Chapter Three: Politics, polarisation and American exceptionalism

Abstract

The struggle not just to define but also to preserve American power is no modern phenomenon: questions of intervention and projection have dominated the nation's politics from the days of the Founding Fathers. Then, as now, the old centres of power were shifting. Nor is economic stress an unfamiliar factor for policymakers. As another presidential election looms, America's role in global affairs and security has emerged as one of the campaign's great battle lines.

But in 2012, domestic political and economic problems are compounded by the ongoing financial crisis in Europe, which, together with the overstretch and fatigue from two wars, has sapped the strength of America's chief allies. While it may urge its NATO partners to shoulder more of the security burden, the US finds them less willing and occasionally unable to share the strain. This Adelphi examines the myriad challenges America must confront if it is to uphold and spread its values and interests.

Notes

For Santelli's rant, see http://freedomeden.blogspot.it/2009/02/rick-santelli-tea-party.html.

Kate Zernike, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America (New York: Times Books, 2010).

Gregory Kroger, Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarisation in Congress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It's Even Worse than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012); Nolan McCarty, Howard Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).

Edward Luce, ‘The Neocons Are Back Vying for a Seat in the White House,’ Financial Times, 29 April 2012.

Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012).

For illustrations of this line of argument, see Bobby Jindal, Leadership and Crisis (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2010), chapter 10; Rick Perry, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010), chapter 5.

For an extreme version of this argument, see Charles Murray, ‘The Happiness of the People’, The 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/race-and-gender/the-happiness-ofthe-people-speech/.

See ‘News Conference by President Obama’, Palaiz de le Musique et le Congres, Strasbourg, 4 April 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/news-conferencepresident-obama-4042009.

Kendra Marr, ‘Newt Gingrich Talks Faith – not Affairs – at Cornerstone Church in Texas’, Politico, 27 March 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52023.html.

Matthew Yglesias, ‘Gingrich Warns America May Become a Secular Atheist Country Dominated by Radical Islamists’, Thinkprogress.org, 29 March 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/03/29/200379/gingrich-warns-america-maybecomeasecular-atheistcountry-dominated-by-radicalislamists/?mobile=nc.

Dinesh D'Souza, The Roots of Obama's Rage (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2010).

Robert Costa, ‘Gingrich: “Obama's Kenyan, Anti-Colonial World View”’, National Review Online, 11 September 2010, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246302/gingrich-obama-skenyan-anti-colonial-worldviewrobert-costa#.

Jonathan Capehart, ‘How Newt Gingrich Thinks’, Washington Post, 13 September 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/09/how_gingrich_thinks.html.

Glenn Kessler, ‘Huckabee's “Kenyan Clarification” Raises More Questions’, Washington Post, 2 March 2011, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/03/huckabees_kenya_clarification.html.

‘Huckabee Defends Rev. Jeremiah Wright’, Huffington Post, 28 March 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/19/huckabee-defendsrev-jere_n_92346.html.

Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama's America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

McCarty, Rosenthal and Poole, Polarized America; King and Smith, Still a House Divided.

For top marginal tax rate data, see http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213.

David A. Stockman, The Triumph of Politics: The Inside Story of the Reagan Revolution (New York: Avon Books, 1987).

Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008).

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is available at http://www.atr.org/userfiles/Congressional_pledge(1).pdf.

Mann and Ornstein, It's Even Worse than it Looks.

Though they might also require a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate to make good on this promise.

David Corn, Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party (New York: William Morrow, 2012).

Benyamin Appelbaum and Eric Dash, ‘US Debt Downgraded by SP’, New York Times, 5 August 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/business/us-debt-downgradedby-sp.html.

See ‘Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured’ (Washington DC: the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005).