Dear students:
Many of you, especially those from outside the U.S., have asked me over time to explain the American system of politics and government as it really is; not as it is written in the books. Last week’s events in Charleston, South Carolina and the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality have generated particular interest.
Below is my attempt explain.
But first, a couple of quick personal notes, for context.
Like you, I am from somewhere else. I am an immigrant; an American by choice. I am a naturalized citizen, and have been active in American culture and society most of my life. I could live elsewhere, but I choose to be an American. Politically I am progressive, the word we now use for liberal. But that word has become complicated. I’m not partisan. I am active on issues, but not in partisan or electoral politics. I do not contribute money or time to either major political party. I have contributed small amounts of money occasionally to candidates from both parties.
My proudest moment was a few weeks after my 17th birthday, 41 years ago, when I started work on Capitol Hill as a Page in the U.S. House of Representatives. I was working for the Republican members in the House. This was during the hearings leading to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in the scandal known as Watergate. In the years afterward I worked on a number of electoral campaigns for my sponsoring member of Congress and other candidates, all Republican. I have never worked on a campaign for a Democrat, but most of the issues I advocate for are issues many Democrats embrace. As an example, for ten years I have been on the board of Freedom to Marry, the national campaign to win marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. We won in the Supreme Court last week.
In college I majored in politics and philosophy, including comparative political systems, and in graduate school I studied both philosophy and political theory. Early in my career I was a registered lobbyist, and I got legislation introduced by a Republican senator and Democratic congressman, and had hearings on it. Not by access or influence but by simple persuasion and hard work. That was 31 years ago.
Given all that, here’s a quick primer on American politics, as best I can figure it out, in three core concepts.
1. It’s All About Who’s Worthy (or Considered to Be)
Forget the labels. The central divide in American politics from the very beginning is the question of who is worthy: who is entitled to full rights and privileges, and who is marginalized. Until we understand this foundational question, we can’t make sense of American politics.
Our founding documents assert the self-evident proposition that all are equal. But the reality is that we’ve had second-class or third-class citizenship for most of our history.
For example, for much of American history, the native people who were here before the Europeans arrived were marginalized in American society; often murdered in large numbers to make way for European-American expansion across the continent. Many remain marginalized today.
American history has been one of continuously expanding the definition of who is entitled to equal protection. In his address following the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality last week, President Obama said, “Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle. That we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times.”
So despite the stated values of equality, we are a work in progress. There’s still a lot to do.
Slavery is America’s original sin. Among the signers of that document declaring universal equality were slave-owners. The Constitution formalized slavery, listing slaves as counting as three-fifths of persons for purposes of enumeration to select members of the House of Representatives. But they weren’t allowed to vote.
The Civil War, which ended 150 years ago, was about eliminating slavery. During that war, President Lincoln said the war would test whether any nation dedicated to universal equality could long endure. The pro-slavery side lost. But the U.S. bungled the post-war reconstruction, and a white supremacist movement arose to assure that the descendants of slaves would remain in a subordinate status. Institutional inequality became the norm for much of the country, enshrined in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1898 that said it was OK to keep citizens separate but equal; but separate almost always meant inferior. A Supreme Court decision more than 50 years later reversed that conclusion, saying separate meant unequal, but institutional inequality remained the norm in much of the country.
The dispute last week about the flag flying at the South Carolina capitol is the continuation of this debate. The flag in question was used by a part of the pro-slavery faction in the Civil War, later embraced by the white supremacists, and adopted by state legislators in some former slave states in the 1950s and 1960s as a reaction to the civil rights movement and forced desegregation of public institutions.
And the Black Lives Matter movement that arose in the last year in response to shootings of unarmed black men by police is also a continuation of this debate.
But the central question of who is worthy isn’t just about race or the descendants of slaves.
For all of American history there has been a debate about who is deserving of full citizenship rights. Initially only white male property owners older than 21 could vote. That universe expanded steadily, so that in the 1920s women got the right to vote; in the 1970s 18-year olds were included.
Every wave of immigrants has had its own experience of inequality and marginalization. In the 1800s it was European immigrants: from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland. In the late 1800s it was Asian immigrants. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, it included Middle-Eastern, Eastern European, and African immigrants.
Wars typically put immigrants from the countries we’re fighting at risk. My own grandfather, an immigrant to the U.S. in the early 20th Century, was fired from his job just before the U.S. entered World War I because he was of German descent. But he was actually from Chile. So he changed his name from George Hesse to Jorge Garcia and got his job back.
As the U.S. entered World War II, more than 120 thousand Americans of Japanese descent, mostly on the West Coast, lost their liberty and property and were held by the government in prison camps scattered throughout the country.
Since the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, a significant portion of the population and leadership has been opposed to Islam and to Muslim citizens and immigrants.
