The rarest commodity in American politics is satisfaction. Peaceful contentment is nowhere to be found, not on the right, the left, or the center. Everywhere is a battle. Everything is a crisis. The country swirls and sways between competing and contradictory visions of political apocalypse.
True, there are hopeful voices and important achievements. After a little looking you can always find some optimism and political praise among the talk shows and column inches. Democrats have a handful of major spending bills and perhaps even the soon-to-pass Build Back Better deal to be thankful for, along with the mere fact of a post-Trump world. Republicans have Virginia, a committed party base, and a seemingly viable battle-plan for the post-Trump world.
And yet, I suggest that no one is ‘happy’ with the current state of the Republic.
Besides the most cynical political opportunists, no one enjoys vitriol, flagging international standing, and domestic polarization. These are not the subjects of Thanksgiving toasts. Indeed, many go so far as to bemoan or foretell the death of American democracy. Those on the right feel unfairly stigmatized, culturally policed, and left behind by a country not recognizably their own. Those on the left are consumed by rampant injustices, racial and economic oppression, and dangerous anti-democratic agitations. And the center despairs amid its unhappy company.
This, I think, is a fairly faithful picture of how most Americans perceive their political situation.
The opinions, impressions, and feelings of citizens matter. And in this instance, the zeitgeist of anger and despair floats above us, without any firm sense of context or place, unmoored from history.
True, the times are extraordinary. COVID is probably top reason why, but Trump was certainly a president unlike any we have ever had. The January 6th insurrection was shocking and disturbing, and also without parallel. Looking back at the Trump era, to use Anne Applebaum’s phrase, “history will judge the complicit.” I will not diminish or deny the multitude of very real, empirically provable problems that ravage American society.
And yet, a stubborn question burrows in my brain: are we really so quick to forget all the troubles no longer right in front of us?
Despite all the discouraging and extraordinary around us, there is a deeper continuity beneath it all. This war we find ourselves in is only the most recent engagement in a long-running conflict. For a moment, look back with me.
Only a decade ago, there was a different batch of raucous, anti-institutional agitators polarizing public opinion. The Tea Party Movement swept into office a new generation of disruptive legislators and protest-oriented conservatives. It contained extreme elements that seemed to threaten contemporary norms and values. There appeared such an upwelling of hatred against the Obama administration, that it took even some cynics by surprise. All this occurred in a context of utter financial meltdown, when corruption seemed poised to finally take down American capitalism. Many of the people we treat with shock and anguish today were the same people making speeches and calling for violent action in 2009-2011.
A little further back, America was deeply involved in an invasion of questionable legitimacy. After the national tragedy and universal horror of 9/11, any national coming-together was quickly buried in Iraq, in the torture chambers, foreign prisons, and American lives lost overseas. When Bush rolled into Iraq and then failed to produce the proof he’d promised, our domestic stability and international prestige took a hit unlike any since Vietnam. Oh, and 2020 wasn’t the only controversial presidential election with lingering impact (see 2000). Just read this PEW piece from 2003:
Over the past four years, the American electorate has been dealt a series of body blows, each capable of altering the political landscape. The voting system broke down in a presidential election. A booming economy faltered, punctuated by revelations of one of the worst business scandals in U.S. history. And the country endured a devastating attack on its own soil, followed by two major wars.
Besides the two wars, it all sounds pretty familiar.
What about the ‘90s? What about that time of booming economic growth and New York fairytales? Well, go watch Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton’s battle it out. The 1993-1994 election cycle was vicious and saw the birth of a whole new category of extreme, we-don’t-care-what-you-think conservatism. Half the country thought welfare was destroying everything, the other half thought that decent, humane systems were being destroyed. True, America was the victor of the Cold War, triumphant and secure. But how did this victory manifest itself? After a brief Fukuyama parade, we were confused, lost, and without a common purpose. Even then, the sun seemed to be setting.
