In the course of his lament at the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, Evan Thomas says things were not as bad at mid-century:
[T]he middle of the 20th century was a bit better on the question of cooperation. Back then the political parties tried to be big tents. The Democrats numbered conservative Southerners as well as liberal Northerners. The Republicans had some big-city liberals as well as rural conservatives. But then, starting in the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson bravely embraced civil rights, Southern conservatives deserted the Democrats. By the '80s, Democratic strength was centered in the big cities and along the coasts, and liberal interest groups had taken over the party. Neither party tried as hard to reach out to the ideologically diverse.
Atrios is right to slam Thomas for soft-pedaling the composition of the Democratic Party before civil rights in this passage, but the problems with his analysis run much deeper. What Thomas fails to realize is that the bipartisan era was a historical aberration built on conservative Democrats who remained in their party due to the history of race in the South. Once they and like-minded constituents became Republicans, the political system returned to the historical norm of partisanship and polarization.
This point needs to be made again and again because so few elites grasp it. Indeed, Paul Krugman makes the same error as Thomas in The Conscience of a Liberal, which attributes the polarization of contemporary American politics to movement conservatism. In fact, while movement conservatism may be the proximate cause, there's a good argument to be made that the re-polarization of American politics was an inevitable result of the party realignment on race in the 1960s and 1970s. Movement conservatives made the first move, but the process of re-polarization is still ongoing.
So when you hear someone touting how great bipartisanship was in the old days, ask them if they believe the price we paid was worth it.
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