interviews
The Nationalization of U.S. Elections
by Dan Hopkins
December 31, 2020
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
The Partisan Politics of National Security
by Chris Capozzola
March 23, 2020
This interview with Chris Capozzola, MIT professor and author of Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Could you start by introducing yourself?
Chris Capozzola | My name is Chris Capozzola. I'm a professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I teach 20th-century US political and military history.
I want to talk about the politicization of the military. More specifically in this time period between World War II and Korea – when we see a real shift in Democrats' and Republicans' stance on the military.
I’m glad to have a chance to share this history, because I think most Americans in the 21st century take for granted that Republicans are the party of national defense, national security, and a big military, and that Democrats are the party against that. This was not always the case.
In the 1930s, we saw the reverse. The Depression was underway and war looming in Europe after the rise of Hitler. As president, Franklin Roosevelt was committed to creating an active place for the United States in the world, and understood the military as crucial to his goal.
Roosevelt faces opponents. Some within the Democratic party think of entering World War I as a mistake, and don't want to repeat it. The Republican party is concerned that expanding the US military would commit the US to being more active in geopolitical conflict , which might strengthen the Presidency at the expense of Congress, or the states, or the people.
Roosevelt has to navigate that tension as the war's really looming.
Once we enter World War II what happens?
In some ways, the debate about a military build up and aid for allies is intense and ongoing until December 7th, 1941. Pearl Harbor brings that debate to an end. During the war, there was bipartisan support for the war effort and for most efforts to expand federal power over the military.
It helps FDR with the effort that he had been making in domestic politics to expand federal power. I always like to say that the Democrats won World War II. They convinced the American public that a strong federal government that provides for its citizens and is deeply engaged in the world is the solution to their problems.
What is the context behind this Democratic position?
I think for many Democrats were from two directions in this time period.
On the domestic side, they are supporting Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. They really believed that an active federal government, at the national level, will do more for ordinary people to get them out of the Depression. They also remember Woodrow Wilson and his legacy at the end of World War I. Wilson was a Democrat. He wanted to bring the US into the League of Nations, but he was defeated, mostly by Republicans, but also by some Democrats. With Roosevelt, Democrats are pushing for the US to join the United Nations, and for the United States to establish NATO. They do not want to retreat from international affairs after World War II in ways that they had after World War I.
And after the war is over?
No one quite knows what the military should look like after World War II is over.
The military had expanded dramatically. 24 million men and women served during World War II. Everyone knew that it was not going to stay that big, but there were also new technologies – the atomic bomb, and the makings of what would eventually become the Air Force in 1947. No one really knew what kind of Army was needed. No one really knew if we should still have a draft. The draft was brought to an end after World War II. There were new policies for veterans, like the GI Bill, which was adopted in 1944. It was an effort both to reward veterans, and also to get them to show up at the polls and support politicians who supported veteran initiatives.
Everything was up in the air in 1945, importantly including, America's relationship with its wartime ally, the Soviet Union. The Second World War has created a very cautious alliance between the US and the Soviets against Germany, and that alliance just falls apart as the Cold War replaces the Second World War. As the Cold War emerges, you see a shift in terms of the parties and politics of national defense and national security.
What’s the shift?
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans support Communism. Neither party wants to see the Soviet Union succeed. Both parties agree that Communism is a threat to the American way of life. However, they don't necessarily agree on how to approach the issues, and between 1948 and 1950 the Democrats are taking the heat for any setback in the war against Communists. Harry Truman, a democrat, is the president. As the Chinese Communist party under Mao's control is consolidating its power, Truman is charged with losing China. Republicans use Communism to critique the Democrats, and that becomes a central way that Republicans have challenged Democrats on national security.
Ever since then, Republicans have generally been pushing for stronger anti-Communist measures, and larger military forces, and the Democrats have been put on defense.
The next war the US enters is Korea. What’s the partisan response then?
That's why this period from 1949 to 1950 is so intense, because you have the Chinese Civil War and the Chinese Revolution that leads to a Communist victory. You also have news that the Soviets have the atomic bomb.
