Barack Obama was still a little green when he took the stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. His youthful appearance was matched by the idealism of his message. Mr. Obama spoke that night, in a speech that made his political career, about the need to overcome partisanship.
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America,” he declared.
That thesis has aged about as well as the hair around the former president’s temples. Despite the magnificence of his oratory, Mr. Obama was wrong. America was terribly divided then. It is far more so now.
It may be a truism to observe that Democrats and Republicans have starkly different ideas about how their country should be run. But the absolute partisan doesn’t only believe strongly in her party’s values; she loathes people who don’t. What’s more, she hews to those values not because she finds them valid, but because the party has decreed them.
America now has more partisans, in that sense, than ever before in its modern history.
Consider two recent bits of polling. The first shows that 79 per cent of Republicans approved of Donald Trump’s toadying performance at his Helsinki press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin – a performance that was the antithesis of everything Ronald Reagan stood for.
By the same token, while the FBI used to be Republican red meat, GOP support for the bureau has plummeted in the past 18 months as James Comey and his successors have entered Mr. Trump’s crosshairs.
These Republican voters are repudiating core conservative beliefs (FBI good, Russia bad) virtually overnight, because the leader of their party wills it.
As for that other core ingredient of raw partisanship – hatred of the other side – there’s plenty of that going around, too. Roughly a third of Democrats and almost half of Republicans tell pollsters they would be “displeased” if one of their children married a member of the other party. In the past, virtually no one felt that way.
What we are seeing in the United States is partisanship boiled down to its essence: pure tribalism devoid of ideological content. Blind devotion to party is not new, but it is more blind and more virulent than ever before in modern America.
How are we faring in Canada? Things are not nearly as bad here. None of our political parties is devolving into a personality cult dedicated to an emotionally unstable demagogue.
Of course, we have bitter partisanship in Canada. In fact, the narcissism of small differences ensures that our inter-party feuds often turn disproportionately nasty. Few places convert more molehills into mountains than the Canadian House of Commons.
But partisanship has never been quite so entrenched in Canada as it is in the United States. Having four major federal parties helps: It keeps voters from developing overly passionate loyalties to any one political brand.
Canada’s broad consensus around key issues, such as public health care, women’s reproductive rights, free trade and mass immigration, helps cool the partisan temperature, too. The stakes in any given election simply aren’t as high as they are in American presidential contests, when health insurance for millions, judicial support for legal abortion and the state of the country’s southern border are often in play.
Still, a couple of phenomena spurring the uptick in U.S. partisanship have also started plaguing the culture in Ottawa. It has become a cliché to say this, but social media is one of them. Since its users visit the platform for quick stimulation, Twitter rewards invective. Partisans of all stripes, not to mention their political leaders, have taken note. Seeing the Prime Minister’s principal secretary flaming opponents in staccato bursts on the internet is an odd spectacle, and not always an edifying one.
Political havoc in the United States has also taken its toll on the way Canadian parties treat each other. The renegotiation of NAFTA and the surge of asylum seekers across the New York-Quebec border have been partisan flashpoints in recent months, and no wonder: The Canadian political system has not dealt with either contingency in generations.
These inducements to tribalism will not go away soon. Our politicians and their followers must make sure they don’t succumb.