Partisan Divide Getting Wider

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 27, 2003

Byline: Jennifer G. Hickey, INSIGHT

People "are about to go out there and vote. They have real concerns. And you're choosing with your editorial comment, by making this program about some unsubstantiated charges that started in a supermarket tabloid, you're telling people something you think is important. That's not context. You're setting the agenda, and you're letting The Star set it for you," bristled the campaign aide in response to allegations of sexual impropriety emerging only weeks before voters were to go to the polls. Former Clinton campaign consultant Mandy Grunwald's indignant comments made weeks before the 1992 Democratic New Hampshire primary very well could have been made by supporters of Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to a stream of last-minute allegations of sexual harassment.

Groping stories may have gripped the media in the final days leading up to the California gubernatorial recall election, but exit polls indicated they had little impact on voter decisionmaking. Not surprising, considering that most California voters already had made up their minds in the weeks before the revelations. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the negative attacks did not turn off conservative voters whose concerns about the state's finances took precedence over last-minute charges made by the Los Angeles Times, which was left defending its own credibility.

The election also showed how quickly roles could be reversed as Republicans dismissed Schwarzenegger's alleged lewd behavior and Democrats gave credence to previously unraised charges of sexual harassment that supposedly took place as many as three decades ago. The hypocrisy exhibited by both sides demonstrates the extent to which partisanship now infects politics. But the nation quickly will move past the California recall (returning to American Idol, the Laci Peterson case and baseball's pennant race), while political analysts and strategists ponder whether the failed hardball tactics and ugly tenor of the recall campaign will serve as a portent of what to expect in 2004.

Although California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland has indicated a willingness to finance a recall of the recall, and rumors of recalls in other states are in full throat, similar dramatics are not expected in the 17 other states with recall provisions, says University of California at Berkeley professor Bruce Cain.

In a postrecall teleconference with reporters Cain said, "[California] had a particularly low threshold 11 percent of the gubernatorial turnout and most states have the common sense to have a higher threshold of 25 to 40 percent. Many states also use [threshold percentages of] registered voters, rather than actual voters. While we've already seen more recalls at the local level, and we will see more recalls at the federal level, it won't be an everyday occurrence." Cain adds that the situation in California was made unique by public recognition of increasing levels of state spending, a governor unpopular among voters of both parties being challenged by a celebrity political neophyte and desperate, last-minute campaign tactics that reinforced the desire for a change in leadership.

Yet what happened in California underscores that a shift in politics has opened still more and deeper fissures across the partisan divide that began to be a chasm following the election of Ronald Reagan.

"Nowadays more party unity, higher stakes and greater polarization have produced something quite different. It has all been reinforced by the permanent campaign and by the move in the breakdown in norms about using extraordinary means, like impeachment and recall elections, rounds of redistricting, filibustering judicial appointments and on and on," Cain contends.

President George W. Bush may have come to Washington hoping to change the tone to "one of civility and respect," but the odds were against him even without the Florida recount. In an April address examining the Bush presidency and the American electorate, University of California at San Diego political-science professor Gary C. Jacobson said Bush's election was an extension of a long-term trend toward "greater partisanship and ideological coherence" among the voting public.

In addition to producing the highest level of party-line voting in nearly 50 years, ticket splitting reached its lowest level since 1960, and the number of districts delivering pluralities to House and presidential candidates of opposing parties reached a 48-year low. "In short, G.W. Bush entered the White House on the heels of the most partisan election in half a century," Jacobson said. Nor is the partisan dynamic confined to the halls of Congress or state legislatures.

As Cain sees it, "There is an impatience in the culture as a whole. The extension of electoral politics into governance and governance into electoral politics, or what we call the permanent campaign. It extends political battles into court venues, it extends that into ... recall and impeachment."

Meanwhile, as people decry partisan politics, their words do not necessarily reflect their deeds. "There's lots of evidence that the public dislikes the idea of partisanship and certainly frowns upon the squabbling among politicians and between the parties, but at the same time those voters are increasingly partisan in their voting behavior," says Brookings Institution senior fellow Thomas Mann.