Once again, Truman, a Democratic president, gets the blame for Korea. The US experiences some military victories, but a lot of defeat. Very quickly, the war in Korea becomes a stalemate between the Communist and non-Communist forces. This makes it harder and harder for Truman to say that the Democrats have the right answer on defense.
What's the public Republican stance on Korea?
It’s two-fold. There's certainly bipartisan support for stopping Communism and for supporting American troops and allied troops in Korea. But there are also plenty of Republicans who want to take the war efforts a step further.
Truman doesn't want the war to get big because he knows it would start to affect the economy. It might require drafting large numbers of American soldiers, and he knows that the war is not that popular. Also, Americans don't quite understand the stakes of this war - its complicated and far away. It's not clear to Americans why this is part of American interest.
There are plenty of Republicans who are angered by Truman's limited war strategy. Including General Douglas MacArthur, who starts publicly advocating a much more aggressive war, even while he's serving in uniform under Truman.
Certainly through Iraq and Afghanistan. How does the electorate respond to the transition?
I think the transition happens during the Korean War, but I think we can see it playing out for the average American voter over the course of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
Kennedy made moves to bring us into Vietnam, and Johnson, of course, expanded the war. He does this, in part, because he felt that, as a Democrat, if he did't send American troops to Vietnam, he would be seen as weak on defense. He feared that he would look as bad as Truman did for having lost China and Korea. Over the course of the Vietnam War era, you start to see the emergence of an anti-war position within the Democratic party. Senator Eugene McCarthy, a critic of the Vietnam War, challenges Johnson during reelection. .
This is where the Vietnam War is different from the Korean War. With the Korean War, there is a bipartisan consensus that the war needs to happen, that the Communists need to be stopped, and that Americans need to beat them -there was just division about who had the better plan. By the end of the Vietnam War, there is an anti-war wave in the Democratic Party, and that will remain an important force. It was critical of Reagan's Cold War policies. It was critical of the War in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and continues to be a voice today.
Do you think there’s a clear Democratic line on military engagement or intervention post-Vietnam?
I don't think so. In fact, you see deep divisions within the Democratic party today and in the last 10 or 15 years about when to use military force. Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright felt military intervention was necessary in the late-90s in Kosovo. Some of President Obama's advisors advocated a greater involvement in the war in Syria. But Obama's hesitation to committing US troops to Syria, reflected the ongoing reluctance within the Democratic party to engage in large-scale military commitments abroad.
It seems that there are similarities in this in terms of the Republican narrative. Since Korea, the GOP has been strong on defense, big on military. President Trump and a rising white nationalist sentiment seeks a return to isolationist conservatism. On the left, Senator Sanders moves towards pacifism. Actionably, how different are those stances?
I would make a distinction there. One wing of the Democratic Party has a clear spokesman in Senator Sanders – an anti-interventionist who would actually seek to reduce American troop strength, reduce the number of US missiles. President Trump, for all his talk has made few moves. And in the moves he has taken are anti-interventionist nor do they reduce the size of the military. Instead, he is simply shifting from multilateralism towards unilateralism.
Unilateralism is about going it alone. This is what President Trump calls "America First." There was, in fact, an organization in the 1930s called "American First," which sought to oppose international treaty commitments, the League of Nations, and multilateral forces. In that sense, Trump is not inventing something new. He's tapping into a very old strand in the Republican Party, the kind of thing that was right there in the 1930s, and that Franklin Roosevelt had been fighting against when he was trying to get us ready to fight Germany and Japan.
There is a hyper-clear difference in motive and context. But what’s the difference in terms of orders?
The difference would be very visible in military size and its power. President Trump has made no moves to reduce troop strength, to reduce troop presence at overseas bases.I think that an anti-interventionist president from the Democratic Party would make those moves. That's the difference between a reductionist approach, or even a disarmament approach, and a shift towards unilateralism.
Does this say anything about party ideas around hegemony or global order?
