Why America Doesn't Work

Why does America not seem to work? Gas prices are too high, there is not enough affordable health care for all, math and reading scores are woefully far behind the rest of the world, the gap between rich and poor remains wide and perhaps growing, good-paying jobs seem crowded out by cheap foreign labor, Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt, highways are deteriorating, blacks and women still earn less than white men, children are abused and neglected, the environment is deteriorating, and on and on. Why cannot the government simply get these problems under control?

Progressivism entered American politics promising to solve these problems if the national government were only given sufficient resources and sufficient authority to plan effectively for the entire general welfare. It was not until the 1930s Depression that the welfare state got the opportunity to put its ideals fully into practice but by 1960, the welfare state had become, as its most famous theorist, Gunnar Myrdal, boasted, "the widely acclaimed ideal of a whole nation." People by then had accepted the progressive dogma that national prosperity and welfare did "not come into being from the unhampered play of market forces but through public policies, which are all under the ultimate sanction of the state."

The stagflation of the late 1970s shook the public confidence in the welfare state but even Ronald Reagan's efforts at reform were soon overwhelmed by the actions of his successors who maintained the commitment of government to guarantee the general welfare, epitomized by President George W. Bush's statement that "when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Still, while the public expects the government to move to solve every social ill, it has become dissatisfied with how the government tries to solve them, as the persisting complaints attest. Even in its heyday, Myrdal worried that "to many persons, the welfare state has negative, not positive connotations" so people were skeptical about granting the necessary power to public authorities.

The founder of American progressivism, Woodrow Wilson, understood their problem. He recognized that America's checks and balances were the obstacle to effective government planning and sought to overcome them by attempting to concentrate power in the president and other national political leaders "responsible" to him as party chief. A progressive and conservative party would contest and whoever won the majority could adopt its comprehensive national program. While Franklin Roosevelt was successful leading the progressive majority under the Wilsonian reforms to dominate Congress and the courts for a time, it came tumbling down in 1938 as the Depression continued, allowing Republicans to win enough seats to form a coalition with Southern Democrats that ended presidential domination and single party rule. Except for World War II, power has remained diffused among many power centers, frustrating effective national planning, whether from Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or the George Bushes, leaving only unelected judges to steer toward the progressive ideal.

While power did become increasingly centralized in the national government, it did not appear especially effective. Moreover, the people did not unify around two ideologies or parties but remained fragmented and diffuse. At the end, the Founders "new political science," as Alexander Hamilton called it, proved more powerful than the reforms. James Madison had taught it was in the nature of politics for factions to develop if there is sufficient freedom to do so. There were only three ways to control this, he maintained: suppress the factions, have all peoples hold the same opinions or allow factions to develop but control their excesses through separating power over a large territory to minimize the influence of any one. Totalitarians choose the first, progressives the second and republicans the third. The progressive solution actually meant all agreeing to one of two coherent overriding conservative and liberal ideologies that contest for power in two opposing political parties. It had some early success in the New Deal but ultimately broke down in the face of Madison's and Hamilton's "obstacle course" of divided powers and because the population was too "diverse," in Madison's terminology, and would not divide in the simple manner expected by the progressives.

The premier systematic snapshot of the American populace is performed every few years by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. This year's study makes the point in spades. They find the electorate divided into nine groups, none of which holds even one-fifth of the population. Only two have much ideological coherence in the progressive-rationalist mold and both together only total 37 percent of the people. The rest do not fit easily under the terms progressive and conservative. Indeed, conservatives are broken into two types, economic (or enterprisers) at 9% of the population and social conservatives at 11% while progressives total only 17% of the public (and were in previous years divided into two groups, social-justice and secular liberals at about 8% each). The basic fact about the American populace is that it is divided into many diverse social groupings.

The Pew Center likes to emphasize the "changing shape" of the American political population and has sold each of its studies to the media since 1987 in this manner. Its methodology, in fact, emphasizes change. Yet, even with this bias, the dominant pattern over the years has been the stability of the diversity. Indeed, the 2005 typology generally returns after some minor wavering over the years to the categories of the first study (except, for some reason, combing the liberal groups) and, for the first time, includes some comparative data over time (although only in the tables at the end because, as a researcher admitted, the similarities over time were not noticed when the text was written).

