Im-Politic: Maybe Americans Aren’t Hopelessly Polarized After All

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bipartisanship, consensus, Election 2014, Im-Politic, polarization, public opinion

Just when you think you have some clear sense of American public opinion, and especially get depressed about abundant signs that the country has turned into Polarization Nation at least for the time being, the nation throws you for a loop – in this case an especially encouraging one. At least that’s how I interpret these new Gallup findings about voters’ priorities as the home stretch of Election 2014 approaches.

Some of the data confirmed widespread assumptions. For example, only 19 percent of registered voters who describe themselves as Republicans or “Republican-leaners” viewed climate change as an “Extremely/Very Important” issue. Sixty-one percent of Democrats or “Democratic leaners” put the subject in this category. Three quarters of self-identified Democrats and leaners regarded income inequality as a major concern, versus only 54 percent of their Republican counterparts. And an even wider gap separated the two groups on the question of equal pay for women.

But the data for the last two categories also contain some of those hopeful surprises. Would you, for instance, have believed that more than half of Republicans and leaners are worked up about income inequality? In principle, of course, those Republicans could be fretting about too great a prospect of inequality-reducing policies being launched. But what about the 58 percent of Republicans mentioning equal pay for women (versus 87 percent of Democrats)? Is it really possible that many or most think women have made too much progress on this front already?

Similarly, it was entirely predictable that 77 percent of Republicans and leaners would regard “taxes” as a crucial issue – presumably because they’re supposedly too high. But what about the 63 percent of Democrats and leaners putting taxes on this list? Could many or most think they’re too low?

Other pleasant surprises: The Democrats’ top concern was “the availability of good jobs”; 89 percent called it an “Extremely/Very important” issue. And although Republicans and leaners viewed it as their third leading concern, 83 percent of them agreed with this characterization. Curiously, Gallup keeps presenting “the economy” as an issue separate from jobs. Nonetheless, 91 percent of Republicans described it as a major issue (ranking it Number One in the process), and 86 percent of Democrats assigned it comparable importance (ranking it third).

International crises have caught the attention of both groups of voters, too. Republicans were somewhat more concerned: ISIS advances in the Middle East were their second highest priority issue, with 85 percent calling them “Extremely/Very Important.” And 73 percent of that camp attached this label to “foreign affairs.” But Democrats were hardly blasé. Seventy-two percent regarded ISIS’ rise as a high priority, and 64 percent agreed re foreign affairs.

Gallup also asked voters the similar, but not identical, question of which issues would be major influences on their actual vote. And the results were pretty much the same.

Back in the mid-1990s, I was part of a group of liberals and conservatives who met informally once a month to discuss the chances of creating a “new synthesis” in American politics. The aim was combining the best and most politically appealing positions from each camp. Lots of common ground was discovered, but the renewed partisanship triggered by the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment campaign seemed to cool everyone’s interest. These Gallup results – and my own continuing confidence in the common sense of a critical mass of the American people – indicates that discussions like that 1990s group need to be restarted.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: India Shows US Folly of WTO

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consensus, India, international law, international organizations, Modi, Trade, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I have to admit – part of me admires new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for singlehandedly blocking a new World Trade Organization agreement to streamline customs procedures throughout the global economy. The proposed deal falls considerably short of a global trade game-changer. In fact, its main value seems to be in showing that the WTO has not become completely moribund now that its members have deadlocked on a significant world trade liberalization deal, and many have ramped up efforts to reach regional agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership instead.

Nonetheless, Modi was under heavy international pressure to cave in, and resisted. His rationale? “Do we choose feeding our poor or getting good press world-wide?” I have no idea whether the food stockpiles other WTO countries found so objectionable actually do prevent hunger in India, or represent the best way to do so. But I was impressed to see a leader unabashedly prioritizing his own nation’s interests over those of some abstract “global community” or supposed set of “global norms” in language that would have made his Israeli counterpart Binyamin Netanyahu proud.

At the same time, India’s ability to veto an entire global trade agreement all by itself spotlights one of the WTO’s biggest structural flaws, and one so serious from Day One that it should have convinced Washington to stay out: the organization’s requirement, carried over from its predecessor global trade body, that decisions be made by a consensus of the entire membership if at all possible.

In this way, the WTO differs fundamentally from other international organizations, like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. In those bodies, an outsized share of the real power was given to the strongest, wealthiest countries, in the form of the Security Council and its veto provision at the UN, and in the form of weighted voting at the IMF. By contrast, the WTO in effect established equal power for all countries, regardless of their characteristics.

This egalitarianism was mainly codified because most of the world’s national economies viewed it as vital for achieving one of their highest priority goals – reining in America’s legal authority to act unilaterally to advance or defend its trade interests. For a world heavily dependent on exporting to the United States to achieve and maintain prosperity, few developments could be more dangerous. Fortunately for these U.S. competitors, American trade policy was (as today) tightly controlled by offshoring and importing interests, and Washington agreed to a system bound to leave the U.S. market open much wider than other national markets.

But as made clear by Modi’s gambit, consensus-based decision-making also gives grossly outsized influence to countries whose real-world attributes merit nothing of the kind. Of course, India has an enormous population, and has made impressive strides alleviating poverty and modernizing its economy. Relatively speaking, however, it remains a pygmy, representing only 3.03 percent of global output as of last year.

Because there’s nothing even close to a worldwide consensus on acceptable trade and related economic practices, no conceivable WTO reforms can solve the problem – at least on a basis acceptable to the United States. Instead, Washington should take full advantage of the opt-out provision of its WTO accession agreement and leave the organization at the next opportunity (which comes up in 2015). As American leaders never should have forgotten, the best guarantors of U.S. security, independence, and prosperity have always been its own power and wealth – not the useless-at-best and potentially dangerous illusions of international law and institutions.