Opening Remarks:How Divided is America?

Summary of Remarks

In this first session of the Real State of the Union, panelists debunked the red-state/blue-state myth, imagining new ways to describe the great American divide, or lack thereof. Moderator Adrian Wooldrige posed the question: is the American union strong or hopelessly divided? Jonathan Rauch used the term "bipolar disorder" to describe the American divide, claiming that the country is quite united, with opinions between parties differing by degree rather than by entrenched stance. Rauch stated that more and more people are describing themselves as moderates or independents. The bipolarity enters when one examines the partisans, where the American political system and its main players gravitate toward the extreme, creating a truly divided political system.

Following Mr. Rauch, William Powers described the role of the media in expressing and possibly exaggerating this divide. Whereas in prior centuries media was truly diverse -- with literally hundreds of ragtag newspapers available on a typical street in Manhattan -- media is now limited to relatively few papers and networks, with bloggers providing the some divergence from the mainstream. Mr. Powers also demonstrated that the ideal of objectivity is a relatively new one that has never been entirely achievable. Today's consumers of media are ever-more skeptical of objectivity, creating what Mr. Powers hopes will be a more responsive, self-correcting media.

Ms. Hanna Rosin described a divide in a group that most see as monolithically conservative: Christians. Rather than lump Christians and their various denominations together, Ms. Rosin argued that a traditionalist Catholic has more in common with a traditionalist Evangelical than a modernist Catholic. This has allowed alliances to form between religions, alliances that the Bush administration has been able to utilize.

Finally, Mr. Jed Purdy further expanded Mr. Rauch's themes that politics and politicians are divided while the country largely isn't. To deconstruct this idea Mr. Purdy considered how politics relates to American culture at large, if it is not simply a manifestation of public opinion and intent expressed through votes. He hypothesized that partisans identify narrow issues on which the country is fairly evenly split and make them definitive of political identity. Where voters stand on these issues

Participants

• John Fox Sullivan
  President and Group Publisher, Atlantic Media


• Ted Halstead
  President, New America Foundation


• William Powers
  Staff Correspondent, National Journal


• Hanna Rosin
  Staff Writer, The Washingon Post


• Jedediah Purdy
  Fellow, New America Foundation and Law Professor, Duke University


• Adrian Wooldridge
  Washington Correspondent, The Economist