Over the Hedge
Belshire Way is a street in a subdivision in Orange County. ("Close to Irvine Spectrum!" the real estate ads say. "Open floor plans!") Drive by, and the view is of 14 one- and two-story tract houses. Some have red tile roofs. Some have pools in the backyards. Some get notices from the homeowners' association about garbage-can visibility and unsanctioned tetherball pole setups. In other words, it could be any suburban street in America but for something invisible from the curbside: For years, Belshire Way has been a cul-de-sac divided--exactly divided--between Democrats and Republicans.
Eleven apiece. That's how many voters on that one Lake Forest street were registered, as of this spring, with the two major political parties, along with an American Independent and five others who declined to state a partisan preference. Nationally, such "political integration," as it is called, is thought to be declining. Analyses of voting patterns over the last few decades have shown electoral districts increasingly dominated by one party or the other. Part of it is gerrymandering. Another part, though, appears to be obvious: Liberals and conservatives are becoming less and less likely to live side by side.
Who can blame them? On the Internet, on cable TV, on talk radio, on the nation's op-ed pages, polarization dominates the national discourse. Compromise and civility are as passe as Walter Cronkite. It's O'Reilly versus Franken, Drudge versus Kos, Rove versus Wilson, McCarthyites versus moonbats. We are a nation divided--nearly exactly divided. Or so we are told.
Which is why, with the 2006 primaries set for this week and the 2008 presidential race shaping up as a fight for the middle, it seemed instructive to visit one of those spots where the two sides still have to look across the hedge at each other, interact with each other. What has the intense political polarization of the last few years done to ordinary life in a place such as Belshire Way? Has anybody blinked? Has everybody stopped speaking? Have all but the apathetic moved to more like-minded quarters? Or has the great divide been worn down by proximity?
The answers, as it turns out, range from the sad to the surprising, from the confused to the subtly comic. But to the extent that one neighborhood can reflect any society, the people of Belshire Way suggest that there is a profound divide--not so much between voters but between the cul-de-sac and the Beltway, between average, fed-up Americans and the professional partisans and pundits who frame the dialogue and whip up political bases and see no harm in insisting that everybody, right down to you and your neighbor, pledge allegiance to somebody's side.
