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My first trip to the United States was in late 2000. In a frozen New York and Washington DC, I was, unknowingly, witnessing a major political thaw at the end of an era. In Washington it was still possible for a European tourist to visit Congress or the White House. And in New York I could still see the Twin Towers standing. They would be overthrown less than a year later by the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and, with them, by the illusion of omnipotence of the winning US of the Cold War. Two decades of wars in the Greater Middle East followed, presumably to defeat jihadist terrorism, but which served, above all, to reveal the frustrating limits of US military might and fuel American concerns about the country’s security, something Trump will not fail to mention. to explore.
In Washington DC, I could still see protesters protesting Republican George W. Bush’s victory in the presidential election despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore. Above all, I remember that he appealed to his supporters, in the name of the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, to accept the result and to collaborate with the new administration.
Over the next two decades – in which I spent two seasons in Washington DC for academic work – I have followed the emergence of an increasingly ideological, more extreme, more polarized American politics, and one in which commitment has grown stronger and stronger. . What’s wrong? The American constitutional system was designed by the Founding Fathers at the end of the 18th century to enforce commitment. This is the fundamental problem of American politics today: hyperpolarized and, to a large extent, paralyzed. A problem for Americans, but also for US allies who rely on them to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
America likes to think of itself as the country of the future, but it is governed by the oldest constitution in force in the world, which dates back to 1790. And despite the tendency to idealize the past in the public memory of any political community, there is always been in history North American fluctuations in the degree of confrontation and political polarization. A fundamental fact to keep in mind is that the Constitution of 1790 corresponded to very laborious commitments. Many of the aspects criticized today were deliberate commitments. Like the famous method of indirect election of the President by the Electoral College that led Trump to victory in 2016, despite having lost the popular vote.
The great fear of these voters was that demagogy was a way to tyranny, which they knew was the main vulnerability of democracies. An open and elective political system is always vulnerable to leaders who put their interests above national interests and respect for the law. In the US, central power is therefore deliberately very divided: between the two chambers of Congress; between him and the president; not to mention the courts or the powers of the federation states. This requires extensive commitments and mutual concessions. But the components were also aware that there are no perfect systems. The choices of individuals and the possibility of history always have a role to play. To a lady who asked Benjamin Franklin which regime the voters had “given” to the country, she replied: “A Republic, if you know how to preserve it.”
But wasn’t the United States very divided in the past, before Trump? Of course yes. It is enough to recall the growing tension, division and violence around slavery which dominated the first half of the 19th century and culminated in one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, between 1861 and 65, causing 700,000 deaths. However, the great trauma of this bloody civil war marked the beginning of a very long period in American history in which political consensus was more appreciated than ever.
After the defeat of the southern states, in 1877 a great compromise was reached between the elites of the north and the elites of the south. In this commitment the interests and rights of many African Americans recently freed from slavery were tragically sacrificed. This should remind us that if the search for confrontation at all costs is terrible, so too can the search for compromise at all costs. In any case, the fact is that, for the elites of the Republican and Democratic parties, the great evil to be avoided has become the risk of a new civil war. For this reason, these parties openly boasted of their lack of ideological convictions. They had “catch all” or broad spectrum parties, with far more historical than ideological ties to certain regions and different groups within the country. As the famous Senator Borah stated in the early 20th century, someone who defends disarmament, the League of Nations or other leftist policies, if chosen as a Republican candidate, then they will be a Republican. Basically, the two main dominant political parties in the United States were large coalitions of regional elites. The system had many problems, from the very beginning elitism and clientelism, but it had the advantage of promoting a culture of commitment, within the parties themselves and, subsequently, between different coalitions of senators or deputies, which allowed important reforms.
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