COMMENTARY
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Some speculate that polarization in the American public is driving the polarization in Congress. However, there are strong reasons to believe that the polarization in Congress
primarily comes from other sources.
”
Source: “Common Ground of the American People: Policy Positions Supported by Both Democrats and Republicans.” Program for Public Consultation, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, July 2021.
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PARTISANSHIP
Yes, We Can Agree Most Americans can find common ground by Scott Paine Florida League of Cities
I
f one merely reads or watches the leading stories in the news or follows politically engaged folks on social media, one might be excused for imagining that we, the American people, are as deeply and distantly divided as the opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. Regardless of the topic, it seems as though Americans immediately line up on opposing sides that resist all efforts at reconciliation. While there is some undeniable truth to this image, I feel a need to push back against it. Yes, on the hot button issues of the day, we persistently and consistently divide along a set of fault lines. The most popular of these, in media circles, is partisanship. Survey after survey reveals that the distributions of Republican and Democratic opinions on all sorts of contentious issues are mirror images of each other, with those who profess not to align with either party somewhere in between. But we also divide by where we live (urban/suburban/rural), education, race/ethnicity, gender, age and region of the country, just to name a few. Given this all-too-familiar refrain of division, it may come as a surprise to discover that most of us agree about many important policy ideas. A series of 35 surveys conducted over five years, with over 90,000 respondents, reveals that more than two-thirds of Americans, regardless of party, agree on many specific policy measures across a range of policy areas. Those areas include prescription drugs, health insurance, immigration, social security reform,
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tax reform, food assistance programs, federal jobs programs and campaign finance reform. Some of these policies are more popular with the right, others with the left, but partisans of both parties support them by sizable majorities. (For more information on these surveys, see box, p. 21.) I’m not suggesting that there is agreement about every element of these policy debates, only that there is solid, bipartisan agreement among voters about many meaningful policy choices Congress could make. I’m not sure whether this finding naturally leads to the question “Why so much emphasis on division?” or “How can that be, given the polarized state of American politics?” I’ll deal with both. Long before social media, the various existing media understood that controversy draws an audience. Samuel Adams famously declared the death of several colonists the “Boston Massacre.” Most of them had been involved in a confrontation with a beleaguered, outnumbered and poorly prepared squad of Red Coats. His flair for the sharp-tongued critique of British actions made its own not insignificant contribution to the growth of revolutionary fervor in Boston. Party-supported newspapers of the 19th century were filled with inflammatory (and often false) stories about the other party’s candidates and officials. Even as something like modern journalism began to gain sway, news outlets didn’t abandon dramatic headlines and scandal-mongering stories.
