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December 22, 1995 Binary Politics by Craig Ruff, President, Public Sector Consultants, Inc. A National Public Radio commentator coined the term binary politics to describe America’s two-party political system. Two choices in the voting booth or between federal deficit reduction and spending plans do not cut it in a society thirsting for customized choices and answers. Flooded with a cornucopia of choices in every marketplace except politics, America’s consumers typically face a restricted choice of only 0 or 1—Democrat or Republican—on election days. Maybe that is why political participation itself is binary: Half of eligible citizens don’t bother to vote. Among voters, only about half call themselves Democrats or Republicans. As civilization advances, it delivers ever-expanding choices, ranges, and customized goods and services in all things except the commodity of politics. James Madison and other engineers of American governance feared and sought to constrain the selfishness of self-interested Americans. They could hardly have imagined the Balkanization of consumer interests and appetites today. By restraining political choice, our system now leaves little but disappointment. Our political system’s fear of the tyranny of minority interests starves the entire public. Picture the frustration of a car shopper with a choice only between a Model T or a Chevy. You have a sense of why, in part, Americans do not traffic political showrooms—polling places. When they do, they leave disappointed. Americans have lost interest in politics in part because of restricted choice. The model of two political parties contesting one post, to the victor the spoils, rarely satisfied the white, property-owning men who lived off the soil in the 1800s; it is fanciful to think that the two-party system satisfies the thirst for customization in today’s diverse society and electorate. You don’t find many people popping champagne at the thought of choosing between Bill Clinton or Bob Dole eleven months from now. Given such a restricted choice, the media and the public savored the entry of Colin Powell, Bill Bradley, Ross Perot, Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Nader. Americans should take a careful look at the multiple party and proportional representation systems of democracies around the world. Let us consider more extensive gerrymandering of legislative districts around communities of interest. How about allowing both the winning and losing candidates to be seated in a legislature, with their shares of a legislative vote equal to their share of popular vote? The winner-takes-all electoral system works for the successful politician, not the public. Neither a conservative living in John Conyer’s U.S. House district nor a liberal living in Dick Chrysler’s district contributes more than a peep to public policy making, for example, the debate over the national budget. In the end, a budget settlement between President Clinton and the U.S. Congress will arise out of a compromise between binary partisan fears rather than among the public’s disparate interests. As Washington editor Michael Kelly writes in the December 4 New Yorker:
Polarized policy choices like the Clinton or Congressional budget plans would be fine if all Americans sat at one end or the other of a continuum of needs and interests, defined by politicians in partisan terms. Polarizing politicians, as conservative strategist William Kristol says, boil the policy equation down to "whether bankrupting our children trumps throwing Grandma out in the street." Most families enwrap grandparents and children and should resent the binary budget choice thrust at them. America is a land of bounty and diversity. We are a people who deserve expanded political and policy choices. The tchotchkas of American politics—our way or hell rhetoric, overnight polls, and reelection strategies—grossly underestimate the complexity of our society, our abundant choices, and thirst for answers customized to each family’s needs. Binary politics and binary policy choices don’t cut it anymore. |
