Can Americans Become Americans Again? A Question for July 4th
Just adding this little note an hour after publication. This subject is not new for me. I have written about US public opinion and war extensively in my career. So while it may be new to recent readers of this Substack, it is not a new subject for my research. Here are just some of my earlier Substacks on the question.
Hello All,
As it is almost July 4th, I thought I would throw a little analysis into this most American of holidays. There is a good deal of sentimental drivel being thrown around this year about how Americans desperately want to come together, how they still share more in common than not, and how there remains a shared ideal of Americanness.
That is, in a word, easily disprovable horsesh&t.
America is divided in such a profound and destructive way that, I believe, it can be said that Americans no longer see themselves as Americans. They have stronger allegiances which govern how they see both themselves and how they see the world. Only if Americans admit that and really try to become “Americans” again, can the country come out of the terrible state it is now.
Something deeply depressing has happened over the last few decades as the country has ceased to share an idea of what the US is or for what it stands. It has instead balkanized into two camps, and loyalty to your camp is far more important than any shared national vision.
The best way to look at just how profound this shift has been (and how it took place in a relatively short period of time) is to look at the basic questions of how the American population views wars that the country fights and the role of the USA in the world.
In a nutshell, the country has moved from a situation where partisanship was a secondary concern in the Cold War, to one where partisanship determines the country’s views of itself and the outside world.
The best place to start is that most contentious of wars, the Vietnam War. Now the Vietnam War moved from a war that had a strong national consensus behind it when it started, to one that was strongly unpopular at the end. However, throughout this contentious process, partisanship was never the determining factor.
Note: I will use only Gallup Polls for this paper, as a consistency test. However other polls have similar results.
In an even more striking sign of how partisan identity was a secondary consideration, during the year (Summer of 1968 to Summer of 1969) when the war started to become increasingly unpopular, and the presidency changed hands, there was a striking similarity in how Democrats, Republicans and Independents viewed US involvement in the conflict.
Maybe the best way to see how partisanship mattered during the Vietnam War, but was a secondary not a primary consideration, is to look at the answer to the question “Was Sending Troops ‘a Mistake’” from 1965-1973
Now you can see how partisanship is a factor in the US outlook throughout the whole conflict. When Democrats are president—from 1965 until the end of 1968, Republicans are more likely to view sending troops as a mistake. When a Republican becomes president in January 1969, the parties switch, and Democrats become a little more negative. However the key thing is that the trajectory of partisan opinion is broadly similar. At the start of the conflict fewer than 30% of Republicans or Democrats see sending troops as a mistake, but by the end more than 50% of each party shares that view.
Quick extra evidence, the Korean War also had only modest partisan differences in how it was viewed. While Harry Truman was president Republicans were more likely to view the war as a mistake than Democrats, but the difference is nothing compared to what you are about to see.
Americans Have Ceased Being American
Now I want to show you a poll about how Americans over the previous twenty-five years have viewed the place of the USA in the wider world, because it is one of the most stunning partisan poll results I have ever seen. When asked whether they were “satisfied or dissatisfied” with the global position of the US, this is how Americans responded.
For the last 25 years almost the only thing that matters for Republicans and Democrats (particularly Republicans) was whether a member of their own self-identified party was in the White House. It did not matter what that person did, what wing of the party they came from, whether they started the War on Terror (Bush) or criticized that exact same war (Trump), Republicans were overwhelmingly satisfied (over 80% at times) with the USA’s place in the world as long as a Republican was president. Correspondingly, a large majority of Democrats (sometimes over 60%) were satisfied when a Democrat was chief executive, regardless of what the policies of that president happened to be. And, just to confirm the split, self-identified Independents acted as a brilliant control group—people who had no strong partisan identification usually split the difference.
Note: The Republican identity chart is astonishing, only a small minority of Republicans seem to have the ability to approach this fundamental question from a non-partisan perspective.
We have just had additional confirmation that partisanship determines how Americans view war and the outside world. Trump’s recent war against Iran was in no way seen as an American war. It was his war, so Republicans loved it and Democrats despised it. This was the result according to Gallup.
Approval of the recent action in Iran was significantly higher among Republicans (79%) than among independents (26%) and Democrats (8%).
Americans used to have some rally around the flag effect when wars started, even if just for a while. That is now gone. As I said, a massive percentage of Americans have stopped looking at a question from an American perspective—but instead have adopted a partisan one.
When and why this happened is somewhat easy and somewhat difficult to answer. It had something to do with the War on Terror and the end of the Cold War. Throughout the 1990s, while partisan differences were there, the country did not automatically divide into camps when it came to military action. For instance, the US-led campaign to bomb Serbia in 1999, showed only a modest partisan difference. Here is my only non-Gallup poll for this piece, it is Pew Research summarizing its public opinion findings not long after the Kosovo campaign started.
Support for both air strikes and ground troops is generally higher among men than women. Two-thirds (67%) of men support the air campaign, for instance, compared to 57% of women. The air strikes continue to draw majority support across party lines — 66% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 57% of Republicans say they support the bombings.
Something deep and I hope not irrevocable has happened over the last 26 years. The USA has lost a sense of Americanness and opted for partisan loyalty to the point where that determines Americans’ views of themselves, war, and the outside world.
Unless that can be ended and a more shared national idea re-emerge, the country will remain in the perilous shape that it is.
Happy July 4th Everyone!
Don’t think America will ever be what it once was. Trumpism has destroyed it.
This is related to the rise of polarizing media and news as entertainment?