Partisan Divide Deepens Under Obama

SO NOW WE know. Despite his promise to heal the partisan divide in America, President Obama is turning out to be the most partisan president in modern history. That’s from the Pew Research Center. Here are the approval numbers from polls taken in the first spring of a president’s first administration.

They are, it must be admitted, sobering, for they show that, far from bringing unity to a divided nation, President Obama has only intensified the division.

President	Tot	Rep	Dem	Ind	R-D
Obama 2009	59	27	88	57	-61
Bush 2001	55	87	36	56	+51
Clinton 1993	49	26	71	47	-45
Bush 1989	56	79	41	48	+38
Reagan 1981	60	87	41	61	+46
Carter 1977	72	56	81	70	-25
Nixon 1969	65	84	55	65	+29

Pretty interesting isn’t it? And you don’t have to look too far to figure out why. Republicans’ worst fears have been realized in Obama. He’s signed a massive payoff to the Democratic special interests in the stimulus bill. He’s sent up a budget to Congress that goes flat out on social spending. And he figures he can run the banks and the auto companies. Democrats may love his agenda, but Republicans don’t.

It’s interesting to look back. Notice that Democrats weren’t as negative on Reagan as they were on Bush. And you gotta say that Reagan was much more conservative than Bush. Presumably the closeness of the 2000 election and the heightened partisan aftermath helped to deepen the divide.

And Nixon! Dems were at 55% approval for President Nixon in the spring of 1969. Imagine that!

Then there is President Carter. He was the Independents’ favorite president in the modern era, at least at the beginning, with a 70% approval rating.

From a Republican partisan view this is great news. It looks like President Obama is failing to build a solid majority party. The road is open for Republicans and conservatives to win back the support of the American people.

But from an American point of view, this is not good. It means more years of the culture war. In the end, someone is going to have to win it outright. That could be nasty.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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