Books: 'Off Center'
"The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy"

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Authors
Friday, December 16, 2005 12:00 PM

Authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson was online Friday, Dec. 16, at noon ET to discuss their book, "Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy." "Off Center" examines the success of the Republican party in gaining and maintaining power and influence within the government, despite objections by some Democrats and moderates that they are more conservative than most Americans. The authors argue that their policies are too far to the right of majority American opinion, and that this hurts the system of checks and balances to the detriment of democracy.

Jacob S. Hacker is Peter Strauss Family Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University. He is also a Fellow at the New America Foundation, among other affiliations.

A political scientist who studies health and social policy, Hacker is the author of "The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security," which was co-winner of the 1997 Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration, and "The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States."

Paul Pierson is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Avice Saint Chair in Public Policy and. Before taking this position in 2004, he was professor of government at Harvard University, where he taught from 1988 to 2004.

Pierson's first book, Dismantling the Welfare State? won the American Political Science Association's Kammerer Prize for the best book published on American national politics and policy in 1994. He has been the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, and a Russell Sage Foundation Fellowship.

The transcript follows.

____________________

Jacob S. Hacker: Paul and I are very grateful to the Washington Post for offering this chance to discuss the current state of American politics. It's rare to have a chance to communicate with readers in such an engaging, real-time forum, and we hope to answer as many of your questions as possible.

For those who have not read our book, and I assume that's many of you, there are links to reviews, our blog, and a brief book description at www.hackerpierson.com.

I thought I'd start off by explaining why we wrote Off Center. Judging by some of the questions we've already gotten, some of the you think the answer is obvious-the Republican Party is taking our country off track. Others are equally convinced that we're wooly-eyed professors denying the obvious: that voters elected and re-elected the folks who are in power. So I think it's important that we point out that our reason for writing the book was not simply dissatisfaction with our current political leadership; it was also dissatisfaction with the conventional interpretation of contemporary politics.

In the conventional view, the "center" -- middle-of-the-road voters in the electorate and moderates in government --ultimately run the show in American politics. That's because they're the ones whose votes politicians need to get elected and pass legislation. After all, the design of the American political system is supposed to make it hard to do even popular things -- much less unpopular ones. And most political scientists as well as pundits have viewed the system as operating like a thermostat, pulling things back toward the center if they swing too far left or right.

So far, however, this hasn't happened. Despite holding very narrow advantages that are supposed to force compromise, conservatives have pursued a very right-wing agenda (as judged by public views of their major domestic policies) and yet continued to rack up policy successes and electoral victories. Our goal in writing Off Center was to explain this puzzling outcome -- how, that is, Republicans have governed to the right of moderate voters and achieved considerable (but, of course, not unlimited) success in advancing their agenda, without (so far, at least) provoking substantial gridlock or backlash. Our broader goal was to answer what to us is the really crucial question: What can be done to restore greater accountability and responsiveness within the American political system?

We should say that our own emphasis lies on the organizational and social foundations of political power, rather than on the character of personalities or particular rhetorical moves. In particular, we think a central source of GOP success lies in the unprecedented (within the contours of modern American politics) capacity of conservative elites to coordinate their activities and operate in a unified fashion. In a political system that was specifically designed to prevent unified action, coordination is an enormous political advantage.

Coordination makes it far easier to control the agenda (which is crucial in politics), to stay on message, to use legislative procedure (as well as even more obscure elements of policymaking) to pursue off-center goals while presenting a more moderate face to the public, to divide opponents, and to protect potentially vulnerable Republicans from exposure-as well as shower them with cash if all else fails.

Perhaps most important, the capacity to work in an unusually unified way allows GOP elites to provide what we call "backlash insurance" -- a variety of protections to politicians who might otherwise feel a need to be more responsive to public opinion.

To be clear, we are not saying that the GOP is always unified, or that it can get away with anything even when it is -- and there are certainly signs of big strain in the GOP coalition today. Over the past decade, however, the GOP has been far more unified than its opponents, or than any political party in modern American history. And it is that unity that has helped it to achieve a surprising degree of electoral and policy success despite moving off center -- a course of action that is supposed to bring a party to ruin.

