party leaders blamed George H.W. Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton (with major help from Ross Perot) on insufficient fealty to the new conservatism, ignoring the equally plausible notion that the party failed to address the understandable economic concerns of those living in the GOP’s geographic and demographic targets. 

In the 1994 off-year elections, Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey convinced congressional Republicans to create a “Contract With America” of conservative and Perot-inspired populist ideas. Republicans reclaimed a Senate majority and gained a House majority for the first time in forty years. The congressional party won new Midwest, Border and Southern districts, and brought other pro-GOP changes to the larger political landscape.  State legislatures under full Republican control soared from eight to 19 (one more than the Democrats), and there were now 30 GOP governors.

By cold hard numbers, 1994 was an earthquake that released tension along a partisan fault line that through many election cycles had awarded more Democratic congressional seats than the generic vote proportion. National Republican leaders interpreted it in more ideological terms, claiming a public majority now embraced consistent conservatism. There was, however, only a brief spasm of conservative legislation, like welfare reform, and soon partisan parity returned to stay.

The 2000 election was a virtual tie, with George W. Bush winning just enough voters who seemed to ignore favorable economic conditions to punish Democrat Al Gore for Bill Clinton’s prior excesses. Party identification indicators changed little, and the GOP lost a handful of seats in both the House and Senate, retaining control of the latter body only with Vice-President Cheney’s vote. Four years later Bush narrowly won, but Republican decline after November 2004 was swift. Public discontent with a poorly executed Iraq War combined with a rash of congressional GOP scandals to result in large party losses in 2006. The timing of the Great Recession was ideal for Democrats in 2008, where relative newcomer Barack Obama won easily and his party bolstered two-year-old majorities in the House and Senate. The tables flipped quickly only two years later, as the new Tea Party movement, aroused by recession, corporate bailouts and passion surrounding passage of the new health care law, voted in 63 new House Republicans and narrowed sharply the Democrats’ Senate majority.

2016: Two Spent Parties
When narrowly compared to Democrats, the GOP’s suburban strategy was smart and successful. The party is at least equal to the once-dominant Democrats and plausibly the nation’s majority party. This myopic focus on the two parties, however, ignores the crisis of public confidence in our governing institutions. There is much data on this point, and I don’t think readers will challenge the long-range decline in party affiliation or trust and confidence in Congress, the presidency and the federal courts. Some of this mistrust comes from unrealistic public expectations, but much of the decline is justified.

The national government under both split and unified party control has failed its basic purposes to (paraphrasing the Constitution’s preamble) provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, or secure the blessings of liberty for this and following generations.  It has not made the nation feel more secure, as both party’s promises to end Iraq and Afghan wars or provide comprehensive immigration reform are delayed or discarded. It budgets irresponsibly, allowing debt to accumulate and burdening succeeding generations. It has not distinguished between liberty’s blessings, which include our economic and expressive freedoms, and liberty’s blind spot when it slides to license and allows the marginalization of groups perceived as outside the mainstream.

The establishments of both parties entered the 2016 election cycle largely ignoring these deeper crises. Although in vastly different ways, the Sanders and Trump insurgencies capitalized on them.  In the GOP, most leaders were optimistic about 2016 presidential prospects, seeing a strong field of more than a dozen reliables. Nevertheless, outsider Donald Trump took the opportunity he had long wished for and now saw.  He entered the GOP primaries with a very different style and platform. He took on each suburban-strategy plank, criticizing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, attacking as unfair the recent and pending global free trade agreements, and largely ignoring expected religious gestures while bottom-line pledging to appoint pro-life federal judges. Further distinguishing his candidacy, Trump’s immigration position was radioactive to party leaders and his call for huge infrastructure spending was more reminiscent of New Deal Democrats than a GOP whose Tea-Party infused Congress had just outlawed earmarks.   Intentionally or accidentally, Trump’s campaign showed how little street-cred much of the Reagan-era conservative trinity had by 2016 to even GOP primary voters. Muscular foreign policy had produced wars with no end games, free global trade had produced wealth for too few, and pietistic expressions had not reversed cultural decline. Trump poked the establishment in the eye, and promised tangible results. As difficult as it was for much of the established GOP leadership to accept, Trump drove Republican primary voter enthusiasm and successful crossover appeal by revealing the sagging credibility of the Reagan trinity, while his contrary policies and crude style drew support, attractively and offensively, from the same voter pools.

