Former Oregon Governor and Senator Mark Hatfield died last week. Hatfield was famous for his independence of Republican Party shackles. He opposed the Vietnam War, a balanced budget amendment, capital punishment, and concentrations of power including corporate power. But he was also anti-abortion and a genuine fiscal conservative. He reached across the aisle when he thought it appropriate and tried to be a constructive force in the Senate.
As David Swarz in religiondispatches observes, “It is hard to imagine such bi-partisanship today.” He continues: “Perhaps renewed attention to the more flexible and civil politics of an earlier era can offer a way out of today’s angry brinksmanship.” I think it worth reflecting on why there are no more Hatfields in the Republican Party. There is more at work than personalities and attention to civility. The question is why the Republican Party has swung so far to the right. Justices Scalia and Thomas would have been at the outer 3% of the Republican Party in the 60’s. Now they are Republican heroes. And, in the Democratic Party, what happened to the conservative Southern wing? If there are no more Mark Hatfields, there are no more Strom Thurmonds and many others less reactionary, but far to the right of the current brand of Democrats.
Rick Pildes argues in the April issue of the California Law Review that the main cause of the shift in politics of both parties was the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act vastly diminished discrimination against blacks particularly in the South. As a result, African Americans poured into the Democratic Party making it more liberal, and conservative whites in the Democratic Party switched to the Republicans. This took decades in part because shifting party allegiance is a major shift in political identity. But the shift has taken place and the result has been profound. Another aspect of the Voting Rights Act has been the requirement to create safe seats for African American representatives when polarized voting exists and when districts can be created that conform with traditional districting criteria. The result has been that representatives of those districts have been more liberal, but by concentrating black votes in single districts, Republicans with few minority voters in their districts are prone to be numerous and more conservative. It is instructive to observe that no Democratic candidate for President has received a majority of the white vote since the passage of the Voting Rights Act (and perhaps since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
Observers, including Pildes, point to other factors causing partisanship including the voting population in primaries, gerrymandering, and campaign finance. Moreover, the Voting Rights Act was not an isolated event. It was the product of a larger social movement which began to have effects on the parties even before passage of the statute.
Pildes regrets our hyperpolarization. Despite some proposals he makes, it would seem to be a large part of our future. It is not at all clear to me that polarization is our largest problem. Our largest problem (discussed by David Kennedy in the same issue of the California Law Review) is that the Framers of our Constitution were more afraid of power than of ineffective government. By establishing checks and balances the Framers made polarization effective. Ironically, our winner take all system in voting no longer gives us moderate parties (not that I favor moderate parties), but it discourages the kind of political diversity that ought to be represented in our legislatures. As some European countries demonstrate, it is possible to have a broad political spectrum and working majorities that give rise to effective government. Under our current structures, we have neither a broad political spectrum, nor an effective government.
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