The Providence Phoenix News/Features

Unity's thin veneer
Our political landscape has changed just as much as the Manhattan skyline. Unlike New York City, however, our politics will be back to normal sooner than we think
BY ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN

**Illustration by Mark Reusch**

After last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, nearly everyone agreed that the political landscape in America had been forever changed. The big questions of early September -- whether President George W. Bush's tax cut helped or hurt the economy, whether to raid the Social Security surplus to fund other programs -- now seem irrelevant. Party differences have grown so muted that New York's lightning-rod mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has received almost universal praise for his handling of the disaster. It's hard to believe that we'll soon return to the political climate of last November, when a disputed presidential election split the country in half.

The recently published Almanac of American Politics 2000 (National Journal, 1776 pages, $57) offers some clues to how the two major political parties are likely to respond in the long run to terrorism on our soil. At first glance, however, the book seems like a relic from another era. For example, principal

author Michael Barone tries to reassure us about George W. Bush's leadership abilities, noting that "Bush showed he could respond in crisis" when he lost to John McCain in last year's New Hampshire presidential primary. Now that we're in what Bush has called "the first 21st-century war," that doesn't seem like much of a test of character. It's similarly jarring when the authors talk about "safe territory" for Democratic or Republican candidates, or lay odds on the "capture" of congressional seats from "targeted" incumbents. We've become accustomed to using military terms for the most mundane activities (from the end of World War II through last week, kamikazes got you drunk, not killed); a more careful use of language may be one of the many changes in store for American society.

Barone and his co-authors, Richard E. Cohen and Charlie Cook, can't be faulted for their often irreverent tone, for it was hard to take American politics very seriously before last week. Covering the Gary Condit scandal was a waste of any serious journalist's talent, but most of us now wish that the sordid case of the missing intern still dominated the news. We may even feel nostalgic for the last event to prompt round-the-clock newscasts: the disputed presidential election of 2000.

That election, which led quite a few parents to tell their kids that they were witnessing history, sets the tone for the newest Almanac, which methodically (and often entertainingly) describes the politics of every state and all 435 congressional districts in America. In his introductory essay, Barone calls the United States "the 49 percent nation," referring to a deep and consistent split right down the middle in recent presidential and congressional elections. Barone also notes that straight-ticket voting in recent years has been "more pronounced than in any decade since the 1940s." At the presidential level, a skimming of the Almanac shows that, throughout the country, the 2000 election results lined up almost perfectly with those of the 1996 election That is, Bush combined the votes for Bob Dole and Ross Perot but got no more than that.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, it's tempting to say that these figures don't matter anymore. Surely the country will unite behind the president, at least in the short term. Bush's job-approval ratings predictably rose into the 80s last week, and nearly everyone (with several notable exceptions, including the New York Times' op-ed page last Wednesday) refused to acknowledge the pain -- and often the alarm -- that comes from watching this president do anything more than read from a prepared speech. Two of the other exceptions, Massachusetts congressmen Martin Meehan and Richard Neal, received hundreds of angry phone calls last week after violating what might be called the ESPN Rule: in the wake of a national crisis, don't criticize the president until professional sports teams resume play. When the 2002 congressional elections and the 2004 presidential election come around, it's likely that voters will base their votes on foreign policy and broad economic issues, not on the narrow social issues that now seem so trivial (like imposing waiting periods before people can buy a gun or get an abortion). Certainly, news coverage of the world beyond our borders increased sharply last week, after years of steady decline since the 1991 Gulf War.

But the United States is too large and diverse to avoid political debate for very long. The two halves of the "49 percent nation" may seem unified now, but it may not be long before we return to the "red vs. blue" conflict of last year's election. After Congress sends financial aid to New York and approves ways to gather intelligence about imminent terrorist threats (see last week's vote to expand the government's wiretapping powers), unanimity will be impossible to maintain.

LAST WEEK, New York City and the United States were one, but less than a year ago the political differences between America's major cities and its small towns were wider than ever. According to the Almanac's Charlie Cook, Democrat Al Gore won 71 percent of the vote in cities with more than 500,000 people, while Republican George W. Bush won 59 percent of the vote in rural counties. (Overall, the suburbs were almost evenly split, with Gore easily winning such areas in the North and Bush easily winning them in the South.) This split wasn't new. The most Democratic and most Republican congressional districts hadn't changed since the 1996 election: Gore got 93 percent of the vote in the South Bronx, just four miles from the World Trade Center, and Bush got 80 percent of the vote in the sparsely populated district in the northwest corner of Texas. Last November, the nation's two halves eyed each other suspiciously over the chasm opened up in Florida.

Americans didn't think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans last week, but the nation's two halves will undoubtedly have different ideas about how to prevent future terrorist attacks. It's notable that the Democratic ("blue") half of the country includes both the likeliest targets of terrorism (New York, Washington, and other major cities) and a disproportionate number of the nation's immigrants. This part of the country has long been favorably disposed toward "big" government, and it's likely to embrace such anti-terrorism measures as federalized airport security, tightened gun-control laws, and perhaps a national identification card (one of the features that rallied Republican opposition to the Clinton health-care plan in 1993). At the same time, it's likely to remain opposed to measures that could be used to discriminate against minority ethnic groups, such as racial profiling (a phrase whose meaning began to change last week when police removed a man from an Amtrak train because he was wearing a turban).