Trump’s successful candidacy pulled back the curtain hiding the chasm between a DC-based establishment and the real needs of its suburban strategy voters. Trump separated himself from the field by both style and position, building a slow momentum that did not stop.  Moreover, in the general election he had the great fortune of facing the Democratic nominee who best fit his critique.

The Forked Road Ahead

I conclude with the main presented question: to what extent do, or do not, the priorities and values of today’s Republican Party comport with Christian values. The short answers are, just as for Democrats, some do, some do not, and it depends on how one defines key terms. One thing Christians should acknowledge is that persons leading sovereign nations have a primary obligation to preserve, protect, and defend that nation. Leaders of churches should protect churches, leaders of universities should protect universities, leaders of enterprises should protect enterprises, leaders of families should protect families, and leaders of nations should protect nations. Christians can hope that political leaders engage with other nations respectfully and realistically, understanding both the possibilities and necessities of global cooperation on items of common concern, as well as the inevitable limits that nation-states will put on such cooperation. Christians can also hope, and perhaps expect and even loudly demand, that political leaders create and preserve political conditions so that Christians as individuals and in Christian organizations and institutions (and individuals and institutions of other faiths) can exist, survive, act, speak, grow and even flourish.  Christians should seek political leaders that allow even deep and lasting criticism of their actions by Christians, made on a Christian basis, and openly expressed as such.  

At least some Christians have in the past voted Republican, and of course can continue doing so. As for more substantive party engagement, President Trump has is some ways made it easier for Christians to influence the circles in which move today’s elected and professional GOP leadership.  In limited, probably unintentional, and sometimes offensive ways, the newcomer president has pointed out the meager substantive gains the Republican conservative trinity has brought for the targeted voter pool of former Democrats. He has at least offered material aid to these voters through promise of fairer trade deals and more infrastructure spending. Albeit in ways I would not choose, he has re-ignited an overdue debate over how the nation’s leaders should best carry out their number one priority in preserving and protecting the nation itself. Trumpism’s corrosive elements are already showing in pollster crosstabs and special election disappointments. Nevertheless, the unmasking of the substantive weaknesses of some of the GOP symbolism are things to work with. The party’s acceptance of the permanent constitutional structures of federalism and separation of powers as features, not bugs, also provide it practical advantages over Democrats. Christians willing to accept the depravity in others as much as they do in themselves have opportunities to help the GOP. We can nudge the party’s elected and professional elites to address all potential Republican voters, and all Americans, with greater substantive respect by eschewing racist, sexist and other demeaning messaging. We can push them to move beyond rhetoric to offering more substantive plans for a more plausibly secure homeland, a more thoroughly flourishing economy, and a more genuinely diverse and tolerant nation. 

The Spirit of the Parties

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American political parties are making a mess of democracy – or at least many citizens seem to think so. The percentage of Americans who view both major parties unfavorably has risen steadily for nearly two decades. Today, only a third say that the two parties adequately represent the public; sixty percent suggest a third party is a needed corrective. Public evaluations of party leadership in the U.S. Congress have reached record lows. As many as one-in-three party members have serious reservations about their own team.

And is it any wonder? Parties in government appear hopelessly divided and hampered by encrusted leadership; their legislative efforts are riddled with pointless gridlock and other dysfunctions; the ceaseless pursuit of money often blinds party elites to the needs of the rank-and-file. We could hope for change, but the odds are long. The reform-minded citizen faces a deck stacked with obstructions – gerrymandering, ballot and funding requirements, winner-take-all voting rules – that protect the party duopoly of Republicans and Democrats. We seem stuck with a system that channels diverse preferences to merely two alternatives, both of them subpar. It’s easy to be alienated by it all.

Yet amid the frustration with party elites and calls for reform, there is this curious fact about political parties: Most citizens identify with one. The Pew Research Center reports that at least two-thirds of registered voters are solid party identifiers; add in the “leaners” – people with an affinity for a party but a hesitancy to embrace the label – and the number surpasses ninety percent. Over 60 percent of all citizens identify with a party and most of the others say they are closer to one party than the other, according to the American National Election Study (ANES), the gold standard survey in political science. The ANES also finds that the proportion of citizens who strongly associate with a party has grown since the mid-1970s, a trend that went hand-in-hand, not coincidently, with a decline of weak partisans. The strongest party loyalists now comprise a third of the American public, roughly the same fraction as avowed independents. We hear a lot about a movement toward independence from parties. The data suggest a more complicated story.