During the 80’s we experienced the last great period of political consensus, with Reagan winning smashing victories in both presidential elections and Democrats cooperating in the House to pass major pieces of his legislation (as well as much of their own). But beneath the veneer of tranquil nostalgia, disruptive forces and currents were swirling. Economic inequality was on the rise (and has been ever since), far-right evangelism began to take wing, concerns about welfare, healthcare, and racial justice mounted.
Further back still we had Watergate – the nadir of (maybe) the most corrupt administration in American history. Soon afterwards inflation took off, Americans lined up at gas stations for the first time in memory, and our diplomats were held hostage in Tehran. What's more, for most of 1970-1974, Vietnam was still a bloody, costly blackhole. Accordingly, the political commentary back then was absolutely replete with claims that the Republic was fatally weak and doomed to decline. Even then, the sun seemed to be setting.
Then there were the ‘60s, the most iconic period of tumult. Sure we had the Great Society, MLK, incredible progress and revolutionary change. Did it feel that way for the people living through it though? No one can say for sure. But I would venture that the assassinations, lynchings, riots, threats of nuclear annihilation, and anguish over Vietnam added up, overpowering whatever nascent optimism defined the decade.
Go back even further and we enter our beloved “Golden Age” – when we made some of our worst foreign policy blunders, forced journalists and politicians to prove their ‘loyalty’ before hostile tribunals, did painfully little to allow anyone who wasn’t a white man into systems of power or wealth, and locked ourselves into an atomic death spiral with an evil arch-enemy half a world away. But hey, at least we had a 90% top tax rate (we didn’t really, but that’s a story for another time).
And on and on and on it goes. The depraved depths of Jim Crow and the Tulsa massacre; a failed fascist coup in the 1930s you never hear about anymore; the Great Depression; the Dust Bowl; the enormous polarization between 1870 and 1900; the vitriolic attacks in the press and on the floors of Congress; contested elections, accusations of ballot-stuffing; an atrocious war against Native Americans; the failures of reconstruction; the rise of KKK; the Civil War and all ignored lessons. And on and on and on it goes: the whole perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame history of American politics, all the way back to our divided and squabbling founders.
The eagle-eyed may have recognized this reference to Shakespeare, Sonnet 129, which opens:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
The Bard was talking about love and lust. Clearly, though, he could have just as easily been talking about politics in America.
So what? Is political life in this country an unchanging grey rain curtain of misery?
That’s one reaction. But there is another.
Every generation had its various reasons to feel that democracy, if it had ever existed at all, was slipping away. Every generation was defined by a cruel mix of nostalgia and dissatisfaction. Americans have always been a rowdy, argumentative bunch; we love to argue and complain and mythologize and persevere (see De Tocqueville, circa 1835). So tell me: when exactly did we fall off the path?
Make no mistake, there is no inherent reason for any democratic system to survive; things can always go off the rails. There are and have always been problems and crises in American democracy. Some crises are certainly more desperate and bloodier than others, some problems more perverse and stubborn. But there has always been progress also, and some problems slowly fell away in the face of steady work.
The truth is, we still have our republic and the means to keep it. Of course, we must remain vigilant. People will never stop focusing on the problems of their day, nor should they. Indeed, that focus, that burning obsession to fight and resist at all costs, is one of the main reasons American democracy will endure.
I’m not entirely sure why I wrote this article, beyond wanting to make the point that it has always been this way. Optimism will always ebb and flow with the individual; but I find it helps, every now and then, to grab the zeitgeist and force it back into its context. It certainly shakes your perspective.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin made a famous remark on the sun that was engraved on the president’s chair. He noted: “I have often looked at that [chair] behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.” Indeed, it has always been hard to tell whether the sun was rising or setting on America. Maybe it all depends where one stands.
Looking ahead, the Founding Grandfather made up his mind: “now I know that it is a rising sun.” Now, looking back, it is for each of us to determine if it still rises.
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