Citizenship and Civic Life

The Rise and Fall of Nasty Politics in America

By Daniel M. Shea and Alex Sproveri, in PS: Symposium on Political Civility. Vol. 45. Iss. 3: 416-421.

Many assert we have lost political civility

Imply there was once more civility in American politics

Yet, few study this phenomenon over time

They do

What do they find?

There was no “golden age” of civility

Nor are we “in a rough patch”

Rather, there are periods of incivility

Which fit “traditionally defined critical realignment periods” (416)

Context: what is the recent period of “incivility”?

Beginning with 2008 election but really apparent by 2009

Series of “town hall meetings” on health-care reform hosted by Democratic members of Congress

Describe scenes in Tampa, FL; Pennsylvania

Yet what of other episodes of violence in our political history?

Alexander Hamilton shot by Aaron Burr in 1804

Rep. Preston Brooks beat Sen. Chas. Sumner unconscious during lead up to Civil War, 1856

Susan Herbst (2010) Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivlity in American Politics

Argues that uncivil behavior has always been the “mainstay” of US politics; a tool used intentionally (417)

They call these the “boils up” and “strategic use” explanations

Yet, the authors tell us only “a modest effort to quantify levels of political rancor over time has been made” (417)

Sobieraj and Berry (2011) study syndicated news colums from 10 week periods in 1955, 1975 and 2009; find dramatic increase in levels of outrage in 2009

Authors use Google Labs and Books Ngram Viewer to look at prevalence of words and phrases in books back to 1800

“culturomics” – the study of how words and phrased utilized by authors display social trends (418)

“a rigorous quantitative inquiry into a wise array of new phenomena spanning the social science and the humanities” (418)

set time frame, choose language

search for carefully selected terms, language used to describe things in context they were used;

they chose: “mean” “bitter” “hateful” “filthy” and “nasty” together with “politics”

See graphs on pg. 419, 420

Find rise and fall on a 20-30 year cycle

Coincident with what political scientists call “critical elections” or periods of electoral “realignment”

Late 1820s, mid-1860s, 1896, 1932

(see e.g. Key 1955, Burnham 1970, Sundquist 1983)

They say this is not evidence of nasty politics but that authors chose those words to describe what was happening

They like Herbst’s explanation of
“strategic use”

When “greater issues” are at stake,

People ratchet up the rhetoric

What kind of “greater issues”?

The role of national government, corruption, war, industrialization, sweeping policy changes, threats of communism, civil rights

Relation to critical elections:

“When Americans are drawn into the political arena because of deep-seated beliefs and cross-cutting policy concerns, things can get nasty” (421)

What about today? What trends do the authors point to in explaining today’s period of nasty politics?

Ideological gap between the parties

Cross-cutting issues chosen to force voters to take a side – but today – too many – a host of social, demographic, and political forces have created a prolonged period of partisan polarization

Think of tensions between ideological, identity and interest-based politics

New technologies

“narrow casting”

“micro targeting”

“niche marketing”

“mobilize voters around personal hot button issues rather than around broad themes”

Hope?

Change? In the Obama 2008 campaign?

Caution that this period has to be temporary

Eventually losing side has to admit defeat, accept winner, realign