_______________________

Tampa, Fla.: I agree the Republicans are farther to the right than most Americans. Yet they keep winning elections. I believe their media machine is the key to their success--talk radio, Fox "News," and conservative corporate media ownership. For example, it's widely known here in Florida the Tampa Tribune editorial board wanted to endorse John Kerry in 2004, but Media General corporate HQ said no. The Tribune then refused to endorse either candidate, but wrote far more favorably about Kerry. Americans stuck in a car or office who want to listen to something other than a constantly-repeating 1-hour playlist of totally forgettable pop music hear only the Republican message on talk radio. This explains why so many Americans think Saddam had WMD and links to Al Qaeda and that supply-side economics actually works.

The Democrats are simply muzzled. Out of sight and out of mind. Should the Democrats gain control of Congress, the first thing they should do is reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and severely limit media ownership concentration--say, no more than 10 radio or TV stations, and none in the same market. I think this would be the worst thing that could happen to the right.

Jacob S. Hacker: We have an extended discussion of the media in the book, and I don't want to repeat too much of that here. But we certainly think that the rise of an avowedly conservative media does help the GOP. Equally important, however, is the fact that the media is in the entertainment business, not the news business, and that it's committed to a painfully neutral he said/she said approach to political issues. The combination of a more entertainment-driven, he said/she said style of mainstream journalism and the conservative media has made it a lot easier for Republicans to disseminate their talking points and control the political agenda.

But the big reason Republicans control the agenda is that they have all three branches of government, and have centralized control of Congress in a way no modern American party has. A couple examples: Nearly everything important in Congress is now considered under a closed rule, which prevents Democrats from offering amendments. In addition, Republicans have used conference committees (which are supposed to reconcile House and Senate bills) to push legislation way to the right, often excluding Democrats from the deliberations entirely. Then, the bills go back to the House and Senate where they can't be amended -- which is the equivalent of a closed rule.

The best illustration of this high degree of agenda control? George W. Bush, despite his tough-guy image, has yet to veto a single bill in five years in office. No President since John Quincy Adams has lasted a full term without vetoing a bill. Put simply, Republicans have run a very tight ship, and in doing so excluded Democrats almost entirely from the discussion. They've used this agenda control to shift policies systematically to the right of the center of public opinion -- whether by blocking popular courses of government action, or by carefully crafting legislation and controlling their troops so it's very hard for moderate voters to figure out what's going on.

_______________________

Fairfax, Va: One of you teaches in Connecticut and the other in Berkeley. Should I be surprised that you feel a Republican majority in both houses, as well as a Republican in the White House, is an anathema? Would a government too far to the left of majority American opinion meet with your approval?

I assume you believe the Republicans have gained power and influence by using the innate racist, sexist, and homophobic tendencies of the American electorate to commandeer their vote. That any American with a brain and a conscious should automatically vote Democratic.

Paul Pierson: Jacob has just posted a brief overview of the book's argument. If you simply assume that re-election means that the government is responding to voters' concerns, there is obviously no problem.

The book offers a systematic challenge to that assumption. A coordinated and determined leadership can often use a variety of techniques to pursue what we call "off center" policies. For example, on the GOP's signature issue, the 2001 tax cuts, a memo from Treasury Secretary O'Neil's press aid warned him before the tax cuts were launched that "the public prefers spending on health care and education over cutting taxes" and that therefore it was "crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no tradeoff here." But of course there is a tradeoff (witness the replacement of a large surplus with a large deficit).d GOP success depended on a series of sophisticated steps to make the tax cuts look much smaller than they were and much more evenly distributed than they were. There are lots of details in the book.

As to how we explain it, you've got us mixed up with Tom Frank. We don't believe the GOP has won on the "cultural" issues you describe. We think they've won by figuring out how to protect incumbents even when they do unpopular things, especially by working hard to make them appear more moderate than they really are.

_______________________

Oklahoma City, Okla.: Your thesis seems to suggest that only "centrist" administrations should govern must necessarily be applied to history. By that logic, would you agree that FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society periods were also off-center, and therefore harmful? Or is your thesis selectively applied only to right-of-center administrations?