Rather than two dominant ideological groupings nesting in each of the two major political parties as expected in the progressive model, Pew found many groups. Beside the major progressive and conservative groupings were: disadvantaged Democrats (poorer, many minorities, anti-business, pessimistic) 10%, conservative Democrats 14% (socially conservative and economically liberal), pragmatic conservatives (socially and economically conservative but more environmental, less for court reform and guns) 9%, "upbeats" (positive about society and economy, neither pro nor antigovernment, wealthy, educated, white, suburban, married) 11%, "disaffecteds" (cynical, less educated, independent, gun owners, low voting, male) 9% and "bystanders" (non-voters, poorest, secular, and pretty much divided between the parties) 10%.

As the names imply, the groups can be related to the political parties, but only very generally. Economic and social conservatives identify with and vote overwhelmingly for Republicans. Secular and social-justice liberals and disadvantaged Democrats vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Conservative Democrats are socially conservative but are moved mostly by economic issues and usually vote Democratic. Pragmatic conservatives are more moderate but generally vote for the GOP. Upbeats and disaffecteds are more independent of the political parties but in recent years have tended Republican but have been open to center-sounding Democrats like Bill Clinton.

A classification scheme developed by political scientist Aaron Wildavsky provides a useful way to order the groups. He finds four major political tendencies among world populations: (1) individualists who view nature as benign, easily managed by an "invisible hand" relying on private individual initiative, entrepreneurship and experimentation to make things work out all right; (2) egalitarians who view nature as ephemeral, where all people equally need collective assistance from a strong force like a democratic national government to manage all things correctly and fairly; (3) deferentials who view nature as more neutral but as controllable if individuals rely upon strong social organizations like churches, communities, corporations, and associations and only secondarily on government; and (4) fatalists who view nature and government as capricious, basically unknowable and uncontrollable, and only made tolerable by strong attachments to family, clan and other blood and local community entities.

The Pew groups can be placed within the Wildavsky ones as shown in the nearby graph. Economic conservative enterprisers are the classic individualists but, in their own ways, so are upbeats and pragmatic conservatives. Pew's liberals are the classic egalitarians and so are disadvantaged Democrats. Social conservatives are the typical deferentials but so are conservative Democrats. Bystanders are the archetypal fatalists, not participating at all, but so are disaffecteds, if they do get involved at a somewhat higher rate. Placing the Pew data in the proper Wildavsky categories finds that roughly 29% of the population is individualist, 27% egalitarian, 25% deferential and 19% fatalist, pretty much the same since Pew began studying the electorate. Again, from the perspective of the "responsible," two-party/ideology model, there is not simple individualism and egalitarianism but four types, none near a majority. There simply is too much complexity.

The purer progressive and conservative groups are the most important politically. They represent the bases of the two political parties: liberals make up 57% of "strong" Democrats and the economic and social conservative groups make up 73% of strong Republicans, dominating their respective nomination processes. Yet, even here, only the liberals go right down the party line on issues as the "responsible" political model expects. As the progressive model says, economic conservatives are conservative on both economic and social issues, but social conservatives are less reliably conservative on economic matters. This fact and the support of the pragmatic conservatives has allowed the GOP under George W. Bush to increase the size of government more than any recent Democratic Administration as a way to appeal to upbeats and disaffecteds, against the desires of the economic conservatives for less government. The 9/11 attack also rallied all conservatives to President Bush to combat terrorism and allowed him sufficient flexibility to move to the left on economic policy.

These realities have also resulted in the Democratic groups unifying against the president and his party -- especially at the urging of the liberal groups, which are now as upper middle class as the economic conservatives and like them are driven by ideological rather than pocketbook issues. But the rest of the groups remain non-ideological and this in turn has made it difficult for Democrats to win a majority (at least in the Electoral College). On the other hand, it is the policies of the Republicans and their progressive rhetoric promising that they can solve all problems that have provoked the popular unease and the low public support for the president. As a result, 2006 should be a competitive election although that would only divide government further and make it even more difficult for things to "work."

America does not work in the way progressives think it should both because government power remains divided so that everything is compromised to a lowest common denominator and because the electorate is divided into factions instead of into two rational ideologies as progressives think it should. As long as such a divided government and electorate cannot cohere around a coherent, rational, comprehensive plan, the progressive program cannot even be tried. Neither is likely to change so nothing will ever work for them.

Conservatives work by organizing factions into coalitions rather than into rational national orders. They expect politics to be messy and therefore for government not to work very well. That is why they prefer most domestic social activity to take place privately or locally, which they think is the only way society can really work. The Founders never meant it to work in any other way.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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