We could take some comfort from that story. Parties are foundational to modern democracies – they link the electorate and elites, and they help bring order to governing – so in that sense it is heartening that parties retain some support of the public. But the story line changes when we look beneath the surface of party identification. Christians will catch a whiff of a problem by asking: In this political moment, do parties foster a vision for shalom? Do they embody civic practices that leave room for citizens to disagree on weighty issues and still walk away at peace with each other? In the language of this series, do they promote “respectful conversation” or “convicted civility”?

Perhaps these questions expect too much. Parties are built for competition, not reconciliation. They are designed to mobilize division. Still, I want to suggest that a seeker of shalom can in principle embrace party politics. Competing and highlighting political differences are not necessarily morally disqualifying. Perhaps some Christians even have a special calling to be salt and light as critical insiders within the parties. But it is surely a fraught vocation, especially considering how easily the mobilization of our differences can swerve into demonization of the other side.

And that’s where the recent story of American party politics takes a troubling turn. We often bemoan how ideology or policy preferences on hot-button issues push partisans apart, and indeed these are important concerns. But today’s most consequential divisions are more basic; they operate at the level of identity. Political scientists call this pattern affective polarization, a deep emotional resonance with a party – the “in-group” – and visceral reaction against the opposition – the out-group. Our partisan divide isn’t merely about liberals versus conservatives, pro-life versus pro-choice. Our lives as partisans have become downright tribal.

Parties have reason to keep it that way. The tactics of modern party politics – the microtargeted ads, the focus-group-tested candidates, the poll-driven policy posturing, and, above all, the identification of what – and whom – partisans ought not love – have been honed and deployed expertly in the past few decades, often in ways that we do not see. Christians have been major targets of those formative efforts, what we might call a partisan liturgy, borrowing language that my colleague James K.A. Smith adapts from Christian worship to describe any set of rituals that shapes our desires. The faithful should pause to wonder whether and how they’re caught up in those partisan practices. Are Christians engaging parties as critical insiders, advancing important goals while speaking out against the parties’ manifold problems? Or have they been co-opted by the rituals that shape partisan identity, succumbing to the instincts of the political tribe?

JOINING THE PARTY

Americans’ ambivalence about parties – the citizenry’s simultaneous distaste and embrace – puts them in esteemed company. When James Madison referenced the “mischiefs of faction” in his argument for constitutional ratification, he especially worried that unbridled democracy might let loose the scourge of majority parties. In his Farewell Address nearly a decade later, George Washington warned the fledging republic to avoid “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” A who’s who of revolutionaries and constitutional framers – Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams (both John and Abigail), among others – expressed similar sentiments.

By the end of the 18th century, however, many of the same elites had worked to form the mischievous factions they claimed to fear. By the presidential election of 1800, a party system – Federalists versus Jeffersonian Republicans (or Democratic-Republicans) – had taken root. Washington appeared prescient about that party “spirit.” These early parties (and their leaders, as Micah Watson discusses in his post in this series) were deeply divided and their political clashes were often venomous. But elites came to see the value of unifying organizations in a constitutional experiment designed to diffuse and fragment power.

Today, parties are a potent means to mobilize segmented groups under a relatively coherent umbrella of leaders and ideas. They serve as key “linkage institutions,” a way for elites to rally the electorate and for the electorate to influence elites. Parties also bring structure to decision-making in Congress and state legislatures, with their dozens – even hundreds – of individual members clamoring for the interests of their home districts. Moreover, while the majority rules the halls of power, the opposition has influence and legitimacy because it speaks with a collective voice. For these reasons, among many others, political scientists and theorists often insist that modern democracies, with their extended territories and diverse populations, could not thrive without the existence of political parties. To say that we are bedeviled by the mischiefs of Republicans and Democrats or saddled with tired political structures is not an argument that we should abandon parties altogether.

Yet what about all of that mischief? By using elections as a springboard for control, parties are democracy’s unlikely partner. They are built to compete for blocs of voters, which is another way of saying they are designed to divide the body politic into a small range of groups that are easier to identify, target, segment, and mobilize. In the process parties sharpen and amplify differences, real or imagined, with the goal of presenting stark contrasts among alternatives. The formation of a partisan entails both ascent and rejection. Parties thrive not only when you know where you belong; they also want to remind you that you don’t belong somewhere else. The wider the chasm between your group and “theirs” – the greater the group polarization – the deeper and more durable your identification with the group.