The years of the Cold War, when the US was a clear power on one side and the Soviets on the other, are maybe more of the exception than the rule. In the years before the Second World War there were multiple competing powers: Britain, Germany, the United States was rising. As we move into the 21st century, I think we’re looking at a more multipolar world again. The US will certainly be a strong power, but so will China, so will Russia, so will various European powers.
I think as that multipolar world plays out, and as Americans start to understand that, they will want leaders who can help them navigate that. A lot of Americans, of every political viewpoint, are still operating under a Cold War mindset. They are imaging that we will always live in a bipolar world, but we probably won't, and we might already not.
Do you think, politically, on the right and the left, we need to acknowledge US standing internationally?
Yes. I think there's also a space in between that's actually quite larger. It's something that critics on both the right and the left call, "The Washington Consensus," which is a shared bipartisan viewpoint that the United States should be the most powerful force in the world, that it will work through multilateral institutions where it holds a disproportionate power, and that this will keep the United States the force that determines, that sets the rules, of the global game.
That's the most common opinion, the one held in the middle by most of both parties. That idea isn't at the front of people's mindsets right now, in part because it's not the viewpoint of our current president, but it hasn't really gone anywhere. It certainly is part of the day-to-day operation of both civilian and military institutions.
Do you think the politicization of the military is inherently bad?
The politicization of the military is always bad, in the sense that it is bad for democracy in general.
That's part of what makes a democratic military democratic. By design military institutions are hierarchical and insulated from partisan politics and, to some extent, from democratic accountability. We have to trust them, and we trust them most when we feel like they represent us and that they reflect us.
Over the last 40 years or so, there has been a divergence in who serves in the US Armed Forces. This is, in large part, a product of the institution of the all-volunteer force in 1973, the end of the draft, as well as broader trends toward inequality: both inequality in terms of wealth, but also education and job opportunities particularly for young people in the 18-to-30-year-old range. This has basically made it less and less likely that all Americans will serve.
This is something that all Americans should be concerned about, and I'm not sure that there's a clear solution to it. I'm not sure that bringing back the draft is a solution to that. It certainly wouldn't give us the highly-skilled, professional, high-tech Army that we have now. It's not clear we should unmake the Army we have now just to solve social problems that are external to the Army itself.
There's a quote I think of often and will butcher, that is maybe misattributed to Thucydides, that says, "The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” Do you feel like historically there was a lesser divide because the draft or size of the wars, or is this a reflection of rhetoric over time?
I think it's a reflection. I mean, certainly, the draft was the mechanism, but it wasn't the cause, if that makes sense.
Right.
The service in the US Armed Forced by large swaths of the male population was caused by the draft. But the US Armed Forces have changed, and would have changed even if we kept the draft. We are an incredibly technologically advanced military right now that does best when people join and stay for a long time to learn skills. But as they do stay in the US military, they start to develop its own values, and when those values start to diverge from the values of the population that doesn't serve, then those differences get accentuated.
But I'm not surprised that only 1% of Americans have served in the US Armed Forces. I always compare that statistic to the fact that only 1% of Americans are farmers, but we still eat every day. But you might also say, "Well, we don't live as close to the land today. We don't understand our land. We don't understand our food." I think that same disconnect is sort of happening with the military.
We don't necessarily understand the choices that the military makes, we don't understand the service that they do on a daily basis. I'm not sure we can undo either our food system or our defense system, but we should think about what kinds of indirect effects they're having on our society.
I feel bad asking historians to predict the future, but I’m going to anyway. Where do you think we go from here?
Well, yes, you're right. Historians don't like to predict the future. But when we are asked to, we know one way to get it right every time, which is to say, "This too shall change." I really do think that is the case.
When some sort of demographic shift happens, or, God forbid, some kind of military crisis happens, they could shift rapidly again.
The tasks of the US Armed Forces will also change in the future. We tend to think that large land wars with hundreds of thousands of infantry soldiers are over, but they might not be. There will be other crises, particularly related to global public health, to the global climate emergency, to natural disasters. That may require a different kind of military, and it would probably require different ways of thinking about who serves in it.