Partisanship vs/as Truth
posted by Frank Pasquale
In the space between the two political conventions, it’s a good time to think about partisanship. Political philosopher Nancy L. Rosenblum has just published On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship. It’s a helpful corrective to the relativistic nonpartisanship that suffuses US media coverage of politics.
Consider, for instance, these lines from Bill Clinton’s speech two days ago:
Look at the example the Republicans have set: American workers have given us consistently rising productivity. They’ve worked harder and produced more. What did they get in return? Declining wages, less than ¼ as many new jobs as in the previous eight years, smaller health care and pension benefits, rising poverty and the biggest increase in income inequality since the 1920s. American families by the millions are struggling with soaring health care costs and declining coverage. I will never forget the parents of children with autism and other severe conditions who told me on the campaign trail that they couldn’t afford health care and couldn’t qualify their kids for Medicaid unless they quit work or got a divorce.
Are these the family values the Republicans are so proud of? What about the military families pushed to the breaking point by unprecedented multiple deployments? What about the assault on science and the defense of torture? What about the war on unions and the unlimited favors for the well connected? What about Katrina and cronyism?
Now, from a nonpartisan, “objective media” perspective, that’s an unfair screed. It focuses on the negative to the exclusion of anything positive. It can’t possibly be the “truth,” because the truth only emerges from full and fair debate between the “two sides” that exist on any issue.
But to the partisan, it’s a fair account of the history of the past eight years or so. So who’s right?
After reviewing political philosophy’s hostility to parties, Rosenblum rises to their defense:
Parties create, not just reflect, political interests and opinions. They formulate “issues” and give them political relevance. Party antagonism “stages the battle”; parties create a system of conflict and draw the lines of division. Moving back and forth between metaphors of natural and artistic creation, Maurice Duverger tried to capture this shaping power: parties crystallize, coagulate, synthesize, smooth down, and mold. Creativity in politics is almost always identified with founding moments, constitutional design, transformative social movements, or revolution, not with “normal politics.” Modern party politics is the ordinary, not (ordinarily) extraordinary locus of political creativity.
The analogy to artistic creation here is particulary evocative. Art can teach us unique truths, but can also hymn the most destructive ideas. Politics is a realm of narrative, emotion, and common vision. Rosenblum argues that one has to accept the possibility of partisanship’s harms if we’re to have a politics capable of constructing anything at all.
The legal academy appears less and less receptive to such ideas, insisting instead that truth and goodness emerge out of compromise and debate between two sides. Consider, for instance, the work of Cass Sunstein, who’s done a great deal to urge those on the opposite ends of the political spectrum to talk to one another. He certainly knows how to keep a conversation going. But if you listen to just a few minutes of this debate he has with Richard Epstein on the Obama candidacy, you quickly realize that “it takes two to tango.” While Sunstein reflectively considers whether Obama is enough of a free trader, Epstein has painted a terrifying picture of progressives hellbent on apotheosizing union bosses, imposing confiscatory taxation on the hardworking, and Lindbergh-style isolationism.
Sunstein’s theory and practice build on Rawls’s idea of political liberalism–of a well-ordered polity where all respectfully debate their differences according to principles of public reason. (He’s recently criticized George Lakoff’s work for being too visceral, and failing to live up to that standard.) But the key to Rawlsian deliberativism is the proviso that society is indeed well-ordered.
Speeches like Clinton’s (and Obama’s last night) take aim at that assumption. They give the lie to what Rosenblum calls “[t]he array of complaints that comprise “progressive antipartyism” [in] political theory today.” As I’ve argued before, mass politics is primarily about what issues are on the agenda–not principled deliberation on some pre-existing menu of options.
For a final example, consider the proper response to this claim, reflective of many elements of “free market” health policy circulating currently:
Almost one of every four Texas residents – 24.8 percent – were uninsured in 2006 and 2007. . . . But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.”
Now one can try to rationally persuade Mr. Goodman that his pollyanna views aren’t all that responsive to the ultimate financial concerns of the 47 million uninsured. One could engage in disquisition about the nature of statistics, their accuracy, the difficulties of accounting for well-being in just a few numbers.
Or one could say this:
For over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.
When you consider the extraordinary bias in what are often deemed “scientific” policy discourses, Rosenblum’s case for parties is all the more compelling. Leave the “deliberative democracy” for places that already have universal health care, fair educational opportunity for all, and a sustainable energy policy.
August 29, 2008 at 10:02 am
Posted in: Politics
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