Political scientists disagree about the precise causes and effects of partisan differences. Many have argued that the gaps are largely about ideology and policy preference, often intensified by citizens’ political interest, class, race, or geographical location. Others suggest that while elites in Congress or state legislatures are indeed polarized along ideological and policy lines, ordinary citizens are far less divided. Still others insist that Congress hasn’t technically polarized at all: It’s merely re-sorted by ideology, such that New England liberal Republicans have jumped to the Democrats and conservative Democrats from the South have switched to the Republicans. On this account, the rank-and-file only look polarized because they are channeled to two options that are.

But there is another way to look at partisan division. In fact, this approach – what I introduced earlier as affective polarization – treats ideology and policy views as largely derivative, a reflection of deeper and more visceral emotional attachments to political groups. In Democracy for Realists, political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels show that, contrary to our “folk theories” of democratic citizenship, citizens rarely survey the landscape of ideologies and policy preferences, conduct a well-informed cost-benefit analysis, and make a choice to join groups that align most closely with the result of their calculus. They start with group attachments that fundamentally shape how they understand and act toward political ideas and institutions. Much of our political thinking isn’t rational; it’s a rationalization. Scholars often compare the phenomenon to sports loyalists. Very few of us give our loyalty to the team most likely to “maximize our expected utility,” determined after consideration of metrics in a spreadsheet. We generally come to that loyalty as a family inheritance, a passing down of a commitment that we didn’t choose.

Political loyalties take shape in a similar way, but they cut deeper into our evaluations of others. Shanto Iyengar and his team at Stanford’s Political Communication Lab, for example, ran several experiments to investigate implicit attitudes that partisans have about their political rivals. If mere ideology or policy views were the bases of inter-group attitudes, partisans would simply describe the opposition as wrongheaded. But instead partisans overwhelmingly label their opponents as untrustworthy, immoral, and dangerously threatening. The researchers also noted that the negative evaluations across partisan lines were more intense than attitudes across other identity groups (e.g., race, gender, or religion). It’s a result corroborated in other studies that use “feeling thermometers” to gauge a person’s emotional response to specific groups. The “warmth” gap between partisans is higher than any other set of groups. This is partisan tribalism, the translation of in-group identity into a marker of human worth.

One of the reasons this tribalism cuts deep is that it’s colonized areas of our life that we do not ordinarily imagine as “political.” Facebook might seem an innocuous place to share cat pictures or the latest family news with grandma, but recent network analysis suggests it also has become the most important hub for partisan-tinged news and in-group communication The loss of rhetorical boundaries on Facebook – and perhaps more acutely on Twitter – reinforces the gaping political chasm. Media analysts have thoroughly chronicled how deeply our tribalism has penetrated nearly every platform (television and print, social media, etc.) and form (not only news, but also entertainment). The patterns go well beyond the virtual world as well. Housing patterns are increasingly correlated with partisan attachments (there are now companies that will help you find a match between neighborhoods and your partisan loyalties). Marriage across party lines, just like race and class, is increasingly rare.

The Christian church is not immune. The recent experience of white evangelicals is a prominent case study. If I were to put the power of partisan polarization to the test, I’d want to observe the response of white evangelicals to a GOP standard bearer who divorced twice, owns casinos, has a reputation for philandering, and thinks repentance doesn’t apply in his case. So, 2016, social science thanks you. And what did it reveal? Not only that partisan polarization persists under those conditions, but also that it has the potential to re-frame how the faithful understand their own basic convictions.

That partisanship among white evangelicals persisted is not a difficult story to tell. We have heard a great deal about how this election was profoundly different in its populist or authoritarian or racial undertones, that it was a historical disruption. Yet in many ways it was ordinary; the story is as much about continuity as change. The line-plot of the Republican’s share of the white evangelical vote over the last five presidential election cycles is flat. The exit polls showed 79 percent of white evangelical vote for Bush in 2004 and Romney in 2012, for example; in 2016 it was 81 percent for Trump, no different statistically from those early contests. Better surveys suggests slightly different numbers but a similar pattern.

Those trends lead me to read the news headlines about the 81 percent as less about continuity than a candidate. The question seemed to be: How could white evangelicals vote for him? But that question assumes white evangelicals were voting simply for a man, rather than out of a (partisan) identity. The strength of their attachments apparently even re-shaped longstanding moral convictions, most notably the full U-turn in how white evangelicals assess the importance of presidential character. In a 2001 PRRI poll, white evangelicals were the most likely among all religious groups to think private character is important in a public leader; in 2016, just before the election, they were the least likely of all religious groups to hold that view. It is hard not to see the change as a textbook case of partisan rationalization. Yes, it is possible that some white evangelicals were noseholders who overlooked Trump’s foibles in favor of higher priorities (e.g., abortion). But recent analysis by Paul Djupe and others suggests that subset of white evangelical voters was quite small. Polarization was at the forefront.

