A Populist Möbius Strip

For Republicans and Democrats alike, what’s old is new again.

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Republicans will never tire of answering Democratic allegations of racism by pointing out that the GOP was the party created to oppose slavery, while Democrats not only defended it, but after its abolition doggedly opposed for a century protections for black Americans’ rights. 

Which was true, right up until it wasn’t.

Lyndon Johnson’s remaining defenders say that his enthusiastic, cruel bigotry in private masked a deeper, sincere interest in civil rights. It also may be true, though, that he was a rotten man who was motivated more by political opportunism than humanity. Maybe both, or maybe it depended on the day or how smashed he was on Cutty Sark. Whatever his motives, Johnson effected perhaps the most radical change in partisan policy stances in American history in just a handful of years.

Johnson, who as Senate majority leader had neutered Republican-backed civil rights legislation in 1957, signed a far more aggressive version into law in 1964. Republicans watched as Democrats nabbed an issue that had been with the GOP since before the party had a name. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This was pretty interesting. One of Stirewalt’s better columns. I wonder if readers understand the subtext and history he glosses over. For instance, that the “liberals’” and libertarians have different definitions of individual rights, the former coming out of Rousseau and Rawls and the latter coming out of conservative/right wing thinkers.

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  2. Mary Stine

    I'm going to defend the mobious strip as an example of our current dissonance. First, we have to imagine a strip much larger than humans and elongated into an oval. Then we have to imagine that humans are wearing magnetic shoes that allow them to walk anywhere on the strip.
    We humans might be able to hear each other walking along, but not see each other, and vice versa. At some points, we'd not even be able to completely hear each other. But eventually we'd all have to acknowedge we'd all been traveling the same strip, and likely making the same missteps.
    This is what we are NOT doing now. Both parties are pretending they have always been the saintly messengers of the truth that is good for all humans. And that the other team has always been not only wrong, but evil. I'm not buying that and I don't think the 47% or so of voters (who are independents) are buying that either. There are also likely voters on either side, like me, who can see the past mistakes and current ills in their own parties.
    If there is any one thing I doubt the most about our current form of government it is the two party system. Both parties are now in the hands of their most extreme members. Will ranked choice voting get us out of this mess? Or will it take enough of us forming a legitimate 3rd party?

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    1. Tom (Inadvertent Obfuscation)

      It seems to me that we cannot have a robust third party without ranked choice voting. It also seems that the two-party system will keep ranked choice voting from becoming a reality, at least for general elections. Ranked choice voting might be installed to provide us with sane results for primaries.

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    Synchronize Your Dogmas (Bill B)

    I'm not sure what Chris is referring to when he identifies a Democratic "populism" coming out of the 60's and 70's. There was an anti-war movement that was the product of a pretty unpopular war and a civil rights movement to insure the equal rights of minorities and women that was long overdue. And neither was attractive to a large segment of the country.

    In what sense are these populist or is Chris referring to some other phenomenon?

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    Pat Riot

    Yep, I voted Republican back when the Democrats were evil, and now I vote Democrat now that the Republicans are evil.

    It it switches again I'll switch as well...

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I've been reading an interesting history book by one of the abolitionists kicked out of the Quaker community in 1843.

    Long story short, a majority of Quakers opposed slavery, but not on what to do next. I see easily 7 different factions. The leader of Indiana Yearly Meeting was a "colonizationist", who wanted to ship the freed slaves to either Haiti, Liberia, or out west. His reasoning was "it worked for the Indians, so why not"?. Henry Clay was also a colonizationist, as was (for a time) Abraham Lincoln, although all three had very different reasons for it.

    The colonizationists kicked out of Quakers the abolitionists who led the underground railroad.

    Today, Quakers embrace the underground railroad, as their own. But for over a decade they did not.

    My point? History is messy as hell and we over-simplify it too much.

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      Mike B

      I did not know that about the Friends. Good illustration of your point.

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    BrettH

    Enjoyed the read, thanks Chris. Indeed, what is old is new again. The general public would do well to pick up a history book or two to realize that we are, broadly speaking, still the same bipedal apes that built the pyramids and argued over preferred power structures. We just have cooler tools/toys at our disposal these days than the game changer that was the wheel.

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    Paul Reichardt

    The writer provides an interesting parsing of liberals versus progressives. Though I’m not sure why liberals in the late LBJ era are here hyphenated as populists.

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      Synchronize Your Dogmas (Bill B)

      I was confused about that too.

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    Rjosephpaquette

    Chris, while I agree with the sentiments, Morbius strip maybe the wrong emblem for populism.

    May I suggest, Ouroboros. This emblem is a serpent of ancient Egypt and Greece represented with its tail in its mouth, continually devouring itself and being reborn from itself.

    I think this more accurately represents populism in the US.

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  9. Eric Swenson

    Are those groups (Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Nationalist) four corners of a quadrilateral, or the respective names of binary sides in the two parties?

    I can see an argument for Nationalist/Progressive being the Statist view in their respective parties, and vice-versa, but I'm unclear if that is the view in mind here. Liberals could likewise be balanced against Conservatives, with a focus on freedom but one looking to tradition and one to culture. Is that the other axis - tradition and heritage vs culture and aspirational vision?

    If they are a quadrilateral, I have more trouble, since that leaves Liberal Republicans and Nationalist Democrats a little stuck.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Chris L

    Those White House uniforms. Woof.

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    1. P Satter

      Apparently some of them ended up on the Meridien-Cleghorn High School marching band in Iowa. A humorous but useful end for them.

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