Two weeks in, the second Trump Administration can be described as shaking up America’s longstanding political ‘normal.’ This is about the only description that will not trigger partisan reaction, pro or con, emotional and vituperative.
The longstanding normal has, and may yet, revolve around partisan polarization. Under that regime, anything asserted or favored by one side is immediately opposed, contradicted, denounced and vilified by the other. The two sides thereby suck any policy issue into their bipolar standoff. The two camps thus “duopolized” American discourse. Anyone not particularly committed to either side still has to choose between the two hostile, exclusive identities. The voter can’t see any real alternative. So, if a voter who cares deeply about a particular issue thereby backs the side that supports them on that matter, they associate themselves with every other stance of that side’s identity. If there is no specific matter that stands out, the voter is left to choose between the two groupings, either adopting one of those political identities, or getting counted one way or another, based on that election year’s trends.
In 2024, one side, and its partisan identity, was rejected in this process. The votes were, as always, roughly evenly split, but the winning side cast itself explicitly to reject the other’s signature tenets. Now the winning side, taking this rejection as its mandate, is busy eradicating the other’s identity markers from government, simultaneously facing the challenge of running that government. A not-implausible argument says their predecessors were doing the same thing. Both act, or acted, and would act, as though erasure of the other’s fingerprints is essential. Which is to say both see their partisan culture as fundamental, and the other’s as un-American, non-sensical, evil, or otherwise illegitimate.
One response to this problem of polarized division is to seek “unity,” in a true and common American identity. But when the question of true identity is subjected to our partisan trench warfare, “true” becomes enemy of “common.” To call for unity will mean blaming any division on anyone who disagrees with my premises. This is exactly the mode of discourse that has become normal.
What we need is not “unity,” but a recognition that there is something more fundamental than our political views and identities, which no one can claim exclusively, and on which we agree with even our most bitter political opponents. America needs a partisan-proof bedrock base on which all can contest but co-exist, in comity that overarches and tolerates their diverse sub-unities.
There is one trick – that bedrock will entail particular practices and institutions – free and fair elections, rule of law, due process, free enterprise, impersonal principle over vested interest, and more. All have been, or could become, contested grounds in the partisan political rhetoric. Can partisans oppose objective threats to those objective standards, without turning that dispute into another partisan spat? The only answer is: only if the bedrock is clear, principled, and truly common.
Can America re-cast political discourse, in the light of a clear fundamental ethos, to accommodate political contest, yet preserve and protect national comity? This becomes a fundamental question as the two sides of our historical “normal” adjust to a new political scene – or go away. In a time of upheaval, we will likely see new rationales for governance, new ideas of values that society must uphold, new institutional constructs. They will not all fit together, and many of their proponents will fight with each other if only from pride of authorship. So anyone might well be a bad guy to some advocate of some particular tenet, rationale, or interest. We will need bedrock that can set a compelling standard on which we can have comity, for the two political-cultural camps, or new ones, however many.
Not coincidentally, America has its bedrock. The nation conceived itself as “we” who hold, as self evident truth, that all humans have inherent, unalienable rights, and that government exists to secure those rights. We need to separate that abstract article of faith from the partisans’ claims to own them, and digest its requirements of consent of the governed, impartial respect for each other, honesty and humility in my personal pursuits, and self-restraint under a social contract. We, each and all, need to do our part to keep it in its proper bedrock status. But it exists. We need to put partisan advocates in their proper place – they can be fair contestants over means to our national ends. But America’s identity lies in our common creed, not their doctrines.
Common Conviction 