As the third decade of the 21st century opens, the United States finds itself in a paradoxical situation: The economy is booming, unemployment is historically low, the nation is not involved in any major wars, and the international situation is (for the moment) reasonably stable. Yet voters do not feel stable or happy: On the right, many believe that the country they knew is being taken away from them by immigrants and shadowy elites, while for the left, democracy itself is being challenged by a Republican Party that has turned into a cult of personality. In 2016, America elected a president whose personal characteristics — narcissism, ignorance and barely disguised racism — should have immediately disqualified him. Yet Donald Trump became president and remains an object of adulation for at least a third of the country.
This polarization is perhaps the single greatest weakness of the American political system today, a weakness that authoritarian rivals like Vladimir Putin’s Russia have gleefully exploited. It is the subject of a superbly researched and written book by the journalist and commentator Ezra Klein, founder of Vox and host of a popular podcast. Klein argues that polarization exists for structural reasons having to do with the incentives created by U.S. institutions, and that our current predicament is not the result of individual leaders and the choices they make: It existed long before Trump took his famous ride down the escalator in Trump Tower and will unfortunately survive regardless of who is elected in November.
The bottom line of Klein’s argument is that polarization was driven fundamentally by race. The Republican Party has become the home of angry white voters anxious that the United States is turning into a “majority minority” society, as California already has, a reality epitomized by the election of Barack Obama.
