politics

The sisters look alike and work together at the Life Time Fitness center in Coon Rapids. But they are divided -- like Minnesota and America -- in their presidential preferences. * Crissy Hill, 25, admires President George W. Bush, wants him to finish the job in Iraq, and finds Sen. John Kerry "arrogant and unlikable." * Big sister Mary Hill, 30, doesn't like the way the war is going and complains that Bush "can't even speak properly."

According to a fashionable view of America, the sisters should be at each other's throats. They should disagree about everything from tax cuts to gay rights.

But that idea makes them laugh. Talking about politics also makes them laugh, as Crissy tries to get Mary to admit that she favors Kerry mostly because she likes Boston.

Like the sisters, many Americans and Minnesotans have strong feelings about Bush. But on most subjects, we, like they, agree more than you may realize.

The sisters agree on many issues, including gay marriage. "Who cares?" says Crissy. "They're not hurting anyone," Mary dittoes.

A frequent refrain of campaign coverage and commentary this year holds that America is deeply divided about politics, culture and religion. According to this view, we live in states that are either red (Republican) or blue (Democratic), so dubbed because of the color-coded maps used to illustrate the 2000 vote.

In Red-Blue America, you take your political cues from either Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore.

You are either a God-fearing, gun-toting, gay-bashing he-man, listening to Lee Greenwood in your pickup, in which case you love Bush and believe that the republic's survival hangs on his reelection; or you are a latté-sipping professor of women's studies who frets about global warming and shudders to think people actually believe superstitions like Adam and Eve or Supply and Demand, in which case you detest Bush and will vote for Kerry in the hope that he is really further left than he pretends.

The good news is that the chasm isn't as deep, as new or as scary as all that. Evidence from a Minnesota Poll on the state's political mood, and from numerous national polls, suggests that the so-called great divide is more a Hill sisters thing than a Limbaugh-Moore thing.

The political center is not disappearing. We don't live in states that are all red or all blue. And most of us dislike the kind of partisan all-or-nothing-ism that caused the Minnesota Legislature to melt down this year without completing its basic tasks.

Down the middle

According to the red-blue stereotype, the Rev. Eric Haugan of Winthrop ought to be a strong Bush backer. Look at the clues. Men, churchgoers and rural folks are among Bush's better groups. Haugan is pastor to a small-town Protestant congregation. His abortion politics are closer to Bush's than Kerry's.

Haugan is actually an undecided Democrat. He respects Kerry's military service and dislikes efforts to besmirch Kerry's character. But he also strongly supports Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.

Haugan inhabits a centrist haven that isn't supposed to exist in Red-Blue America. He has two Republican friends who are leaning toward Bush, but with reservations. One is troubled by the war. The other, like Haugan itself, is offended when Bush implies that Americans are God's chosen people. Red Americans are supposed to like that.

If the center has disappeared, why do more Minnesotans describe themselves as moderate (40 percent) than as liberal (21) or conservative (33)? More also consider themselves independents (38 percent) than Democrats (32) or Republicans (30).

The Red-Blue America theory suggests that we are divided on everything from our musical tastes to gay marriage. But in fact there are few huge chasms over issues.

Take abortion, supposedly the most divisive, all-or-nothing issue of them all. If you judge only by the voting record of U.S. senators, it's just that. Every single Republican senator received a zero ranking last year from the National Abortion Rights Action League, meaning that they unfailingly opposed the league. Yet, 44 percent of Minnesota Republicans believe that a woman should have the right to choose an abortion, according to the Minnesota Poll. Democrats are closer to unanimity in favor of abortion rights, but still, one-sixth of Minnesota Democrats oppose the idea that a woman should have the right to choose.

When polls offer respondents a middle choice on controversial issues, including abortion, compromise is often popular. In July, the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs asked voters in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa whether abortion should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances or illegal in all circumstances.