The current debate on immigration reform focuses inordinately on Mexican immigrants. (In early June Donald Trump, in announcing his candidacy for president, denounced Mexican immigrants as disproportionally being rapists.)
But the question of who is worthy goes well beyond racial, national, or ethnic identity. It also extends to the distribution of government benefits. Hence Mitt Romney’s famous statement that 47 percent of the population are lazy and dependent on government handouts; hence current presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s reference to people depending on the government as counting on “sugar-daddy.”
The political divide is between those who believe everyone is entitled to equality and those who don’t. Hence, the opposition to healthcare reform (why should I pay for the healthcare of people who don’t take care of themselves) or for public assistance with subsidies to buy food, known as food stamps (they just want the government to give and they don’t want to work) or even for unemployment insurance (they should just get a new job).
The best description of this phenomenon I’ve found is in the book Whose Freedom: The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea by the Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff. In it he describes an entire moral system that explains this divide. On the one side, that there’s a natural order with white males on top and others below. On the other side, that there’s fundamental equality that should be honored.
Lakoff notes that there’s a moral worldview that drives each side. On the natural order side is a view that any dissent with any particular issue is an attack on the entire moral system. Hence, disagreeing with a particular Christian doctrine – or even saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” – is interpreted as an attack on Christianity; allowing same sex couples to marry is interpreted as an attack on marriage. That view often seems incomprehensible to the other side.
2. Ignore the Labels; Focus on the Policy
The labels used to identify points of view in American politics are neither descriptive nor helpful. Rather than focus on the labels, it is important to focus on the actual policies being debated. Examples:
➢ Pro Life. This label is used by those who oppose abortion. It is part of a political argument that says abortion is the killing of a person. You might expect the label Pro Life to include other life-and-death issues, such as opposition to the death penalty. But it does not. So paradoxically, a large number of Pro Life people support the death penalty. So it’s important to not extrapolate from the label to the policy. Pro Life is used only in the context of abortion.
➢ Pro Choice. This label is used for those who favor a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion. Choice here is not all-encompassing, but limited to the topic of reproductive choice. The central argument is that the decision whether to have an abortion should not rest with the government or with others, but rather with the woman. Opponents argue that a fetus has no say in such a choice.
➢ States’ Rights. This label is used by those who oppose national policy that challenges laws in individual states, usually laws that permit discrimination. For example, States’ Rights was used during the civil rights movement to argue that the federal government should not interfere with the racial segregation laws of individual states; the marriage equality debate before the Supreme Court this week was about whether states should be permitted to deny equal marriage rights to gay couples. In the recent debate about the Confederate battle flag there was an appeal to States Rights that said individual states should be free to decide whether to fly the flag. States Rights is also part of the debate now about “common core” educational standards, by those who say the states should decide what to teach in schools (even though “common core” is not a federal program). We see similar appeals in issues of healthcare, LGBT rights, and gun laws.
➢ Anti Big Government. This label usually is used by those who oppose social programs that provide benefits to people, including unemployment benefits, food stamps, and social security (a government-run retirement program). Some presidential candidates call for the outright elimination of entire departments of the federal government. Paradoxically, most anti-big-government advocates are not opposed to growth in defense spending or law enforcement, but typically limit their big government opposition to social programs. (See above, the question of who is worthy.)
3. We Don’t Debate Issues; We Debate Meta-Issues
One common source of confusion is that Americans seem to debate issues, but actually debate peripheral side issues rather than central issues. Examples:
➢ We don't debate abortion; we debate waiting periods, at what stage in a pregnancy an abortion can take place; whether exemptions to that time period can be made to save the life or protect the health of the mother; whether such an exemption can apply in pregnancies arising from rape or incest.
➢ We don't debate whether citizens should own guns; we debate waiting periods before someone can buy a gun; whether to require mandatory background checks; whether trigger locks or other safety features should be required.
➢ We don't debate healthcare; we debate changes in the insurance coverage of healthcare. Last week’s Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, which was framed as upholding all of Obamacare, was about whether subsidies to help people pay for health insurance were to be available in all states or just in states with state insurance exchanges.
➢ We don’t debate the death penalty; we debate forms of execution; whether the appeals process is skewed against poor or minority defendants; about whether DNA evidence exonerating a condemned person is sufficient to grant a reversal of a conviction. This week’s Supreme Court decision on the death penalty was on the question of whether a particular drug could be used to execute prisoners. The Court ruled that it could.
In my experience these three foundational principles, each counterintuitive in some way, are the key to actually understanding what is going on in American politics.
As the 2016 presidential election, still 500-plus days away, gets underway, these can help us understand what’s really going on when candidates espouse positions that might not otherwise make sense.
I hope you find it helpful.
Best,
Helio Fred Garcia
Adjunct Associate Professor of Management and Communication
New York University
