An Open Letter to the Rest of the World Posted by David Shorr

Dear onlookers around the world,

As politics in my country becomes dominated by a reckless tantrum over the simple matter of paying our debts, many of us are all too conscious of the doubts and concerns this is raising for the rest of you. Speaking as someone who has spent an entire career advocating for an American foreign policy of benevolent global leadership, I feel I should try to explain how our political system got here.

The simple explanation is polarization of the two parties, but that makes it sound like a problem of Republicans and Democrats moving farther apart from one another -- one party toward the right and the other leftward. No, the real problem is the steady rightward drift of the Republican Party over the last two or three decades.

Which wouldn't be bad in itself if the political culture stayed alert and aware, watching as the far-right wing veered out of the mainstream. After all if the rest of the system remains sensible, there's only so much harm that a highly ideological minority can do. Unfortunately, the extreme right took the mainstream with them. Not the mainstream views of average Americans, mind you, but the perceived political center of gravity. 

In other words, a segment of opinion that's roughly quarter or a third of the public enjoys influence far beyond its actual numbers -- and has for many years now. In addition to their shameless propaganda and talking points often completely disconnected from the facts, the far-right wing has enjoyed two other advantages. For one thing, the political elite class and especially the media have indulged them, continually stretching the definition of what are considered reasonable arguments. The other thing that's helped the extreme right -- and hurt the country -- is the political reality that our most influential voters are those paying the least attention.

Let's talk about conservative hero President Ronald Reagan for a moment. He's been mentioned a lot lately, mostly because he raised the federal debt ceiling 17 times in his presidency. But that is hardly the only issue on which today's Republican party stands far to the right of Reagan. There are also his tax increases, tax rates, arms control treaties (yes plural), rapprochement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and reluctance to use force. Reagan would easily qualify as a moderate in today's context.

Paul Krugman has  been trying to point out to the political elite their own complicity in the steady rightward drift that has brought us here. Krugman is absolutely correct, when the shapers of opinion use an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand framework to keep themselves above the fray, it leads to an appalling low level of public policy discourse (never mind the bile spewed by Fox News).

It's good that we have a scholar of economics like Krugman to sound the alarm, given that the same free market fundamentalism that got the country into this mess is given more credence than the Keynesian principles that got us out of the Great Depression. At this point, one of the political parties in America's two-party system has staked its entire argument on an ideological premise that flies in the face of reality -- i.e. that government and public expenditure can only have a negative role in our economy. Like I said, the media serves as an enabler, helping disseminate the empirically baseless idea that drastic cuts in government will bring jobs. (Sometimes I wish we could get every American to read this list of 102 Things Not To Do If You Hate Taxes.)

The real source of power in the American political system is the swing voter, who gives no allegiance to either political party. What strikes me most of all about the last several years of shifts in power is just how impressionable swing voters are, as they sway in each pre-election wind. Don't get the wrong idea about the "low-information voter." These voters are neither ignorant nor biased nor misinformed (well, maybe a little). Mostly they are simply tuned-out. Whether it's a matter of inclination, the consuming struggle to eke out a living, or a weak civic culture, the swing voter doesn't take the time to keep close track of public affairs.

All of which begs the question of whether America's political system will come to its senses. I see two sources of hope. First, you may have noticed that I said above that only 25-35% of Americans really subscribe to extreme-right views. Those views can only prevail when politicians manage to drive a higher proportion of those voters to the polls and/or keep policy debates at a level of platitudes without being challenged and debunked.

The second bit of good news is that far-right arguments eventually crumble if subjected to real scrutiny. We've started to see a few cracks, such as when House Speaker John Boehner caught flak in February for shrugging off the job losses that would result from drastic federal budget cuts. Then more recently, there was Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney's flip-flop-flip about whether President Obama made the recession worse.

An even more encouraging example was the US Senate's ratification of the New START arms control treaty during last December's lame duck session. While the agreement has drawn its own share of ideological wrath, the weak case against ratification withered over the course of several days of debate on the Senate floor.

That's how the US political system will regain equilibrium, when sensible elements of the GOP break free of mindless anti-government obstruction. The old joke about Republicans is that they run for election saying that government can't do anything, then get into office and set about proving it. But it hasn't always been that way and doesn't have to be. If you're looking for a bellwether, three Republican senators in particular have reached across the partisan divide at various points recently: Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

In summary, then, please bear with us.

Sincerely yours, David

Illustration: Boris Rasin

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