REMOVING THE POLARIZED GLASSES

The American founders were on to the threat of partisan tribalism long before contemporary social scientists. When Washington warns against “the spirit” of party, he is decrying a certain disposition, a dangerous kind of group-based enthusiasm. James Madison, the master of political psychology before it was cool, noted the same tendencies in Federalist #10:

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points…; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions who have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into animosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

The concern about affective polarization rooted in in-group/out-group conflict over identity and fueled by political entrepreneurs: it’s all there in Madison’s diagnosis of the problem of faction, circa 1787.

So what about a cure?

Madison’s prescription was largely institutional. Extend the republic so that factions increase in not only numbers but also range of interests; structure political access through the separation of powers and federalism so that factions are divided and dispersed; and then force those separated institutions to share power so that factions compete and counter each other’s ambitions (“checks and balances,” as we often say). It was a brilliant and counterintuitive move: To protect the body politic from the thing you fear, create more of the thing you fear, and then build mechanisms to control them.

The question of whether Madison was brilliant yet wrong is well beyond the scope of this piece. But we could still ask whether the Madisonian instinct for a structural fix could serve us today in addressing polarization. Consider two possibilities, one feasible in the near-term, the other a much longer project, at best:

Crush the gerrymander: State legislatures generally re-draw the lines of legislative districts in response to the reapportionment of seats after each Census. That means the party in power has an opportunity to craft district borders to maximize the number of seats that party will win in a given election – an opportunity they have seized with abandon through the process of “gerrymandering.” Not surprisingly, the resulting seats are almost always “safe”; very few campaigns for the House of Representatives are competitive. Because incumbents don’t need to moderate their views to cast widely for votes, they are liberated to govern from one side of the polarized extremes. Shifting the line-drawing to an independent commission or even a computer algorithm might push legislators to greater moderation by drawing lines that force them to compete for their seats. These reforms are difficult but not unprecedented. Some states have moved to commissions, and over half the states have some kind of reform initiative underway in anticipation of the 2020 Census.

Open the door wider to new parties: A variety of mechanisms protect the party duopoly, but few have as much impact as our system of single-member districts with first-past-the-post voting. In nearly every legislative district, the candidate with a plurality of votes (the most votes, not necessarily the majority) wins the lone seat in that district; the losing party (or parties) goes home with nothing. It’s easy to see why this favors two-party systems by comparing to legislatures with proportional representation (PR), in which parties win seats in proportion to the vote they receive. In a hundred-seat legislature, for example, a party with only five percent of the vote would still have five percent of the seats in a PR system. As a result, smaller parties have a place in legislative processes, especially when no party garners a majority and the parties must form a coalition government. But the reforms prospects here are quite dim. The U.S. Congress, using its power under the Constitution’s Election Clause (Art. 1, sect. 4), could take action in favor of PR (it has in the past on single-member districts). But the parties have little incentive to make a change that challenges their position, and there’s virtually no knowledge and tepid interest in the public about the PR alternative.

What else? How about rules for presidential primaries? Ballot requirements? Campaign funding? Housing policy? But return to those Madison’s analysis for a moment. He placed great stock in institutional “precautions,” but he reminded his peers that structure wouldn’t be enough. To meet the threat of factions, he said, we would still need citizens imbued with “sufficient virtue.” His message to us: Partisan tribalism will not diminish merely by tweaking institutions. We need a civic culture that nurtures change.

What would it mean, then, to build a civic culture that pushes against the prevailing practices that generate and reinforce polarization? We should not be so naïve to think that we can simply demand that our leaders get along. We shouldn’t even have such a hope in ourselves. A change in civic culture requires practices that reorient and habituate our purposes. Martin Luther King’s rhetorical flourishes were inspiring, but his insistence on the practice of non-violence was the nitty-gritty work of culture-making. It was not simply a tactic of influence; it was also a formative ritual oriented around the hopeful convictions of a disciple of Christ.

