“The Road to Paralysis,” a new book by Binghamton University history professor Donald G. Nieman, who co-teached a course on modern U.S. history with his wife, professor Lee Ann Wheeler, draws on questions and insights from students, and It was born out of a discussion with my teenage son. Political polarization in this country.
“If young people grow up thinking this is how politics should be, what will our future look like?” Neiman said. “I think this is a serious and alarming development in American politics. If this becomes the norm, I don’t know if our constitutional democracy can survive. That’s how serious it is.”
The Road to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Messy, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic, published by Anthem Press in mid-October, takes the United States from the Great Society to Congress. It examines the changes in political culture that led to the Capitol riot. within 60 years. Polarization and toxicity are now common in countries that are half red and half blue, and “compromise” is considered a dirty word.
Neiman, who served as president of Binghamton University from 2012 to 2022, was already concerned about the increasing polarization of politics after the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. Years later, Neiman embraced the Gen Z perspective when discussing the issue with his son Brady. He was a high school student at the time.
For example, Brady was equally appalled by police violence against Black people and calls to “defund the police.”
“He was concerned about the polarization he saw among his contemporaries,” Neiman recalled. “He was appalled by the ‘cancellation’ and the meanness on both sides of the political spectrum. It got him thinking about the impact this has on young people.”
At the same time, Nieman and Wheeler co-taught HIST 104, a modern American history class for first-year students. As the course moved into the 1970s and beyond, Nieman was able to receive input from 18- and 19-year-olds.
“For students, post-Watergate is almost 50 years of American history,” he says. “They are interested in the sequence of developments because this helps them understand where we are today and how we got there.”
This meeting laid the groundwork for the book Mr. Neiman wrote the year after he resigned as president. But research and writing led to surprising discoveries for this historian.
“When I started reading this book, I thought: We’ve been polarized since the late 1960s,” he admitted. “My thinking changed during the process of writing the book. It was only after 2008 that we became truly polarized.”
***
“The Road to Paralysis” is a 400+ page story of a path to political dysfunction. This is the last 60 years Neiman has written in a style that will appeal to Republicans, Democrats, independents, political buffs, history buffs, and those seeking hope that there may be an escape from today’s name-calling and untruths. This is the story of America over the years.
×
Dig deeper into political history
The Road to Paralysis includes a 10-page “bibliographical essay” in which historian and author Donald G. Neiman lists hundreds of books that serve as “guides for readers who want to learn more.” I am listing it.
Want to learn more about social changes in the 1960s? Neiman has some suggestions. Want to learn more about the Nixon era? Here are eight powerful options. Curious about the rise of Ronald Reagan and the 2000 presidential election? Tea party? Trump era? Readers who want to read more will not be left behind.
“One of the challenges of publishing a book like this is that you have to boil down the content,” says Neiman, who cut about 20 percent of the manuscript for the published version. “Mr. Carter’s energy policy could be the subject of a book. How the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 came about could be the subject of a book. My aim is to detail these matters. The goal is not to tell the history of the United States, but to show how they fit into the trajectory of American political and social development and the emergence of polarization.
This semester, Neiman is also sharing his knowledge with Binghamton University students in an important U.S. presidential election course. In class, we will use the years 1800, 1828, 1860, 1876, 1912, 1936, 1968, 2000, 2008, 2016, and 2020 to discuss how the presidential election system developed. Find out. This class will also spend time looking at the post-election fallout of 2024.
Instead of covering specific changes over the years, such as political geography, new ways of communicating, and divisions over race, gender, and religion, in individual chapters, Neiman devotes 12 chapters to four- or eight-year blocks of American history. are. “Road to Paralysis” begins in 1964 and progresses through the years, with each president in the spotlight at the forefront.
“I wanted to tell the story of American political development from the mid-1960s to the present, rather than treating it graphically,” he said. “It shows the power of chance. It’s easy to talk about a wide range of forces and factors coming together. But humans make decisions. The juxtaposition of events and how people make decisions It’s easier to do that with a chronological story.”
The book begins with a pro-Lyndon Baines-Johnson political ad that Neiman and Wheeler aired in their HIST 104 class in 1964. “Poverty” was a one-minute black-and-white ad that showed the faces of poor children and urged Americans to rally behind LBJ and his fight against poverty.
“This ad’s implicit belief in the government’s ability to solve complex problems sounds naive,” Neiman wrote in the book. But for Neiman, the ad “crystallized where our country has been over the past 60 years.”
