COMM 386: Partisan systemic failure? / PLS READ!

In the wake of last week's smack-down of the financial bailout bill, columnist Ronald Brownstein of The National Journal suggested the U.S. House of Representatives' "stunning initial rejection of the rescue plan" was much more than just politics-as-usual. The headline was one of those that heads that say it all:

The Other Meltdown

THE HOUSE'S FAILURE ON THE BAILOUT BILL REVEALED A SYSTEM SO POISONED BY PARTISANSHIP THAT IT CANNOT ADDRESS EVEN A GENUINE EMERGENCY.

Brownstein, who made his name covering presidential politics for The Los Angeles Times, is one of the most astute political analysts in the business. And he isn't writing for mass-market media anymore. According to its About Us page, The National Journal and its sister publications are targeted for a readership consisting of of "Members of Congress and their senior staffs, the Executive branch, federal agency executives, government affairs professionals, corporate and association leaders, and the political news media."

So what you get when you read Brownstein is a guy who knows the business writing for readers who also know the business because they're in the business.

(So is Brownstein, but that's another story for another day.)

Brownstein's take on the votes in Congress is nuanced (and he wrote before the second bailout bill passed the Senate and House). He sums up a lot of it when he says:

After Monday's defeat, [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain struck suitably constructive notes in urging the parties to reach agreement. Yet each nominee arguably helped to seed the initial failure by relentlessly portraying Washington as a corrupt casino where lobbyists stack the deck against average families. That indictment wildly overstates lobbyists' impact on the country's biggest challenges -- health care or energy or the economy. On those fronts, the greater impediment to progress is ideological rigidity and partisan polarization. But when voters are constantly told by both parties' presidential nominees that Washington is endemically corrupt, is it any wonder that they doubt the plans it produces? This week should show each candidate that he is playing with fire by denigrating so indiscriminately the government he hopes to lead.

But there's more to it than that, and it's important. So I am very specifically assigning you to read Brownstein's article. We'll discuss it in class, and I will find ways to ensure you have an opportunity to write about it. Last month, Brownstein wrote about the "culture wars" that have marked the last 15 to 20 years of politicking.

You'll have similar opportunities to write about culture wars, So read Brownstein's culture wars column column too. Writing just after the two nominating conventions, he called it a "One-Sided Culture War," but he made it clear it's a game both parties can play:

Each party made clear at its convention how it wants to divide the electorate. Democrats sought to segment the voters by class. They presented Obama (the "son of a single mom") and running mate Joe Biden (the "scrappy kid from Scranton") as working-class heroes who would defend the middle-class because they are products of it. The Democrats portrayed McCain as an out-of-touch economic elitist who doesn't understand the interests of average families.

Republicans sought to segment the voters along cultural lines. They presented McCain as the personification of timeless values--honor and duty. Far more importantly (and effectively), they introduced vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as an embodiment of small-town America who champions conservative social values not only in public life but also in her private life. They completed the picture with tough national security messages that usually resonate loudest with the same traditionalist voters most attracted to conservative social positions. Meanwhile, the Republicans portrayed Obama as an out-of-touch cultural elitist who belittles small towns like Palin's Wasilla as not "cosmopolitan enough."

There was some cognitive dissonance in the fact that those particular words were delivered by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose most intimate contact with small-town America probably comes when he makes a wrong turn driving to the Hamptons [New York's high-rent suburbs on Long Island]. But that didn't diminish the effectiveness of the overall assault. The first post-convention polls suggested that the Republicans succeeded more than the Democrats in dividing the electorate along the lines they prefer.

This is important, too. For one thing, Palin and GOP presidential candidate John McCain are doing all they can to change the subject back to cultural and racial attacks on Democrat Barack Obama. For another, the cultural issues -- including the economic-slash-cultural issues that Democrats prefer to raise -- are inextricably bound up with the way we do politics and government in this country. The attacks on lobbyists, for example, that did so much to derail the first Wall Street bailout are at least partly cultural in origin.