It’s no coincidence that King’s fight against the racial tribalism of his day took root in the church of Jesus Christ. Christian worship is filled with practices that can’t coexist with polarized minds. We are called to worship in community; urged to confess our breaking of shalom; invited to a table together; and sent out to serve others across all lines of difference. To adapt Smith’s language again: While our lives are immersed in a partisan liturgy, Christian worship presents a set of counter-rituals that call us to account. Church leaders often worry about bringing the political into the sanctuary, and there are compelling reasons for that concern. But is there anything churches should be better equipped to tackle than disciples who turn their tribes, partisan or otherwise, into an idol? Partisan polarization requires a multifaceted response that matches its complexity. But perhaps seekers of shalom should start when they gather with each other.

On Becoming a Democrat

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It’s an honor to be part of this eCircle about party politics. Seventeen years in local, partisan elected office, over the past twenty-five years (with an eight-year break in the middle), has given me a lot to reflect on.

I enjoy hearing stories. I also like to tell them. I’ve found that personal stories are a great way to begin and develop discussions about intensely personal topics. Many people have strong feelings about politics and stories can sometimes help moderate them. So to open this discussion I want to share personal stories that give insight into how my political thinking and action have been shaped.

Getting the Bug

I grew up in a conservative Christian Reformed community, outside of Chicago and just over the Illinois-Indiana border. My earliest memory of anything political is from the Nixon-Kennedy presidential election of 1960. I was only seven years old but I still remember saying, along with my second grade classmates, “Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man….” and then some derogatory statement about Kennedy and a garbage can (yes, we made it rhyme). At that young age I was somehow left with the impression that it would be a horrible thing for us Protestants if a Catholic became our President.

I probably would have traveled down that conservative, Republican road into my adult life except for a pit-stop at Calvin College. Back in those days  we stood in line to enroll in classes and if we were at the end of the line, the classes were often full. This naive “pre-sem” freshman ended up at the end of the line for my first enrollment and only one of the classes that I wanted was still available. A wonderful second year student advisor stepped up to help me. “Why don’t you try this philosophy class – I hear that the professor is pretty interesting.”

In my older years I have the privilege of being able to look back and recognize pivotal times in my life. Sitting in Evan Runner’s Introduction to Philosophy class during the fall of 1971, at the advice of that student advisor, was one of those. I discovered new ways to see the world and my place in it. I began applying my new lenses to my interest in education, on the way to becoming an elementary school teacher.

A few years later, a series of Runner lectures were published under the title “Scriptural Religion and Political Task”. I was fascinated by his analysis of religion and politics and apparently took to heart the closing sentences of his Foreword to the publication. “We need men and women to live politically out of a whole-hearted commitment to Jesus Christ and the whole revealed Word of God. Then, perhaps, the present young political revolutionaries – and there will be more of them – will learn to fight for political, social and economic justice on the side of the Lord of Creation, whose Kingdom will surely come, and is coming daily through our own acts of obedience to His revealed Word.” That commitment to political, social and economic justice, grounded in Biblical and creational discernment, came to be the lens through which I eventually viewed my role as an elected official.

Choosing a Party

Fast forward to 1989. While living near downtown Grand Rapids and helping to run a small social service center, I became involved in community organizing activities. People I worked with began to suggest that I should run for political office and my life experiences in human services and public works made county government a nice fit. I decided that I should give it a shot. But there was a problem. The County Commission was a partisan office and I had to run as a either a Republican or a Democrat. I didn’t like the choice – I wanted to be an independent. But a little research quickly quashed that thought. In partisan elections where straight party ballots are allowed (like in Michigan) over 50% of voters only fill in one circle – for their party of choice. I would need to get more than 75% of the remaining votes for a chance of winning and that would be next to impossible.

In retrospect, my choice to run as a Democrat was less about the official positions of the party than it was about some general themes and the public figures who represented their parties at the time. The presidents who served during my early adult years were Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. I was a big fan of Jimmy Carter and appreciated what I saw to be an approach to politics and government that was grounded in faith and scripture. Nixon certainly set a bad precedent for Republicans and, following Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan was a striking contrast when it came to themes of political, social and economic justice.

“All Politics Is Local”

Over the years I’ve come to recognize a fascinating inconsistency in both political parties. Republicans tend to emphasize individual rights – to bear arms, to have “local control”, to control one’s own income. But that changes when it comes to the issue of abortion, where they oppose personal  choice. Democrats tend to emphasize community responsibility over individual rights – except when it comes to abortion when it becomes all about “a woman’s right to choose”.

In my many years of campaigning door to door for election, I’ve developed a standard response to the question that I’m occasionally asked, “Are you pro-life?”. But when I say that my Christian faith leads me to generally be opposed to war and against capital punishment, I usually hear a flustered “That’s not what I mean!” response.

