The Myth of the Red & Blue

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.

The middle answer was chosen by 54 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents.

"The country is obviously closely divided, maybe even bitterly divided, but in terms of policy we just are not very deeply divided," said former Rep. Vin Weber, one of the leaders of Bush's campaign in the Upper Midwest. "If you turn down the decibel level, the issues we're arguing over don't compare to the really deep disagreements of the past. We disagree about whether to shift the tax burden a little bit up and down the ladder, but nobody's talking about going back to a top rate of 70 percent."

If Weber is right, then why is the decibel level so high?

In his recent book, "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Stanford political scientist Morris P. Fiorina argued that the noise comes from a relatively small, politically obsessed slice of the population.

"The simple truth is that there is no culture war in the United States -- no battle for the soul of America rages, at least none that most Americans are aware of," Fiorina wrote. "Many of the activists in the political parties and the various cause groups do, in fact, hate each other and regard themselves as combatants in a war. But ... the bulk of the American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the crossfire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other."

Battlegrounds

The idea that Americans live in blue and red states is dead wrong. That should be especially clear to residents of a certain longtime blue state called Minnesota, which both parties have declared a battleground this year. Candidates have visited so often they're beginning to pronounce Wayzata correctly.

Depending on how you count them, between 16 and 21 states are neither red nor blue but very much up for grabs in November. That many swing states is above average.

And bear in mind that in the 2000 election, the event that touched off the Red and Blue America craze, neither party got 70 percent of the vote in any state. In Franklin Roosevelt's heyday, he used to get more than 70 percent in 10 or more states, and he broke 90 in Mississippi every time he ran. Now that was a blue state.

And when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, he didn't get above 1 percent in any Southern state. That was polarization.

Fiorina argued that during the last quarter of the 20th century, the political opinions of Americans grew less divided by class, by generation, by religious denomination, by educational level and by region.

But if Americans aren't worlds apart on issues, or isolated in red and blue strongholds, what accounts for the widespread impression of an unusual political estrangement? One answer is a change in our major political parties.

As recently as the 1970s, both major parties were broad overlapping coalitions.

Some of the most conservative political leaders were Southern Democrats, such as George Wallace. Northern Republicans included social liberals, such as Nelson Rockefeller.

The migration over recent decades of conservative Southerners into the Republican Party has enabled both parties to become more ideologically coherent. Nowadays, most liberals are Democrats and most conservatives are Republicans.

The change has freed today's party leaders and strategists to use more one-sided and provocative rhetoric because Republicans are less concerned about offending their own liberals and likewise with Democrats and conservatives. It increases the chance that unrepentant liberals and conservatives will be nominated, which makes the choice offered to the electorate clearer. And it makes it less likely that Democrats will approve of a conservative Republican president like Bush, because there are so few conservative Democrats.

None of this means liberals and conservatives disagree more than they ever did, but it may look that way because the disagreements are almost entirely across party lines.

Elected officials have found it difficult recently to find middle ground. This year, the Minnesota Legislature adjourned without passing a budget or a bonding bill.

But do unyielding policymakers reflect the people they represent? In June, a CBS News poll asked Americans what elected officials should do when they are at loggerheads. An overwhelming 83 percent said they should compromise.

Extreme views aren't limited to elected officials, of course. Attend any of the candidate visits to Minnesota, and you will see plenty of fighting words on buttons and signs, such as the less-than-respectful Bush-bashing bumper sticker that reads: "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot," or the charming new Republican habit of chanting "flip-flop" when speakers discuss Kerry's record.

The stereotype of warring partisan camps certainly extends to the level of activists and other members of the political elite. The New York Times surveyed the delegates to the Democratic convention and found them to be more anti-Bush and further to the left than Democrats in general.

For example, 89 percent of Democratic delegates favored the repeal of all or most of the tax cuts passed during Bush's term, while only 59 percent of Democratic voters felt that way.

The appearance of a historic division also owes something to media hype. Fine national publications have produced big packages about polarization. And yes, if you go to Texas and San Francisco, you can find the well-armed Bible-bangers and vegan tree huggers you need to put a human face on a story about Red-Blue America. But couldn't you have found similar characters 20 years ago, or 40, when polarization stories were not in vogue?

Stories about the red-blue divide have sometimes relied on polls that indicate more people than in the recent past are paying attention to the campaign, see a difference between the parties and the candidates, say it matters who wins and are happy with their choices.

You can paint those as evidence of polarization if you want to, but they are also signs of a robust democracy.

Other media don't so much describe polarization as epitomize it. On talk radio, on Web logs (blogs) of the left and right, and on the nonfiction best-seller list, rhetoric often slips the bonds of civility.

If you want to be alarmed about the consequences of the Other Side winning this election, there are lots of people anxious to help. But it would hard to top the subtitle of radio talker Hugh Hewitt's new book: "Crushing the Democrats in every election AND WHY YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT."

In the Minnesota Poll, 58 percent agreed that "so many people have taken extreme positions these days that it's hard to talk with anyone about politics unless you know they are likely to agree with you."

"I try to talk to Republicans, but very often they end up leaving the room," said Gary Aamodt, 66, an Eden Prairie Democrat. After one such incident when the Bush-bashing drove a Republican couple from the dinner table, Aamodt said he and the couple, friends of 20 years standing, agreed to avoid talking about Bush in order to preserve their friendship.

Something about Bush

Feelings about Bush seem to be the place where ordinary folks share the strong feelings of the political class.

Since the early days of polling, no president -- not Ronald Reagan, not Bill Clinton -- has produced such a wide gap in sentiment between Republicans and Democrats. Ask Minnesotans if they approve of Bush, and they retreat, almost completely, to their partisan corners. Nearly nine in 10 Republicans approve; nearly nine in 10 Democrats disapprove. National polls show a similar chasm and suggest that, at least so far, Kerry's most important quality, to both his supporters and detractors, is that he is not George W. Bush.

But plenty of Minnesotans are able to keep politics from spoiling a friendly meal. Barry MacDonald, 46, who publishes a conservative journal in Stillwater, is solid for Bush, complaining only that the president isn't fiscally conservative enough. Yet he amicably debates issues over breakfast each Saturday with a liberal friend.

"I'm passionate about politics but I don't let it get me riled up," MacDonald said. "It's not a good idea to walk around powerless and angry all the time. That doesn't foster clear thinking.

"Sure we're polarized," MacDonald adds of Americans in general, "but not more than in the past. At the beginning, we were polarized about whether we should fight King George III."