Paul Pierson: One of the things we have found striking as we have discussed this book in the past few months is how often we hear some version of this question. We are not saying that other governing coalitions have never pursued off-center policies. What we have here, however, is something quite new: a party that has won victories that are uniquely narrow -- there have never been three consecutive elections as close as 2000, 2002 and 2005. FDR and LBJ won by landslides, and each was backed by huge majorities in Congress. It is telling that the current GOP (which, in terms of numbers, has held an edge no greater than Clinton and the Democrats did in 1993/94) has governed in a way that makes us look to the New Deal or Great Society for examples of one-party dominance.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: Jacob/Paul,

Couldn't your point about one party rule affecting the checks/balances be the same if the Dems controlled everything as well? While I certainly agree that one party controlling both the White House and legislative branch hurts the check/balance system, it seems to me this is the same situation as it was from '93-'94 when the Dems controlled everything.

Jacob S. Hacker: This is a great question, and we should make clear that we think off-center politics is bad whichever party is pursuing it. It's certainly true that a number of the trends that we discuss in the book -- the rise of safe seats, the growing power of both parties' "bases," the opportunities for manipulation of political rhetoric and policy design -- have created opportunities for mischief that can be exploited by either party. And the goal of our book is to identify dangers to democracy, not the Democratic Party.

Still, as we show in the book, the neutral language of "polarization" that's so common today really misses the reality of what's happened in American politics. For one, Republicans currently hold the overwhelming balance of power, and for this reason alone they're the ones who benefit most from some of the trends we describe in the book. But even more important, the polarization of the parties has not been equal. First, Republicans -- both members of Congress and activists within the party -- have moved much further to the right over the two or three decades than Democrats have moved to the left. This is a conclusion based on extensive evidence that's in our book, not an opinion. Second, and largely as a result, Republicans have proved much more determined and capable of pulling American politics off center. They have more money. They're more unified -- in part because money brings them together while it splits Democrats. And they have a built-in edge in the current electoral map (an edge they've buttressed with gerrymandering).

You mention 1993-94, but remember how that went and ended. Democrats were largely in disarray, and in 1994 they got crushed because they were viewed as incompetent. Yet today, while Republicans are in the doghouse with the public, most prognosticators still think they're going to hold onto both houses of Congress. In the last few elections, barely a handful of incumbents have lost office and few races have been truly competitive. This represents a threat to democracy, whichever party benefits from it.

Last, we should emphasize that we call for reforms that would, in our view, make our political system more responsive and accountable -- to voters of both parties.

_______________________

Arlington, Va.: Do either of you vote in elections? The reason I ask is that I know a number of economists say they don't because statistically their vote doesn't count. Especially since most of the country is redistricted so there's no contest really. Wanted to know your thoughts on this.

Jacob S. Hacker: I certainly do, not because it's rational but because it's right.

The broader issue is that too few Americans do. Even in the last election, the proportion of people who went to the polls was essentially the same as in 1992 -- and lower than every presidential election between 1948 and 1972. And turnout is quite skewed by income and education, and is probably become more so in an era of rising economic inequality. (In 2000, more than 40 percent of Americans in the bottom third of the income spectrum reported they didn't vote, compared with just 13 percent of those in the top third.) We think this is one reason why tax cuts that shower most of their benefits on the rich have been so easy to enact, despite the fact that most Americans give tax cuts a very, very low priority and want them given more to the middle class.

_______________________

Princeton, N.J.: What role has gerrymandering played in the present conservative domination? I refer not only to political gerrymandering, but also to the constitutional gerrymandering of the Senate and the Electoral College.

Paul Pierson: Another great question. The kind of gerrymandering associated with DeLay's maneuvers in Texas gets a lot of play, deservedly. There are a lot of additional features of the electoral landscape today, however, that would favor the GOP even in circumstances where the "median" or middle voter favored Democrats.

