Next Realignment: Why America's Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next - Hardcover

DiStefano, Frank J.

 
9781633885080: Next Realignment: Why America's Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1633885089 ISBN 13: 9781633885080
Verlag: Prometheus, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

An astute analysis of today's political chaos showing that the current period of disruptive change is part of a recurring pattern in American politics.What's happening to American politics? Old political norms seem to be slipping away. Politics has progressively become angrier, new movements keep butting into the public square, and more and more of the unwritten rules that governed American politics for decades have fallen away. Naturally, many are anxious.Former congressional aide and presidential campaign veteran Frank J. DiStefano argues that this political turmoil feels disquietingly new only because most of us know so little about the history of American politics. In this book, he puts the present era in historical context, showing that America is facing its next realignment, a period of destruction and rebirth in which old political coalitions decay and new parties rise to replace them. DiStefano explains how the history of past realignments connects to contemporary politics. He examines clashes between Hamilton's Federalists and Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans, the rise of Andrew Jackson, the traumatic collapse of the Whigs, the populist revolt of William Jennings Bryan, and the formation of our New Deal party system of today. He explores America's periodic explosions of moral crusading called great awakenings. He clarifies the real ideas and philosophical forces that make up our politics, from liberty and virtue to populism and progressivism, showing how their interaction is now remaking our parties into something new. Will this realignment be a quick renewal as we adapt our politics for a future with new problems, or do we face years of disruption, dangerous movements, and chaotic politics before we rebuild? This book shows that, with a knowledge of history, all of us can help shape the politics of the coming decades and restore our trust in the American Dream.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Frank J. DiStefano is a writer living in Washington, D.C. He was employed as a Republican congressional aide during the Contract with America years of the 1990s and has worked on political campaigns, including helping to shape the policy agenda of Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign as Deputy National Political Director for Issues. He is also a former litigator at Washington, D.C.'s elite Williams and Connolly firm. DiStefano has an undergraduate degree in politics from Princeton University, a law degree from Georgetown University, and he served as a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

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From Chapter 1 - Introduction

The Next Realignment Is Coming

Americans are alarmed about their country’s politics and for good reason. Each week that goes by brings another stunning event in a long ongoing trend—the gradual but consistent shattering of one after another assumption about how politics in America works. With each new surprise and with each norm broken, American politics becomes progressively angrier and more unsettled. New movements keep butting into the public square and more and more of the unwritten rules that governed American politics for decades fall away. Americans no longer know what to expect next from their government. Increasingly worried about their future and their country’s future, many Americans are anxious. They should be. America’s parties are in the process of breaking apart and everything we think we know about how its politics works is about to change. We’re preparing for the next realignment.

Political realignments are part of a historical cycle built deep into the political structure of the American republic. They’re much like earthquakes that occur on known fault lines in the earth—the places in which two of the continental plates floating over the planet’s surface rub against each other. We can’t predict exactly when a quake will happen but, because quakes are part of a long natural cycle built into the structure of the earth, we know about where they will happen, how they will happen, and why they will happen. We watch the pressure build for years as these massive chunks of continent grind up against each other. All the while, the people who live on top of these floating continents go about their lives. People go to work, buy groceries, and play in the park, forgetting all about the powerful force slowly building underneath their feet. One day, the pressure suddenly becomes too much. The two great plates rip past each other, tearing the earth above apart. Structures topple, bridges fall, and the landscape is reconfigured. In a moment, lives get disrupted and the entire shape of the earth is radically changed. Then, the pressure gone, the two chunks of continents rest comfortably in their new position once more. With time, people forget it even happened—until the cycle completes and it happens again.

Having lived our entire lifetimes inside a stable part of a larger turbulent cycle of destruction and rebirth, we mistakenly believe the world we know has always existed and will properly last forever. This stable two-party system built around familiar ideologies is now in the process of collapse. That’s why American politics has become so turbulent. That’s why new movements and ideas have been crowding uncomfortably into the public square. That’s why America’s parties are struggling with feuding coalitions no longer willing to put aside their differences for a common agenda. That’s why it’s been so long since anything important in government has gotten done, leading to the never-ending complaints that American politics is now broken. The next realignment is coming and, depending on our choices as we navigate it, it will reorder everything we think we know about America. That’s what this book is about.

What's a Realignment?

For the entire life of virtually everyone alive today, American politics has always meant the same old war between Democrats and Republicans. As far back as we all remember, the fundamental battle lines of American politics haven’t changed. Democrats have championed the ideology we call modern liberalism—that expert-driven reforms can create national progress to benefit ordinary Americans and the least well off. Republicans have championed the ideology we call modern conservatism—holding the Democrats’ agenda of modern liberalism is “big government” that violates our liberty and undermines the nation’s virtue. The specifics of this never-ending war have sometimes changed over the years as political warfare has moved from field to field. Issues, policies, and political leaders have come and gone. Political maps marking states “red” have turned “blue” and the other way around. Yet to the edge of what most of us remember, Republicans and Democrats have always essentially represented the same ideologies, attracted similar coalitions of people, and advanced similar agendas of ideas. It wasn’t always thus, nor will it ever be.

Just on the other side of our historical memories lie other versions of major American parties completely unlike anything we’ve ever known. These parties were neither liberal nor conservative in the way we now use those terms. They united coalitions of people who, to our minds, come from opposite poles of the political “spectrum.” In fact, America has had four distinct sets of political coalitions over its history, each completely unlike the Democrats and Republicans we know. Each stood for a distinct political ideology that was neither conservative nor liberal in the way we use those labels today. During their long reigns, these parties would sometimes win and sometimes lose. Demographic groups or even entire bases of support might even switch allegiance with the ebb and flow of issues and candidates. Ideologically, however, each party across each era stayed the same, invoking the same principles and promoting the same party ideology. Then, over a short period of time, each of those stable systems burst and two new coalitions emerged from the chaos. Some parties outright collapsed, as with the traumatic disintegration of the Whigs or the sad whimpering away of the Federalists. Some parties the people cruelly abandoned, like the Depression-era Republicans. Some got infected by new ideas and new people, like the Democrats that got swallowed by a third party during the late 1800s. Whether collapse or renewal, when the process completed America had two major parties standing for different principles, attracting different coalitions, and advancing different agendas than before. American parties change in sudden and catastrophic bursts.

Scholars call these sudden changes in America’s parties “realignments.” It’s a term that’s often misunderstood. People like to say that a shift in loyalty of some demographic group from one party to the other is a “realignment”– people might say rural voters trending to the Republicans is a realignment, or northeastern voters trending to the Democrats is a realignment, or the recent monumental shift in the “Solid South” from a virtual lock for Democrats to a virtual lock for Republicans is a realignment. Political realignments aren’t about voters shuffling back and forth from one political team to its opponent. Nor are they about which party wins more elections or controls which offices or institutions. Realignments are the total remaking of the existing two-party framework, redefining America’s parties from their foundation as factions and interests abandon old alliances and struggle to find new partners to chart a new path towards political power. They reorder the most basic political divides in America, changing how we see ourselves and how we define the national tribes that make up our nation. The ideas, principles, and ideologies of the parties go completely up for grabs, and what emerges looks nothing like what came before. Realignments have little to do with the ordinary tit for tat of campaign politics. Not only won’t the next realignment be good for Democrats or Republicans or conservatism or liberalism, it will destroy them all as new parties with new beliefs viewing our problems in new ways spring up from the ash.

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What This Book Is About

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Verlag
Prometheus
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1633885089
ISBN 13 
9781633885080
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
AA Utrecht
3584
Niederlande