NYT columnist David Brooks laments, “The Election Is Happening Too Soon.”
I had hoped this election would be a moment of national renewal. I had hoped that the Democrats could decisively defeat MAGA populism and send us down a new national path.
That’s clearly not going to happen. No matter who wins this election, it will be close, and this is still going to be an evenly and bitterly divided nation.
In retrospect, I think I was expecting too much of politics. When certain sociological and cultural realities are locked in, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events. The two parties and their associated political committees have spent billions this year, and nothing has altered the race. The polls are just where they were at the start. If you had fallen asleep a year ago and woke up today, you would have missed little of consequence, except that it’s Kamala Harris leading the blue 50 percent of the country now and not Joe Biden.
While I have had similar fantasies going back to 2016, they’re not realistic.
First, none of the candidates who’ve run against Donald Trump—Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris—are charismatic, transformative leaders by presidential standards. Barack Obama was and, if anything, the divide deepened and sharpened on his watch. I had some hope that Biden, a decent man with half a century of close, personal relationships on Capitol Hill, could have at least bridged the gap a little among the governing class but that, too, was foolish.
Second, Trump himself is a common denominator. While I keep hoping people will get tired of his act and come to their senses, a huge swath of the country thinks he’s their one hope of getting their country back. And, even by the ain’t beanbag standards of political campaigning, he’s incredibly polarizing.
Third, none of the issues that have divided us have been resolved. There are deep divisions on cultural issues that will likely resolve themselves, likely in a leftward direction, over time. Right now, though, everything from immigration to abortion to LGBTQ rights seem like existential issues to both sides.
Fourth, the information environment that stokes these divisions has, if anything, gotten more targeted since 2016. Everyone chooses their own media sources and algorithms push content that plays to the particular fears and prejudices of each individual to devices we carry with us at all times. It’s been a long time since news was confined to 30 minutes a day with a Walter Cronkite telling us “That’s the way it is . . . ” and having everyone accept that as a fact.
Brooks draws a conclusion that’s almost certainly too stark:
It’s clearer to me now that most of the time politicians are not master navigators leading us toward a new future. They are more like surfers who ride the waves created by people further down in the core society.
While I’m not a proponent of the Great Man Theory of History, I believe leadership matters. Indeed, had Trump not appeared, things would be considerably different. While the Republican Party of 2016 was not that of Ronald Reagan, much less George H.W. Bush, it’s quite likely that either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would have won the nomination. While they’ve both shown themselves to be spineless in the face of Trump’s leadership, neither would have inspired a cult of personality and, had they beaten Clinton and won the presidency, they would have governed as more or less Normal Republicans. The personal corruption, cozying up to foreign autocrats, incompetent staffing, and all the rest wouldn’t have happened. And, had they lost re-election bids in 2020, they would have dutifully and graciously conceded and helped Joe Biden or whoever conduct a smooth transition.
Brooks does some historical analysis that’s mildly interesting but neither here nor there in terms of the present moment. He uses it to pivot to this:
Today we face another great civilizational question: How can we create a morally cohesive and politically functional democracy amid radical pluralism and diversity?
I don’t see any cultural movement akin to the social gospel movement of the 1890s. The libraries groan with books diagnosing our divisions, but where is the new social ideal? Where is the set of values that will motivate people to put down their phones and dedicate their lives to changing the world?
Some days I do think the civic revival part of the formula is coming along nicely. Through my work at Weave: The Social Fabric Project, I meet local leaders who are striving to rebuild solidarity and serve the marginalized at the neighborhood level. But so far these kinds of efforts have not been able to reverse the catastrophic decline of social trust. Our nation still lacks the sense of social and psychic safety that would allow us to have productive conversations across partisan difference. We still lack a national creed or a national narrative that would give us common ground among competing belief systems.
But we’re not polarized at the neighborhood level. The divide is regional and metropolitan versus suburban and rural.
While I’m not sure there was ever a time when there was a strong sense of commonality across those divides, I do agree that it has become harder to have honest conversations. Again, though, I blame the information environment. Going back at least thirty years now, we’ve been in Permanent Campaign mode. Leaders who reach out to those on The Other Side and attempt compromise will be pilloried mercilessly, likely by both sides. It takes enormous courage to seek to bridge gaps in that milieu and it’s in incredibly short supply among our political class.
