The Magnetic Mr. Obama

Will our "polarizing" president attract more voters than he repels?

By JAMES TARANTO

Barack Obama is, according to the headline of a Pete Wehner post at Commentary, "The Most Polarizing President Ever." Over at the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza and Aaron Blake's headline disagrees with Wehner only on what part of speech "ever" is: "Obama: The Most Polarizing President. Ever." (We couldn't find the interjectional ever in a dictionary, but we gather it is more emphatic than the old adverbial form.)
Wehner notes that "one of the core claims" of Obama's 2008 campaign was that he would "heal the nation's political breach . . . elevate the national debate . . . do away with what he called the '50 plus one' style of governing . . . 'turn the page' on the 'old politics' of division and anger . . . end a politics that 'breeds division and conflict and cynicism' . . . help us to 'rediscover our bonds to each other and … get out of this constant petty bickering that's come to characterize our politics' . . . 'cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.' "


Wehner argues that Obama has failed to deliver on these promises. Gee, ya think?
Cilizza and Blake look at the same Gallup poll findings and try to let Obama off the hook:

What do those numbers tell us? Put simply: that the country is hardening along more and more strict partisan lines.

While it's easy to look at the numbers cited above and conclude that Obama has failed at his mission of bringing the country together, a deeper dig into the numbers in the Gallup poll suggests that the idea of erasing the partisan gap is simply impossible, as political polarization is rising rapidly.

In this telling, which is not unpersuasive, Obama is more a creature of his time than a creator of it. He didn't polarize the country, and it is beyond his capacity to lessen its polarization significantly. Yet even if we stipulate that his promise was impossible to fulfill, that doesn't absolve him of responsibility for his failure to fulfill it. He made either a promise he knew would be impossible to keep, which would be dishonest, or one he naively believed he had the ability to keep, which would be foolish. (Somehow this argument reminds us of the trilemma, C.S. Lewis's argument for the divinity of Jesus. It does not lead us to a similar conclusion about Obama.)
Cilizza and Blake define polarization as follows: "We are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action." But the metaphor of polarization, in which the parties are magnetic fields, is actually a good deal more complicated than that. Magnetic fields, after all, affect different substances differently.
For one thing, magnetism is both an attractive and a repulsive force. Cilizza and Blake emphasize the latter, but polarization requires both. One Gallup chart ranks presidents from Eisenhower to Obama on polarization during their third year in office. Obama is at the very top, with a 68-point "party gap." The three least polarized presidents were Jimmy Carter in 1979, Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and Ike in 1955. Carter was very unpopular (24% approval among Republicans, 46% among Democrats), Ike was very popular (91% and 57%), and LBJ's popularity was middling (34% and 68%).
In a polarized electorate, then, partisans not only are more likely to disapprove of a president of the other party but also to approve of one from their own party. Cilizza and Blake note that "out of the ten most partisan years in terms of presidential job approval in Gallup data, seven--yes, seven--have come since 2004. [George W.] Bush had a run between 2004 and 2007 in which the partisan disparity of his job approval was at 70 points or higher." What they don't note is that polarization declined significantly in 2008 (to a 61-point gap), when even Republicans had started to turn against Bush.
Why would the electorate be more polarized today than in past decades? Because there are far more, and sharper, ideological disputes than there used to be, and because both parties have become increasingly ideological. The Gallup data begin in the 1950s, a moment of broad though temporary stability. The big political disputes over the New Deal and internationalism versus isolationism were largely settled. A reckoning on civil rights, though long overdue, had only gotten under way. And today's most polarizing "social issues," like abortion and gay rights, were practically unheard of.

Podcast

James Taranto on political polarization.

By the 1970s and '80s the country had become more ideologically polarized. But partisan identification took a while to catch up. So, for example, Reagan was less "polarizing" than Bush fils or Obama because he had the support of the "Reagan Democrats," who still identified with the donks even though they were closer to the GOP in ideology. A lot of Reagan Democrats (or their descendants) are now Republicans. Similarly, the socially liberal "Rockefeller Republicans" of yesterday are the socially liberal Democrats of today.
"The realization of that hyper-partisan reality has been slow in coming for Obama," write Cilizza and Blake. "But in recent months, he seems to have turned a rhetorical corner--taking the fight to Republicans (and Republicans in Congress, particularly) and all but daring them to call his bluff."
That's a highly implausible account. After all, during the first half of his term, when Obama had big Democratic majorities in Congress, he and they governed in a hyperpartisan way. Their two biggest legislative initiatives, the "stimulus" and ObamaCare, were enacted with a grand total of three GOP votes.
The trouble with all this talk of "polarization" is that it ignores the large share of voters who are neither Democrats nor Republicans. Just as magnetic fields have no significant effect on copper or aluminum, many voters are unmoved by the push and pull of ideological polarization. These voters--broadly speaking, those who describe themselves as independents--increasingly decide our elections.

Obama isn't a lame duck, at least not yet.

It is to them that Obama meant to appeal with his impossible promises to transcend partisan division. According to exit polls, independents made up 29% of the electorate in 2008, and Obama carried their votes, 52% to 44%, very close to his overall margin over John McCain. Obama's airy promises of postpartisanship no doubt helped him win over independents, but our guess is that an even bigger factor was the sense from the preceding few years that Republicans were incapable of governing competently.
Obama has had low approval ratings among independents for most of his presidency. That, not "polarization," is the reason he is in danger of defeat this year. The way for a Republican to beat him is to run a campaign centered on competence, not ideology.
Going for Brokaw
"NBC asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Saturday to pull a campaign advertisement made up almost entirely of a 1997 'Nightly News' report on Newt Gingrich's ethics committee reprimand," the Associated Press reports:

The footage was used without permission and the extensive use of the broadcast "inaccurately suggests that NBC News and Mr. Brokaw have consented to the use of this material and agree with the political position espoused by the videos," NBC's vice president of media law, David N. Sternlicht, wrote Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades.

