Blue and Red

Is there any other developed nation in the world as fundamentally divided as we are here in America? I don't see one. Certainly not France or Britain or Canada or Germany or Japan. While they all have multiple political parties/movements, they just don't have the sheer ideological division that we have here. They used to, but their experience in World War II seemed to have purged that away.

The difference between the Red and the Blue here is so vast, that we can hardly discuss politics rationally. Now the feeling is more fear of the other side and what they might do if they are in office.

It didn't used to be this way, it seems to me. I really doubt that the difference between the Eisenhower Republicans and the Truman Democrats was all that great, on either domestic or foreign policy. Even when Nixon ran against Kennedy, the divide was not that great.

Undoubtedly, the Vietnam War and the breakdown of the Cold War consensus started our great divide growing. It was then exacerbated by the Reagan Coalition. Now that we have had a basically Reaganite dominance in government for nearly 30 years, with all its results in terms of a near-bankrupt economy with manufacturing disappearing offshore and the banks collapsing from their irresponsible practices, Gilded Age levels of income and wealth disparity, and growing anti-Americanism around the world, we don't even remember what a truly centrist government, that looks out for the American middle-class, looks like.

Obama's policies are not far-left liberal, as the Republicans are claiming, they are center-left and realist. Anyone who has looked at either his team of economic or foreign policy advisors, or has read his works, knows this is true.

I hope that someday we might be able to overcome our polarization and national division. But I am not confident about this. The worldviews that bisect us are really set in place and thrive on religious and cultural divisions that are very basic to American life.

All this doesn't bode well for really making progress on the great problems that confront us. It looks to me like stalemate and paralysis are more likely. Obviously, a big Obama win might possibly help with this, if he can show the country what a true leader with a governing majority can do to solve practical problems in the tradition of American democracy.

We'll just have to wait and see what happens in four days.