NB: This interview was recorded on January 4th with the expectation that it would be released in the first week of February. The release was delayed due to my taking on the “Oral History of the Hostage Deal” project. Accordingly, some references will be out of date.

Confronting polarization with our shared history

When I began working on Inheritance, it was in large part because the politics of the day had become altogether too fraught, too anxiety inducing, too unproductive, bitter, and angry to think that it was worth engaging with. So instead, I turned to the past. I looked to history for solace. I tried to tap in to this long conversation that has been happening for thousands of years. And in it, I connected with “the universal human spirit”, the essence of humanity that exists independent of geography, independent of time. And also, I saw that the problems that we face today are not so unique to our own time. They're just a natural part of our attempt to reconcile ourselves with an imperfect world.

While I still feel that an exploration of history is the more pleasant and fruitful affair, it's not something that is meant to be done in isolation, as if we were monks cloistered away. Rather, it is this larger, more distant perspective of our endeavors that I think makes it easier to more productively engage with the politics of the moment. I am able to approach our politics with less a degree of urgency than perhaps people who live their lives inculcated in it. I think that all of us, as we are now, just a few weeks into a new presidential administration, would benefit from lowering the temperature.

Yes. This is a polarized country. These are fraught times. We have many contentious issues to engage with, so much so that it is easy to forget that it wasn't so long ago that both major parties largely agreed on the major issues of the time. If you read through the 2000 party platforms of both the Democrats and the Republicans, you'll find a striking degree of similarity. Both parties opened their platform, trying to take credit for the balancing of the budget and the reduction of the size of the federal government. It’s quite a thing when people are trying to take credit for the same thing, rather than blame each other for it.

Both parties were promising to cut taxes further to bolster Social Security, to invest in American education, but also to hold teachers accountable.They were both interested in what we would, I think, now consider to be traditional values of honesty, hard work, openness to new information, strong discipline, willingness to reason, personal responsibility and tolerance for different points of views. The Democrats, as well as the Republicans, were interested in the expansion of charter schools. And notably, both parties were staunch advocates of globalization and free trade, and they embraced a tougher line on crime. The parties were so similar that at times it seemed a challenge to differentiate between the two candidates.

Declining faith in political institutions

Today is, of course, rather different. Many Americans are feeling disaffected with politics and have very little confidence in our democratic institutions ability to move the country in the right direction. This is manifesting itself in a number of ways. Around 2000 Gallup polls show that roughly one third of the country identified itself as Republican, another third as Democrat, and the other third as independent. Today, neither major party caps 30%, and a clear plurality of the country does not identify with either major party.

This tracks with presidential approval numbers. President Trump, a deeply polarizing figure, was less popular than every other modern president. And yet, President Biden managed to be somehow even less popular than Donald Trump, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight. Joe Biden is an incredible 20 points underwater, with a mere 37.3% of Americans approving of his job performance as of January 2nd, 2025. This is an even smaller share of the country than Trump, just days after the events of January 6th, which resulted in a significant drop off in popularity for him.

It's not just our presidents that Americans are unhappy with. According to the most recent Gallup poll numbers that I have, a mere 17% of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job. Since around 2010, that number has hovered around 20%. The Supreme Court does a fair bit better, but is still underwater, with only 44% approving and 51% disapproving.

Why are Americans so disaffected with politics? Obviously, this is a big question with many and complicated answers, but I think part of that answer can be found in how the parties have changed over these past 25 years. If one were to sleepwalk through the first quarter of this century and start paying attention today, regardless of your political affiliation, I doubt you would really recognize the party that you had previously supported.

Both parties have grown more authoritarian, more willing to use the state to punish its opponents, and to, subvert democratic processes to advance its own agenda. Both parties have soured on free trade and globalism, turning inwards. The Republican Party, which had for most of the 20th century supported immigration, is now defined in large part by its anti-immigration policies. Likewise, the Democratic Party has embraced such an acrid form of intolerant identitarianism that it is turning off lifelong Democrats.

There are few planks in the party platforms of 2000 that either party in 2025 would now support. So of course people are feeling disaffected. The parties have left them. It seems to me that neither party seems to be particularly interested in doing the hard, serious work of politics and tending to the needs of their constituents. But that doesn't mean that we can't do that for ourselves.

We have to fix it ourselves

One thing we can consider as we try to de-escalate our politics, as we try to combat polarization, is we can take a longer view of history and realize that there are people who may have wound up on the other side of the political aisle who might now share a common cause with us. If we are to do the hard, slow work of repairing divisions in this country, we have to learn how to communicate better.

Yes, this is trite. This is unimaginative. This is no novel observation. But it is true.

If you flip open the paper or switch on TV, it might feel as if this country is preparing to go to civil war. I don't believe that we are. But I do believe that we have work trying to better understand each other and I think something that we can do to that effect is to reflect upon our country's politics and the ways that it has transformed over the past 25 years, and to consider ways that we can still constructively engage, even if we no longer have faith in the federal government's ability to faithfully execute its duties,

John McWaters, who writes “Intentionally Left Blank” was kind enough to join Inheritance for this conversation. His knowledge of Republican Party politics and political ideology is a valuable contribution to this endeavor. Our conversation ran a bit long, so will be released in two parts. The second of which should be released next week.

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Corrections

* It was 537 ballots that separated Bush and Gore in Florida, not 538.

* The last year the federal government passed 100% of its required appropriations on time was 1997.

* The last year the federal budget was in surplus is 2001

* Please let us know if you spot any other factual inaccuracies!

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