The Republican ("red") half of the country may come to the opposite conclusions on these and other issues. Barone speculates on why people in these areas voted so strongly for Bush: "They were aggrieved . . . by what they saw as a busybody Democratic government which was trying to impose the values of the major metro areas on their local communities. . . . " Such affronts include "abortions honored, guns regulated or outlawed, and the environment protected by intrusive regulators." (Don't forget the application of speed limits on interstates, a restriction that may seem trivial if terrorist activity spreads to highways.) Will these voters be any less suspicious of the federal government after last week's attacks? They'd probably support a US invasion of Afghanistan, or any other military action against terrorists (especially one led by a Republican president), but will a heightened sense of danger also commit them even more deeply to, say, the right to accumulate firearms at home? And will they argue for more-restrictive national borders, even at the risk of dampening the economic and cultural vitality of our major cities?

This urban-rural split may be deep, but the authors of the Almanac claim that American politics are marked by an even deeper fissure. "What demographic factor separates voters more than any other?" Barone writes. "The answer is: religion." He cites a survey conducted by the University of Akron, showing that in last year's election Bush won 88 percent of the Mormon vote and 84 percent of white evangelical Protestants who reported going to church every week; Gore won 77 percent of the Jewish vote and 80 percent of "other non-Christians." Other polls have shown similar gaps between devout Christians and secular or non-Christian Americans. "Although they may be uncomfortable with the fact," Barone writes, "Americans increasingly vote as they pray -- or don't pray." He adds: "[We] are two nations of different faiths. One is observant, tradition-minded, moralistic. The other is unobservant, liberation-minded, relativist."

The violence in the Middle East -- and now the terrorism within our borders -- is essentially caused by a clash of religious beliefs. Americans are justifiably proud that our religious differences are expressed in peaceful ways, but religion nevertheless contributes to the division between our "two nations." That division was just beneath the surface in the days following the attacks on New York and Washington, with some leaders stressing America's tolerance of religious pluralism (the White House made sure that a Muslim cleric, in addition to Christians and Jews, spoke from the pulpit at last Friday's memorial service in the National Cathedral) and others reasserting their belief that the nation needs to pay more attention to Christian principles or risk the wrath of God. Two days after the attack, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a long-time leader of the religious right, said on the 700 Club television program, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians . . . all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, `You helped this happen.' " Host Pat Robertson, a seriously regarded presidential candidate in 1988, responded, "Well, I totally concur."

To his credit, Attorney General John Ashcroft, appointed by Bush in part because of his popularity among evangelical Christians, went on national television to urge Americans not to harass Muslims living here. Still, Muslim Americans, not to mention the non-religious, might have felt a little nervous when Bush quoted from the Bible in his national address the day after the attacks. (The passage, to be sure, was ecumenical, from Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.")

More startling was last Friday's appearance by the Reverend Franklin Graham (son of "preacher to the presidents" Billy Graham), on NBC's decidedly mainstream Today show. Graham said that one lesson of the attack on the World Trade Center is that we should "put our trust in God" instead of in "the dollar." Fundamentalist Muslims no doubt feel the same way, and the comment was an inadvertent reminder that, for all the sympathy directed toward New York after the attack, Middle America has always had mixed feelings toward the financial capital of the world.

When our national mourning begins to lift, America's religious differences will undoubtedly resurface in our political debate. One of our "two nations" will say that, in this climate of fear, we need school prayer more than ever; the other will say that it's now especially important not to stigmatize non-Christian schoolchildren. Similarly, in view of the likely increase in the number of trials involving suspected Muslim terrorists and people accused of violence against Arab-Americans, how should we regard the push, especially in the so-called Bible Belt, to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other government buildings? It seems so long ago now that one of President Bush's main priorities was his "faith-based initiative," which would funnel government funds to religious groups that provide social services. That idea was already controversial, in part, because it was unclear to what degree non-Western faiths would be invited to participate -- a "side issue" that's suddenly much more important. Do we strive for total inclusion so as not to antagonize non-Christians in this country? What happens when there's the slightest chance that a less-established religious group has ties (wittingly or unwittingly) to terrorist organizations? (Besides, more spending on defense and national security may decrease the amount of funding available for government social services, increasing the burden on church groups whether the feds help them or not.)

Religious differences underlie another issue that flared up in last year's elections: the graphic portrayal of violence and sex in movies and other forms of entertainment. In addition to the list of enemies named by Falwell, this is an area in which fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims share similar concerns. Certainly, laments about the "coarsening" of American culture are likely to intensify now that we're expected to get serious about protecting our way of life. Hollywood has shelved or delayed several movies and television series dealing with terrorism, but there's no sign of cutting down on violence in general. Several of the new fall offerings on TV are "murder of the week" series, and it will take a few weeks to find out whether Americans have lost their enthusiasm for the genre. Regardless, there are bound to be more calls to protect children from the offhand depiction of violence in serial-killer films and rap music, and there may be more calls to suppress "sacrilegious" works of art. Civil libertarians are sure to respond that censorship only undermines the democratic values now threatened by terrorism. The cloud of terrorism will no doubt change the rhetoric, but the specific issues will be the same ones we've been kicking around for years.

PEOPLE ARE now trying to return to normal life, as much as that is possible. It may take a little longer for political debate to become as loud, as impassioned, and as nasty as it was before September 11. But the United States will become divided once again. And now we see some benefit to last year's once-in-a-lifetime election: for all the bitterness on both sides, Bush v. Gore proved how strong our institutions of government really are. Even with the threat of terrorism -- especially with the threat of terrorism -- we shouldn't fear political dissent. New York's skyline was permanently changed last week. But when the dust settles, we'll discover that the American political landscape hasn't changed all that much.