America in the 2000s underwent bipartisan gridlock, a dysfunction in governance as the major parties ceased to manage the great institutions and great problems of the day with the deftness and skill they once did. By the 2010s gridlock had given way to polarization, a heightened sense of ideological, political, and cultural anger between vast populations of Americans locked in conflict over fundamental principles. In the 2020s, the old verities and assumptions of public life sap away as the world changes, and it appears more than likely that some form of political and ideological realignment—perhaps merely piecemeal, perhaps truly revolutionary—will transform the political landscape. At best, this can rebalance, repolarize, and reorder the conflicts of our time, and bring a new regularity to the institutional processes of American democracy. At worst, this can end in the destruction of cherished institutions and a deepening of the institutional and personal distrust which presently afflicts all our public life. Whatever the case, the stultifying stalemates of gridlock and the policy and political stasis they have caused (best highlighted not only by cold-war parity on major structural issues, but by razor-thin congressional majorities and popular votes oscillating this way and that election by election) are intimately related to the historically-high distrust, exhaustion, and rancor of our political society, and the pressing demands for historic change for a rebalancing of our order.
These three great spirits of the decades—gridlock, polarization, realignment—are usually considered separately, by analysts and activists alike. Those seeking common ground and regular order often emphasize moderation and process, condemn extremism and ideology, and privilege results, a fundamentally political approach. Those seeking diminutions of rancor and distrust tend to emphasize charity and goodwill, condemn attacks on human dignity and free expression, and promote empathy and solidarity through human contact, a fundamentally social approach. Those desiring a rethinking and reordering of the conflicts of the age typically desire that old intellectual and ideological heuristics be deconstructed and replaced, look for new coalitions and constituencies, and privilege institutional restructurings, a fundamentally ideological approach.
Each approach, and each faction within each of these approaches, identifies a fundamental aspect of the transformations of American order since the confidence of the 1990s began to crack, and approaches that transformation alone. Some who emphasize any one of these approaches maintain the conceit that, should the aspect they seek to fix be fixed, the other two will naturally be fixed as a result. Whether or not this is true, a genuine net assessment of the problems facing America ought to take each of these aspects of our present crisis on its own terms, and weigh it alongside the others. Procedural discipline in institutions, personal goodwill in society, ideological realignment in politics—the relationship between these goods may be one of many things, but the insights of each can provide key tools for long-term progress on the problems of our time.
From the study of gridlock, we can cultivate an appreciation for the procedural habits and spirits that have long maintained regular order in American government, balancing interests and factions in the long cultivation of the public trust. Those individuals and institutions often tarred as “the Establishment” offer wisdom on this aspect of our present crisis very well.
From the study of polarization, we can cultivate an appreciation for the diverse tapestry of opinion and understanding across American politics, the various political languages, the roles emotions and perceptions play in politics and in society at large, the fundamental habit of unconditional goodwill as a political necessity. Those individuals and institutions commonly known as “Bridgebuilders” and their allies offer wisdom on this aspect of our present crisis.
From the study of realignment, we can cultivate an appreciation for the contingency of any set of political, policy, and ideological understandings, the processes by which fundamental change moves along in America, the role of political creativity and imagination in adjusting political practices and reforming decaying institutions. Those individuals sometimes tarred as “Populists” in any sense, offer some of the best wisdom on this.
The Establishment, the Bridgebuilders, and the Populists have their blindness, too. The responsible Establishment types often lack genuine political creativity and are uncharitable to the Populists, and are the last to discern the necessity of reform and fundamental change. The Bridgebuilders tend not to take politics, at its fundamental level, seriously in any real sense, and sometimes can be as misguided on the utility of reform as most of the Reformist community. The Populists are usually uncouth and uncharitably look forward to an end of the Establishment, and usually believe there is far more public support for their understandings of politics than there actually is. The simple craving of influence and power, the inevitable destroyer of so much intellectual and personal integrity, is usually the simple culprit. But the excesses of their advocates do not in any way diminish the importance of these understandings, or their utility for navigating the present crisis.
A grand central synthesis of these three approaches threatens to become as myopically tunnel-visioned an ideological approach as any other currently shackling the minds of otherwise-talented and dedicated American activists, polemicists, and public servants. In studying any of them, one should be wary of the temptation to develop an airtight grand narrative, even as new heuristics will inevitably enrich anyone’s understanding of the problems afoot.
It is in this spirit that the temperament of the historian can be most useful to the analyst or activist studying America in the present moment. The best historians eschew any single sociological, political, economic, or ideological mechanism of history, instead using a variety of methods to interpret the record and the evidence, arguing for their own interpretations and their implications, and implicitly admitting the limitation of their approaches—history might inform, but it can never give orders, and action is for the judgment of the present.
But the temperament of the historian can and should inform the activist or analyst looking around their own time, seeking its meaning, interpreting the directions events flow, theorizing the futures possible. Someday, some historian will use the heuristics of gridlock, polarization, and realignment, among many others, to assess what happened in America between the 1990s and the 2020s, perhaps a little bit beyond. By looking around now as they will in their own time, we can broaden our own understandings of our time, and perhaps be a little bit more useful in writing with our lives and causes and work the history they will study, a history which will form the foundations of the America they themselves are formed by.
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