We talk about this in detail in a recent piece in the NYT magazine, which you can read (along with much else related to the book) on our Web site www.hackerpierson.com. The brief version:

The Senate, with an allocation of seats hugely favorable to less populous states, now provides an unusually strong advantage to one party (the GOP). One way to think of this is that in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote, he carried 30 states, meaning that 60 senators were elected in Red States and 40 in Blue states, even as Blue voters outnumbered Red ones in the vote for President. (Over the last three senate election cycles, Democrats have actually won 2.5 million more votes than Republicans, but are outnumbered in the Senate 44 to 55).

In the House, the bias is less severe, but still quite significant. Democrats in urban areas are "packed" more tightly into districts (not just because of gerrymandering). When Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, he nonetheless carried 52% of Congressional districts.

We do not think these advantages of electoral geography are anything like the whole story, but they are certainly very important.

_______________________

Kingstowne, Va.: Re: Middle of the road voters

Are there any stats to suggest party affiliation of the general populace? I frequently wonder during elections, what % of the population is (or always votes so) Republican, Democrat, or middle of the road (MotR). As the Republicans have become more extreme, the Democrats have had to respond in kind (in the other direction of course) to maintain balance. So it seems to me that neither lobby... uh, party could be considered to represent anyone considered MotR.

Paul Pierson: I think we may get cut off in a few minutes, so I just wanted to be sure to say thanks to all who wrote in with excellent questions, sympathetic or not! I wish we had time to give more answers, but again, you can find much more information on our Web site and (we hope) in the book.

Surveys of party identification suggest Democrats retain a narrow edge over Republicans, although the numbers are much tighter than they were thirty years ago. Neither, however, is close to a majority -- independents hold the balance. It is true that about twice as many Americans describe themselves as "conservatives" as do "liberals", but self-described conservatives are just 1/3rd of the electorate, a number that has been very stable for years.

As Jacob pointed out in an earlier post, we present a huge amount of evidence in the book to disprove the popularly accepted notion that Democrats (whether leaders, politicians, activists, or voters) have moved left the same way Republicans have moved right. People assert this all the time, but it simply isn't true.

_______________________

Silver Spring, Md.: Are there specific events in recent policy that you think will reverse this trend, possibly as early as the next election?

Jacob S. Hacker: We've thought a lot about this in recent months, as the wheels have seemed to come off the bus of the GOP machine. Our skeptical take, recently published in the New York Times Magazine, is that the GOP still has a very strong control of the levers of power and a very favorable electoral map. Yet we're not of the view that nothing can be done to restore balance in American politics. Republicans have defied a lot of the normal laws of political gravity, and they just might find themselves, like Wile E. Coyote, suddenly running in thin air with nowhere to go but down. Moreover, they have a very slim edge, and their standard-bearer, George W. Bush, has become deeply unpopular. For all these reasons, they're more vulnerable today than at any point since their assumption of power in Congress in 1994.

So what will it take for them to lose office in 2006? Well, the first thing to say is that nobody, nobody can predict elections all that accurately this far in advance. Back in the summer of 1994, Democrats were running ahead -- and then got creamed. They were way up in early 2004 on the congressional front, and then faltered in the election.

But what we can say is that Democrats have two big openings and one big challenge.

The openings: unpopular policies (whether carried out, as in the war, or proposed, as in Social Security); and corruption. The string of recent events -- Katrina, Iraq, and the rest -- has highlighted the extent to which Republicans' priorities are not Americans' priorities on key issues. The wave of scandals has pushed trust in Congress and the Republicans to the lowest levels in years.

And yet, there is a challenge too. Democrats can't just expect that Republicans will implode on their own. Yes, parties in power often have to make major missteps to lose office. But the opposition needs to help show where those missteps are, and propose alternatives.

Democrats have had great trouble in carrying out this latter set of tasks, in part because they've until recently been so shut out of power, in part because they're internally divided, in part because their thinking has often been too short term. What they need to do is emphasize that the GOP's priorities are at odds with the public's priorities (witness the recent tax cuts while people are living in tents in the South) and that the party in power has brought corruption into America's great representative body.

Then, they have to offer a positive alternative message, and we can't help them much there, except to say that, building on their victory on Social Security, they need to have a unified message that emphasizes not just how the GOP has hurt the economic security of American families but also sets a positive path for the future.

_______________________

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.