Column: Bipolar disorder afflicts electorate
In a fascinatingly "bipartisan" move, a subsection of the former Democratic candidate's backers have declared their intention to throw their political weight behind Republican Sen. John McCain for the Presidency. The truly important question for those of us who wish to see a Democrat in the White House is: exactly how many of these millions of Clinton voters will fail to vote for Obama in the general election?
But, as I'm rarely interested in truly important questions, let's talk about a related issue: the importance of political parties in American politics and, more specifically, whether Democrats supporting Republicans is bipartisan or bipolar?
I sometimes worry that, as a non-American interested in American politics, I am intellectually overprivileged in that I can afford the luxury of idealism to a degree that actual voters cannot. I distinctly recall a certain feeling of ideological superiority, nay purity, during the 2004 Presidential election campaign as I railed against the Democrats' nomination of Sen. Kerry — a move I fiercely believed to be an error. I did not share the "anybody but Bush" approach that so many Democrats advocated because I thought that one should support the best candidate — not the better candidate. I was no relativist.
Yet, as my reaction above suggested, I find the idea that people who had conscienced voting for Clinton in the November election consider McCain to be their second-best bet absurd.
However, I think that this is the result, not of a conversion on my part, to a practical approach to politics which emphasizes party victory over better representing the preferences of the electorate, but rather, an inability to understand how, given the stated platforms of the three candidates, Clinton could be seen to be closer, on policy, to McCain than Obama.
I recall a debate I had as an undergraduate with a roommate over the merits and demerits of the two-party system in the United States as a method of democratic representation. It was instructive because we were able to articulate some reasons, beyond the purely banal and venal, for having a two-, rather than a multi-, party system.
European voters typically choose among a wide variety of ideological precise parties who then form coalitions so that a majority of the elected officials support legislation so it will pass. Americans, however, choose among, in effect, two ideologically broad parties who then are often able to pass legislation without the assistance of another party. To many, including myself at the time, the transatlantic difference seems palpable and the European system seems preferable.
But is the difference as stark as it seems? After all, in either case, negotiation still takes place to establish consensus — just in different locations. Europeans can "vote their conscience," at the ballot box, more easily because they have more choices, perhaps, but this doesn't mean that their choices are able to act any more unilaterally than their American counterparts.
Americans may have fewer choices and so may feel more conflicted with their electoral contribution, but the same kind of negotiation is just taking place within the party rather than between them. Whether the party itself constitutes a majority or whether the majority is constituted of several parties, it will almost never be the case that a single ideological viewpoint will be sufficiently dominant to eliminate the need for negotiation between opposed camps.
So perhaps the "Clinton supporters for McCain" occupy the ideological interface on the political spectrum between the Democrats on the left and the Republicans on the right?
Party loyalty is less important, perhaps, because both parties are such "big tents" and don't stand for a narrowly prescribed set of policies? Bipartisanship under this reading would cease to be "date rape," as the infamous Grover Norquist once put it, and become a blissful union arranged for the betterment of the common good.
Perhaps Clinton's supporters, rather than being bipartisan, are actually so partisan that their disappointment with the primary process pushed them away from the Democratic Party and toward the GOP? Perhaps these groups are the product of spite rather than special circumstances?
My deepest worry, however, is that while the American two-party system is, despite popular opinion to the contrary, technically sound, it may not accord too well with the present state of some American political thinking. If single issues are going to decide elections, whether those issues be abortion, the war, or the economy, then "big tents" will be much less adequate than small ones and bipartisanship will truly be bipolar since neither party can truly be associated with a sufficiently unique set of views.
Perhaps we should see the "defection" of Clinton supporters as an oblique protest against the two-party system. I suspect this may be my idealism talking, though.
