It’s important to comment on pressing issues when they arise, and it would be a disservice to avoid posting further commentary on the healthcare reform debate simply because it’s an all-too-familiar issue. The fact is that it has become all-too-familiar precisely because it demands such lengthy treatment.
This time around, though, I don’t intend to focus so much on any particular issue of healthcare reform as such; but rather on the polarized forces lying beyond the halls of Congress—forces that inundate the American landscape and that exemplify the political entrenchment on either side of the contest.
Speaking to NPR recently, President Obama attested that conflict over the healthcare bill has been largely “more politically driven and more ideologically driven than substantive.” Of course, the president is probably referring to the party-line sort of voting that ushered the Senate version of the bill in, 60-39. Without a doubt, to understand the contest as Republicans-versus-Democrats is highly “political” and even perhaps “ideological.” But is the claim that this opposition amounts to non-substantive bantering really justified?
As I understand it, “political ideology” is a term that refers to a given set of fixed, immovable parameters, which exclusively guide a person’s voting and lobbying decisions. Naturally, in a two party system, political ideologies are attached most strongly to the two competing parties: a liberal and a conservative ideology, respectively. As far as I can tell, President Obama’s negative reaction to “politically and ideologically” charged skirmishes is mostly a reaction against his Republican adversaries, who have opposed his healthcare reform initiative from the start, and on the basic principles of their platform. (However, to be fair, certain unrelenting Democrats also received a reprimand from their executive leader for failing to back off of unrealistic, ideological tendencies toward a public option insurance plan.) At any rate, for Obama, such political, ideological partisanship seems to be reducible, in the end, to non-substantive debate.
But I think this sort of logic is patently false. Although I would concede that to argue from the standpoint of ideology does not constitute authentic, informed debate, the fact that party ideologies are a product of reasoned, “substantial” calculation is, in my mind, beyond question.
The problem is elucidated when one considers the ideology proper to each party—Republican or Democrat—in its most ‘raw’ form. On the one hand, liberal, Democratic ideology (including that chastised by the president) is informed, for the most part, by an authentic concern for the well-being and livelihood of a certain class of citizens. The leftist ideology, most generally, aims to benefit blue-collar workers; and it takes upon itself a mentality that applies the most liberal possible sense of “freedom” for those and like situated individuals. On the other hand, conservative, Republican ideology (the main object of Obama’s gripe) is generally thought to ally most closely with white-collar workers, and with big business. Conservatism, likewise, is generally more concerned with an actualization of “freedom” at the macro-societal level, and less concerned with the individual, liberal freedom endorsed by leftists.
In short, I think it’s clear that both conservative and liberal ideologies, in their fundamental constructs, possess a great amount of reasoned, logically tenable positions; and that each extrapolates such foundational principles into larger, more sweeping, party-wide agendas.
For the president to charge politicians with inane bickering that sees no further than party affiliation is, no doubt, a reasonable thing. But to conclude, therefore, that all ideological affiliation is non-substantive is to discredit the very foundations of those ideologies as baseless. And this sort of mentality is, I think, at the root of the apathy that dominates American political participation.
If American’s are continuously told—and by their executive leader, no less—that to assert strongly the stance held by a political party is mere sophistry, the message that’s ultimately conveyed is that politics is nothing but a game, and that apathy, therefore, is a reasonable and justified response. After all, who wants to waste time with something that can be defined simply as “partisan hackery”?
Rather, to encourage Americans to take a firm grip on their nation’s political and social future requires not merely a critique of party ideology as baseless, but instead a reform of a system that can be so critiqued. In other words, don’t tell citizens that their representatives are non-substantive contributors to a social progress that is actually mindless and unformed; but instead, do something to help actualize the meaningful resistance and conflict at the bottom of the bipartisan split.
The first step in making authentic progress is acknowledging that there are competing positions. And unfortunately, so long as politicians talk past one another—even under the guise of confronting ideologues—that simply won’t happen.