“You might think, ‘That was the height of liberalism,'” he says. “But then we find out that America was not liberal in 1964. In a Gallup poll, 20 percent identify as liberal, 35 percent identify as conservative, and 44 percent identify as moderate,” Johnson said. The program and message reflected optimism. Take-home income was also rising. People saw their lives improving year by year. And Americans thought they were leading the world against an aggressive communism that sought to take away their rights and freedoms. We were leading a good fight. ”
By the early 1970s, times were beginning to change. Inflation, unemployment, the energy crisis, cultural change, and political inaction have left some Americans feeling alienated, angry, and wary. An ongoing culture war battle was underway, and politicians were eager to capitalize on it.
“It makes it easier for politicians who can’t fix the economy to take advantage of the moral concerns that people have on the right and the left about issues,” Neiman said.
However, the book dispels the idea that the growing political divisions that began in the late 1960s led to polarization. Richard Nixon signed pioneering environmental legislation, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill forged a compromise to stabilize Social Security and overhaul the income tax system, and George H.W. Bush and Al. – Gore came together to pass the Clean Air Act of 1990, George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy worked together on education reform, and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich planned a comprehensive reform of Social Security and Medicare. , which fell victim to Clinton’s impeachment fight.
“Gingrich has taken the tactics of attack and amplification of the truth to a new level of sophistication,” Neiman said of the former speaker of the House of Representatives from Georgia. “Many of today’s techniques were devised by Gingrich, and he used them effectively. But after Mr. Clinton was reelected, Mr. Gingrich made a major effort to reform Social Security and Medicare. I was deeply involved in the compromise, and I believe it would have been possible if Mr. Clinton had been able to control his sexual desires and not have been embroiled in an impeachment crisis…The politics of the Clinton era were nasty and vicious. But Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gingrich worked together to address the issue.
***
But a variety of factors would soon create a storm of political polarization (what Neiman calls a “tipping point”) during the Barack Obama era. Preoccupations with race, gender, sexuality, and family have reached new heights. The Republican Party’s success in Southern states (70% of Republican senators and representatives are from the South) has made the party more conservative. Gerrymandering meant that most House members held safe seats and had little reason to move to the center.
And then there are the changes in media that Neiman called “seismic.”
“If we had the media environment of the 1960s, I don’t think we would have had the polarization that we have today,” he says. “People fought like cats and dogs, politics were heated, but people generally agreed on the facts. They got their news from three networks and major newspapers.
“Over time, with the (emergence) of talk radio, cable news, the internet and social media, people started getting their news from sources that confirmed their biases,” he added. “Journalism is becoming more democratized. Anyone with a website or blog is a journalist. They don’t have to check the facts and can throw around any conspiracy theory while keeping their audience locked in. It’s a perfect world for people who don’t want to compromise and just want to fight. ”
Disruptive economic changes are also important, Neiman said. The transition from a manufacturing economy to a service and information economy, combined with trickle-down economic policies, has created growing economic inequality. This left many middle-class and working-class Americans feeling alienated, bitter, and convinced that political leaders served only the rich. This was the catalyst for the populism pioneered by Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party.
President Trump is a product of that populism, Neiman said, and one that has been cleverly exploited. Mr. Trump has long aspired to run for president, but Mr. Obama has emerged as a leading populist spokesperson, insisting he was not born in the United States. Neiman recalled a speech the future president gave at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2011. Responses to views on issues such as abortion, guns and the national debt were muted.
“When Obama questioned whether he was born in the United States, the crowd exploded (in support),” Neiman said. “From that point on, I think Trump understood the power of that issue and the kinship issue to ignite the foundation that would launch his political career.”
Nieman said issues of identity, culture and values continue to intensify Trump-era politics.
“Trump was able to exploit these things the way a successful showman can.”
***
Can the United States avoid political polarization, especially in presidential campaigns where candidates call each other “communists” and “fascists”? Neiman believes the first step must take place at the polling place. People need to “raise their hands and speak up about this.”
“Most Americans say they hate politics because it’s so messy and polarizing,” he says. “The poll results are transparent as glass. But people need to vote that way (and say): I will not vote for someone who lies and threatens to jail his opponents. So many This is a difficult task in a polarized system because people are choosing sides. But in 2018, 2020, and 2022, a significant number of voters changed their direction. It gave me hope.”
Neiman also hopes that “The Road to Paralysis” will help readers understand that while political disagreements are inevitable, disagreements should generate debate. .
“This country is large, diverse and constantly changing,” he said. “We’re going to have sharp disagreements. There’s going to be negative campaigning and advertising that stirs fear. It works; politicians will rely on it. No matter what, we can’t continue to live in a bubble, deny the facts, or believe in conspiracies. We should want our leaders to fight each other, but then come together and say, We have a problem to deal with.” Voters need to demand compromise from politicians. Come up with a solution that may not be perfect, but don’t overdo it. Give a little to get a little.
“Polarization has not been with us since time immemorial,” he added. “It’s a relatively recent thing and we should be able to overcome it and create more constructive politics.”
