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American Presidential Elections in a Comparative Perspective. Группа авторов
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isbn 9781498557580
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At the core of the pro and anti-immigration debate is a dispute about American identity. Over the years, this topic has generated heated disagreement in the United States. Roger M. Smith argues that there are three related and distinct notions of American identity: liberalism, republicanism, and ethno-cultural Americanism, which, at its extreme, is nativism. This last notion emphasizes certain cultural characteristics that have existed in the United States since the birth of the nation and defines national identity in restrictive terms. In this view, only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants count as true Americans. Ethno-culturalism facilitates the growth of anti-immigrant sentiments. In Smith’s view, these conceptions of identity are at odds with each other, and none of them have prevailed throughout US history.81
The kind of anti-immigration tendencies and debates over American identity that voters heard in 2016 thus predate the most recent presidential election and the Trump administration. One only has to remember Proposition 187 in California, Alabama’s anti-immigration laws of 2013, or the actions of former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio to realize that resistance to the integration of immigrants is an on-going concern in contemporary America. What Trump did was fan the flames, helping to reenergize these views. In a time of stark economic inequality and significant demographic changes, Trump’s rhetoric resonated. He found in immigration—especially undocumented immigration—an ideal scapegoat. To blame unrestricted immigration for falling salaries and job loss, as Trump did, seems logical to many, and it sells well.
In the current moment of massive immigration in various parts of the world, Trump’s rhetoric provokes anti-immigrant animosity not only in the United States, but also in people and countries around the world. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Teresa May have expressed their concerns about the “geopolitical effects of a [US] ban on immigration and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries.”82 Politicians from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Turkey, among other countries, condemned Trump’s travel ban.83 I show in my contribution to this volume, how Mexican intellectuals, journalists, politicians, and the population in general reacted to Trump’s declarations about immigration policy. For many Mexicans, Trump’s statements and policies are discriminatory, can provoke humanitarian crisis, and violate human rights. In his contribution to this book, Luis Maira notes former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos’s strong condemnation of Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the southern border between the United States and Mexico. Lagos declared that if the wall is built, “we will be all Mexicans and we will protest that wall because it affects us.” In his view, Latin Americans will respond to Trump’s wall policy by “building bridges to understand that we are all equal in dignity as human beings.”
Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-migration views constitute one of the most-criticized areas of his policy. In a country characterized by the diversity that results from a history of almost continuous immigration, an antagonistic perspective toward immigrants tends to generate opposition and disapproval in the eyes of many Americans and many around the world. Today, the movement of people from one country to another, or from one continent to and other, is constant, and world opinion is highly sensitive to the human, political, and economic implications of restricting immigration.
Trump’s statements and policies—such as zero tolerance—are perceived in many quarters as intolerant and xenophobic, casting a dark shadow on a central component of the American Dream.
THE CRISIS OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Walter Dean Burnham asserted that four primary characteristics had come to define the fundamental structure upon which the American political system stands: the decline of political parties as organizations of collective action, the emergence of the mass media as organizers of political campaigns, the professionalization of congress that enables the constant reelection of incumbents, and divided government. Burnham argued that the United States is in an interregnum state, a state in which public policy is disassociated from any based of popular support predominates.84 Today the United States is experiencing the exacerbation of the political tendencies highlighted by Burnham more than two decades ago.
In the 2016 presidential election, the candidates once again distanced themselves from their political parties. Candidate-centered politics dominated the election. The candidates, not the parties, were the election’s main protagonists.85 Trump used his own money to finance his presidential campaign, as Ross Perot had in 1992. However, whereas Ross Perot bought prime time television ads, Trump did not have to do the same: the media was happy to give him plenty of free airtime. When Hillary Clinton was paying 651 staffers in the final week of June 2016, Trump was only paying 68.86 Rich people invested millions of dollars in both sides of the election, hoping to influence public policy according to their interests. American institutions facilitated this development. Citizens United, heard by the Supreme Court in 2010, allows the unlimited injection of money into the political process. Super PACs have become the preferred vehicle for pumping interested money into campaigns.
Being reelected to Congress seems quite easy these days. In the election of 1986, 1988, 2000, and 2004, 98 percent of House members were reelected. The 2016 election fell behind by just one point, with a reelection rate in the House of 97 percent. At the same time, Americans are not happy with the Congress they have. According to a poll conducted by Gallup from February 3 to 7, 2016, only 14 percent of those surveyed approve the behavior of Congress, while 81 percent reject it. After eight months of the Trump administration, the figures are similar. In a Gallup Poll conducted from August 2 to 6, 2017, 16 percent approved of the way Congress is performing its job while 79 percent disapproved.87 Many feel that Congress has become a boxing ring in which the main priority of parties is to oppose each other rather than to search for consensus and create legislation. Political parties in congress privilege obstructionism, and the filibuster is increasingly used to delay or cancel debates and votes on legislation.
In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller was the last liberal contender for the nomination of the Republican Party. Since then, polarization has grown significantly in the United States. In January 2017, Gallup revealed that in 2016, 15 percent of Democrats declared themselves conservative, 40 percent moderates, and 44 percent liberals. The Republican Party showed a more conservative tendency, only 7 percent identified as liberals, 30 percent as moderates, and 63 percent as conservatives.88 As Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Pool, and Howard Rosenthal have asserted, “conservative and liberal have become almost perfect synonymous for Republican and Democrat.”89 These numbers do not capture the complexity of US polarization. In a country with increasing ethnic diversity, polarization is manifested not only in ideological terms but also regards to social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights; racial issues; health care; economic inequality; and the size and role of government. The South, a bastion of the Democratic Party since the New Deal Era when Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued the region with programs such as the Tennessee Valley Administration, is today a stronghold of the Republican Party.
Party polarization is not equally evident in the two political parties. The tendency to move away from the center is more evident in the Republican Party. The conservative base of the Party has become more conservative over the years, increasingly moving the party to the right of the ideological spectrum. Today, Bob Dole seems progressive when compared to Ted Cruz or ultra-conservatives in the “Tea Party.”