09/11/14: America’s illusory partisan divide

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

RARELY A DAY goes by without some reference to the partisan divide in America. It has become the shorthand of our times. But does that tell the whole story? In many cases, it does not.

Captivating the attention of political observers nationwide over the past six weeks has been the trial of Bob and Maureen McDonnell.

As it turns out, they weren’t the only ones. A poll released Tuesday morning found that two-thirds of Virginians paid close attention to the trial . A similar number — 64 percent — thought the trial was mostly fair.

The poll, conducted by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, began two days before the jury rendered its verdict. More than half of the survey’s respondents for those two nights were unsure about whether the former governor and his wife should be found guilty. Two-thirds thought McDonnell’s behavior and actions were wrong.

That last statistic is telling.

The poll report says that “this high level of disapproval crossed sexes, party lines and regions of the state.”

In other words, we haven’t lost our collective sense of right and wrong after all.

The second part of the poll was released Wednesday morning.

While most will be paying attention to the horse-race numbers in the Senate contest, it was the congressional approval numbers that jumped out at me. A whopping 85 percent of respondents disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job. That’s about as close to a consensus as you’re likely to see.

Both statistics give me hope that we can use the things we have in common to advance our democracy rather than using our disagreements to stymie it.

But it’s really hard to have hope when nearly everything magnifies our differences rather than our similarities.

Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but a game of power, with policy considerations an afterthought.

Those few politicians who are willing to compromise are labeled cowards — or worse. Besides, all politicians (except the ones we support, of course) are crooks and liars, right?

The latter shows just how much cognitive dissonance we accept. We simultaneously hold a low opinion of Congress but not our own representative. We think the “Virginia Way” protects us from the need for strict ethics rules; after all, we are not Illinois or New Jersey.

We know these things because that’s what we’ve been told by the media sources we frequent.

With limited time, we choose media that create the least discomfort: sources that we already agree with.

Those few sources that try to be unbiased have furthered the notion that “balance” means you must have representatives from both sides, conveniently ignoring the fact that most issues have more than two sides — or have just one.

It’s why we are surprised when people, seemingly on opposite sides, agree. We shouldn’t be.

We have more in common than those who would divide us are willing to admit. I just wish we’d remember it more often.