American stalemate - The Second Civil War How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America Ronald Brownstein Penguin Press: 484 pp., $27.95
TAKE the concept of an hourglass economy, in which the middle is squeezed to near nonexistence, and apply it to politics -- the major parties and the gravitations of the electorate -- and you have approximated our plight as Ronald Brownstein lays it out in "The Second Civil War." Wielding a catchphrase lifted from Ken Mehlman, campaign manager for George W. Bush in 2004 and chairman of the Republican National Committee for part of Bush's second term, Brownstein calls this "the age of hyperpartisanship," in which almost every force related to our political life "operates as an integrated machine to push the parties apart and to sharpen the disagreements in American life."
Party leaders have taken the gloves off, and Brownstein wants them put back on before we're sorry -- although he suspects many of us, whether red state or blue, are sorry already and waving the white flag. "What's unusual now is that the political system is more polarized than the country," he writes, and "the impulse to harmonize divergent interests has almost vanished from the capital"; increasing divergence, "not the breadth of the underlying divisions itself, is the defining characteristic of our era."
Brownstein, former chief political correspondent for The Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of presidential elections, contends that we are caught in a feedback loop of extremism in party politics: The GOP delivered a punishing preemptive strike, and the Democrats, caught off guard and pummeled from snoozy to woozy, are attempting to shake it off by fighting back in equally blunt fashion. Like a breeder reactor, this type of politics creates its own fuel.
Many surely consider revivified opposition to the party in power all to the good, but Brownstein argues cogently for why the overall situation is not, and why -- when it comes to such matters as border security, budgetary concerns, greenhouse gases and fighting terrorism -- we are stalemated by either/or choices and kept from "the constructive compromises between the parties required to confront these problems." Using polls from Gallup and the Pew Foundation and election studies conducted since 1948 by the University of Michigan to buttress his points, along with plentiful interview material and examples drawn from congressional history throughout the last century and into this one, Brownstein presents both a biting critique of current political practices and an investigation into their origins.