Interestingly, in conservative West Michigan, there was a time, some years back, when I was the only local Democratic officeholder who wasn’t strongly opposed to abortion. The other elected Dems bucked the national party platform and there was a sort of “urban legend” that held that a Democrat couldn’t be elected in West Michigan if they didn’t staunchly oppose abortion. I was evidence to the contrary but the belief continued for many years.

I’ve also heard the tendency for partisan politics to have a local flavor referenced by some who have suggested that a West Michigan Democrat would probably have to run as a Republican in nearby Chicago. What might be viewed as liberal or progressive thinking in the Grand Rapids area would probably not go over so well inside the windy city’s Democratic political machine.

The National Platform

When I compare the platforms of the national Republican and Democratic parties, I’m more drawn to highlight the negatives on the Republican side than I am to the positives of the Democratic side. But let’s set those negatives aside for potential future discussion and peek at the positives on the Democratic side.

For me, some of the strongest Democratic values can be found in the Preamble of its Platform. They are certainly values that I share as a Christian. Here are a few examples:

  • “We believe that today’s extreme level of income and wealth inequality…. makes our economy weaker, our communities poorer, and our politics poisonous.”
  • “And we know that our nation’s long struggle with race is far from over…. race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind.”
  • “Above all, Democrats are the party of inclusion. We know that diversity is not our problem—it is our promise.”
  • “We are proud of our heritage as a nation of immigrants.”
  • “We believe in …. guaranteeing civil rights and voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights, LGBT rights, and rights for people with disabilities.”

Straying From the Party Line

One of the areas where I’ve struggled within my own Democratic party has been around the topic of education. I believe that a strong public system of education is very important.  I also see opportunity in recognizing the diversity of world-views that exist in our society and viewing government as the entity that ensures adequate funding and establishes educational standards. When we do that, it opens the door to public funding of non-government schools that meet the educational standards. While I have yet to see a voucher or charter system, proposed or in place, that creates a level playing field for government and non-government schools, I can imagine a system that functions well  by funding all types of schools, including “religious” schools, so long as they meet the minimum standards set by the society through its government. Such a view isn’t typically appreciated by Democrats, who are usually critical of public funding of private, parochial and charter schools. That criticism seems warranted in Michigan, where charter schools have not been required, for example, to transport students or provide special education services, leaving government schools with higher costs for students needing such services.  Another side of this debate, of course, is that private schools may not want to agree to the standards set by the state so may still want to operate separately from the public system. In private discussions, I’ll often make a comparison to Kent County’s long-standing and highly respected public mental health system. In that system, the local public mental health organization receives funds from the State and subcontracts with private providers, mostly non-profit, to provide mental health services. The public agency distributes the funds and ensures that adequate services of the highest quality are being provided.

Becoming More Comfortable

Over the years I’ve become less hesitant about my Democratic affiliation. I’ve come to view the Republican party as generally more concerned about individual rights over community responsibilities, more concerned about government investments to create individual wealth rather than investing to develop community health, and relatively blind to the structural racism that is a primary cause of the growing gap between people with wealth and people without.

Development for Whom?

In Grand Rapids I’ve been fortunate to be able to serve as a board member of a quasi-government downtown economic development group called the Downtown Development Authority (DDA). In Michigan, DDA’s are authorized to capture the property taxes that result from the growth of property values in a designated geographic area. The original intent of the tool was to support redevelopment of economically depressed downtown areas. Investments of DDA captured tax dollars, along with significant private investments and philanthropy, have transformed downtown Grand Rapids over the past few decades. Yet the transformation hasn’t been good for everyone. There are almost no Black or Latino property owners downtown, despite being 40% of the city’s population. And there are almost no downtown business owners of color either. Some local leaders, including me, have begun asking whether it is a legitimate role of government to incent social change. If reversing the multi-generational effects of racism is a priority for our community, is it appropriate for government to target economic development investments to support that change? In the case of the DDA, should we offer incentives that support things like affordable housing, minority businesses or low-impact green development? As those conversations have begun to occur, I’ve seen a reluctance, even significant pushback, from conservative developers.

