Eisenhower Institute Unveils New Lecture Series Addressing Polarization
(Photo Mary Frasier/The Gettysburgian)
By Alli Dayton, Staff Writer
In an email to the Gettysburg College student body regarding the Eisenhower Institute event What Lies Ahead? Perspectives on a Polarized America, President Iuliano wrote that “our community has a special obligation to address today’s climate of polarization” through conversations and understanding.
What Lies Ahead?, the first of the Eisenhower Institute’s new lecture series, was “devoted to the defining issues of the American experience,” and occurred on Thursday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. via a Zoom webinar.
During the lecture, Susan Eisenhower hosted the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report Charlie Cook and senior editor at Inside Elections and the editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report Stuart Rothenberg. Both guests have had long careers in political observation and documentation, which they used to formulate their answers to questions during the discussion.
The panel began with a discussion of historical precedent for events like the insurrection in the Capitol.
Rothenberg explained that “we are as divided as we’ve been at any point since the Civil War reconstruction” due to the current “deeply troubling time in American politics.”
This divide can be attributed to hyper-partisanship, where neither side has trust in the other. Each party wants “payback from transgressions over the last few decades,” according to Rothenberg, and one party believes that “the other side’s worldview is illegitimate.”
Cook echoed this statement, sharing that the sense of illegitimacy between parties will likely continue with President Biden, who he “would have thought…would be more aggressively trying, at least initially, to go that bipartisan route” by vocalizing his bipartisan beliefs.
The conversation then turned to the contributing factors toward the insurrection at the Capitol.
“[Donald Trump] refusing to validate the election is…really an attack on our judicial system,” said Cook.
“This is the Donald Trump Republican Party…where [according to a political think tank], 80 percent of Democrats believe that the Republican Party has been taken over by racists and 82 percent of republicans believe that the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists,” added Rothenberg.
Cook then shared his concerns about the incident at the Capitol. “What I found so disconcerting” he shared, “is that [the individuals involved in the riots] saw themselves as patriots…like the Boston Tea Party or the people that stormed the beaches of Normandy under General Eisenhower.”
Cook also noted “tribalism” as a factor in the event. “I think it’s a byproduct of our legislative process becoming paralyzed,” he said. “There’s a vacuum, and if Congress doesn’t act, the President will enter that vacuum” to make decisions.
He supported his point further, citing that in the previous congressional election, “34 out of 35 Senate races were won by the same party that was carrying that state” in the presidential election.
This, Rothenberg explained, is “straight ticket voting,” where people say that “[they] are voting for [their] party no matter what.”
Rothenberg then described the growing similarities between the American system of government and a parliamentary system because “parties are ideological…to the extent that people see themselves as either liberals or conservatives.”
Despite no present shift toward bipartisanship, Cook explained that he is “extremely hopeful,” because “[President Biden] likes dealing with people…he’s not aloof or distant,” and “Biden was in the senate…when it actually functioned,” so “his natural inclination would be to try to take things back to…that point.”
Regardless of this hope, Cook concluded that “it’s [going to] take a long time…to get back to where we were twenty, thirty, or forty years ago” because the Republican Party “is in an unsustainable place and they’ve got to change.”