"Aside from the obvious copyright issues, this use of the voice of Mr. Brokaw and the NBC News name exploits him and the journalistic credibility of NBC News," the letter said. The network asked for the campaign to stop running the ad immediately and revise any other videos or commercials to remove at [sic] NBC material. . . .

NBC spokeswoman Lauren Kapp said a similar request went to other campaigns that "have inappropriately" used material from "Nightly News," ''Meet the Press," ''Today" and MSNBC. Kapp said she was not aware of such uses by other campaigns.

Seems as though Kapp manages to contradict herself in that paragraph, but whatever. The Romney campaign has thus far refused to pull the ad, arguing that it falls under the fair use provisions of copyright law. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, a Romney supporter, agrees, calls NBC's legal claim "frivolous," and accuses the network of "trying to silence core First Amendment speech."
That strikes us as overwrought. We'd say the primary purpose of NBC's request to the Romney campaign is expressive, not repressive. The network is trying to distance itself from the perception that it is biased against Gingrich. It's likely the ad will end its run tomorrow anyway, after the Florida primary, having either served its purpose (if Romney wins) or proved ineffective (if Gingrich wins).
An amusing sidelight is noted by the Miami Herald's Marc Caputo in a blog post:

But perhaps NBC should send the letter to its own South Florida affiliate [actually an owned-and-operated station] as well. Shortly after this post, Fort Lauderdale real estate agent Tweeted this observation: "@TomBrokaw Against your express wishes, NBC Miami is running your Romney ad right now. Demand that NBC stop running it if you are serious."

So NBC is in high-dudgeon about the use of its material. But it'll keep airing ads like this because money talks louder than self-important puffery about TV journalistic standards

It turns out, however, that it's not money but government regulation that's doing the talking. Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that "broadcasters are legally required to run any ads candidates present--as is":

It's also worth noting that if a pro-Romney super PAC presented the same ad, NBC could have refused it, since the federal rules apply only to candidates, not freestanding political organizations.

That leads us to a mischievous question. Many newspapers--The Wall Street Journal being a notable exception--have editorialized strongly against the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC, which vindicated First Amendment rights of independent organizations. Do their corporate parents have policies against accepting any advertisements that would be illegal if that view prevailed?
Is the ACLU a Racist Organization?
Two weeks ago, when Juan Williams asked Newt Gingrich to reply to charges that his characterization of Barack Obama as the "food stamp president" were racially insensitive, this column applauded Gingrich's answer. We did not, however, take exception to Williams's question, which struck us as a reasonable one.
We do, however, think Williams goes off the rails in a commentary for the Hill:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are "entitlement society"--as used by Mitt Romney--and "poor work ethic" and "food stamp president"--as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the "Founding Fathers" and the "Constitution" also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core "old-fashioned American values."

Really? Accusing someone of not respecting "the 'Constitution' " is a racial code word? If that were true, the American Civil Liberties Union would be the biggest racist organization around.
Putting Everything in Perspective

• "I want to cut his nuts out."--Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2008
• "The ultimate insult."--Jesse Jackson on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's pointing her finger at Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 28, 2012

Three Papers in One!
"It is time to end the ability of a single senator, or group of senators, to block the confirmation process by threatening a filibuster, which can be overcome only by the vote of 60 senators," the New York Times editorialized yesterday:

We agree with President Obama's call in the State of the Union address for the Senate to change its rules and require votes on judicial and executive nominees within 90 days.

This is a major change of position for us, and we came to it reluctantly.

In calling this "a major change of position," the Times gives the impression that it has long supported the filibuster. But a Times editorial of Jan. 1, 1995 was headlined "Time to Retire the Filibuster." It called for abolishing the process altogether, for legislation as well as nominations.
The paper's "major change" yesterday was a change from its last major change of position, which it explained in a March 29, 2005, editorial titled "Walking in the Opposition's Shoes":

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton's early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it's obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

Yet amid its zigging and zagging, the Times has been consistent, in that its view on the filibuster has always been in line with the immediate interests of the Democratic Party. Its claims both in 2005 and today to have undertaken a thoughtful reconsideration of the matter look rather hypocritical.
Andrew Rosenthal, the Times's editorial page editor, seems aware of this problem. Yesterday he tweeted a link to the new editorial with this comment: "It risks fringe rightwingers getting named by a GOP president, but filibustering nominees must end." This seems to imply a promise to stick to the current antifilibuster position if, a year or two from now, President Romney's nominees are being held up by a Democratic minority's unwillingness to bring them to the Senate floor.
We'll believe that when we see it.
Two Stories in One!

• "List of Pardons Included Many Tied to Power"--headline, New York Times news story, Jan. 28
• "Many of those pardoned [by outgoing Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi] appear to have no special connections."--12th paragraph, same story

Dept. of Unfortunate Metaphors
"Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas and I also know Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder and I know what the sausage grinder is all about."--Herman Cain endorsing Newt Gingrich, quoted by ABCNews.com, Jan. 28
Appeal to Authority
"The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro . . . argued that the 'selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is--and I mean this seriously--the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.' When Marxists are complaining that your party's candidates are disconnected from today's global realities, it's generally not a good sign."--Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Jan. 29
Metpahor Alert
"Our problem isn't that the sources of prosperity have dried up in a long drought; our problem is that we don't know how to swim. It is raining soup, and we are stuck holding a fork."--Walter Russell Mead, The-American-Interest.com, Jan. 29