Health Care

I’ve also been privileged to be a member of Kent County’s quasi-government community mental health (CMH) organization. In Michigan, we had a significant public debate about the expansion of Medicaid health care funding that became available through the Affordable Care Act. Many in Michigan’s Republican-dominated legislature were strongly opposed to taking advantage of the opportunity to use a relatively small state financial contribution to leverage significant federal support that would give hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents new access to health care, including mental health services. Following intense debate and negotiation, the moderate Republican governor was able to sway enough other moderate Republican Senators so that 8 of 26 voted for the expansion. In the House, 28 Republicans voted for the expansion while 31 voted against it. Only one House Democrat voted against the expansion, compared to none in the Senate. The solid support of Democrats for justice for all in health care increased my appreciation for the efforts of Democratic officeholders.

Setbacks

While my fondness for the Democratic Party as the better choice for my political affiliation has grown over time, it hasn’t been without some setbacks. One of the earliest took place in the beginning stages of my first campaign. I had put together a campaign committee that included close friends, colleagues from my work in the community, and a labor leader.  I was surprised and grateful when the labor representative presented me with a significant financial contribution for my campaign from a labor group. Sometime later I brought a draft of a brochure that I wanted to use in my campaign and asked for feedback. The labor person did not like a line in the brochure and asked that I remove it. The sentence in question expressed my desire to follow in the footsteps of several of the area’s well-respected legislators, including Paul Henry (U.S. Representative) and Vern Ehlers (State Senator). For me, the referenced legislators and I clearly shared that desire “to to live politically out of a whole-hearted commitment to Jesus Christ and the whole revealed Word of God.” But they were all Republicans and the labor person would not have that. He was adamant that the sentence needed to be removed. And I removed it. I’m not sure why. Honest self-reflection would suggest that I felt some guilt about taking that large contribution and not giving back something in return. Over the years, as I’ve shared this incident with other aspiring politicians, I’ve described that it made me feel dirty.  And I soon resolved to limit the size of contributions that I would accept from interest groups. When I talk to people about my experiences in politics, I assert without hesitation that money DOES buy influence – don’t believe anyone who suggests otherwise. I’ve seen it repeatedly in elected office and it is one of the worst aspects of our system.

Lessons Learned

I’ve learned a couple of important lessons in my years of running for office and I feel a need to share them at every opportunity so I’ll conclude with them here. The first is that most people don’t vote. In Grand Rapids, not unlike many areas, we might see 75-80% turnout in a presidential election, every four years. In between the presidential elections we vote for a governor and other statewide offices. Between 50-60% might turnout in those. In a City election, like for Mayor, we are lucky to see 25% of registered voters cast a vote. And when school board races are the only thing on the ballot, the turnout is a dismal 15% or less. I’ll say it again. People. Just. Don’t. Vote. It’s even more discouraging to learn that, when they do vote, most people know little to nothing about who they are voting for. They tend to vote based on name recognition or, if they don’t recognize a name, they’ll choose based on gender or ethnic considerations. It’s well known, in some parts of the country, that having an Irish name will give you an electoral advantage. Candidates who want to win have to recognize voting patterns and focus their limited resources on people who will actually vote. So you will see candidates going door to door, only talking to people who have some history of voting in their particular election. You’ll only get a candidate brochure in your mailbox if you have some history of voting. The irony of this is that lots of people complain that they don’t know who to vote for, and say they don’t vote because they don’t know what the candidates stand for. But they don’t receive information about the candidates because they don’t vote. It’s a classic catch 22.

The other important lesson that I try to share with aspiring candidates is that campaigning for office is VERY different from legislating. Campaigning is mostly about building positive name recognition and making sure your supporters get out to vote on election day. That’s hard work but it’s pretty straight-forward. Legislating, on the other hand, can involve making tough decisions on difficult issues that can affect a lot of people. Being grounded in principles of justice for all, and discerning how those principles should guide decision-making that benefits everyone in society, can be gut-wrenching work.

 

I’m grateful to have acquired a Biblical lens and life experiences that help shape my work in elected office. I look forward to continuing that work, Lord willing, a bit longer. And I look forward to what I’ll learn from this eCircle discussion that will enhance my contribution to my community’s political life.

Subtopic 5: Party Politics and Beyond (January 2018)

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Leading Questions: What are the political priorities and values of the Republican and Democratic parties in the early 21 st century? How well do these values and priorities comport, or not, with Christian values? If not, what changes in priorities and values need to be made? Should Republicans and Democrats transcend their particular ideologies?  If so, how?

Conversation Partners: 

  • Doug Koopman, Professor of Political Science, Calvin College 
  • Kevin den Dulk, Executive Director, Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics, Calvin College 
  • Angela Cowser, Professor of the Sociology of Religion, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 
  • Jim Talen, Kent County (MI) Commissioner