Waiting for a Landslide

In 1955, a political scientist named V. O. Key published an essay entitled “A Theory of Critical Elections.” He argued that realignments in American politics are usually punctuated by transformative elections, in which the old order suddenly gives way and a new majority emerges in its place.

This “realignment theory” was embraced by many scholars because it fit the historical record so well. Every 30 to 40 years, it seemed, the American political order had decisively turned over: in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans trounced John Adams’s Federalists; in 1828, when the Democratic-Republicans split into the Democrats and the Whigs; and then on down through Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 victory, William McKinley’s 1896 consolidation of a Republican majority, and the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.

But what made sense to the political scientists of the past has become a trap for the politicians of the present. One reason American policy-making has become “less stable, less effective, and less predictable” — in the words of the downgrade that Standard & Poor’s handed to the United States on Friday night — is the enduring influence of V. O. Key’s theory, and the seductive dream of realignment that it conjured up.

This dream has hovered over national leaders from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. But it has loomed larger in the last decade, as our politics have grown more polarized and our country has suffered through a series of dislocations and disasters. Events like 9/11 and the Great Recession have persuaded partisans on both sides that a dramatic realignment is imminent; the breadth of the ideological divide has convinced them that it’s necessary.

Thus the conservative hope that the war on terror would decisively tilt American politics to the right, and the liberal assumption that the 2008 financial crisis had unmade the Reagan coalition forever. Thus Karl Rove’s famous goal of a permanent (or at least “durable”) Republican majority and Rahm Emanuel’s promise that the Obama White House wouldn’t let a “crisis go to waste.” Thus the assumption, on the left and right alike, that every presidential election is the most important in our lifetime — except for the next one, which will be more important still.

Like most commentators, I’ve indulged in these kinds of sentiments myself. American politics really is riven by fundamental divisions. Our recent elections have had dramatic consequences. It will make a tremendous difference whether the next enduring majority owes more to Barack Obama’s liberalism, Tea Party conservatism, or some other worldview still.

But there’s no guarantee that such a majority will be established in time to walk the country backward from the fiscal cliff. And in the meantime, our leaders have a responsibility that transcends their ideological differences: the responsibility to work with one another to keep the country solvent.

The dream of realignment has become the enemy of such compromises. It inspires politicians to claim sweeping mandates from highly contingent victories: think of Dick Cheney insisting on another round of deficit-financed tax cuts in 2003 because “we won the midterm elections” and “this is our due,” or the near-identical rebukes that President Obama delivered to Eric Cantor (“Elections have consequences — and Eric, I won”) and to John McCain (“the election’s over”) during the debates over the stimulus and health care.

The losers, meanwhile, wax intransigent, while hoping for a realignment of their own. After all, why cut a deal today if tomorrow you might overthrow your rivals permanently? Better to just say “no” flat out, as the Bush-era Democrats did with Social Security reform and the Republicans did with health care, and hope that the next election will deliver you the once-in-a-generation victory.

This is how some Republicans are thinking today, as they crow about “the Obama downgrade” and imagine all they can accomplish in a Mitt Romney administration. Or a Paul Ryan administration, for that matter: Many conservatives are eager to see their party’s leading champion of entitlement reform enter the race, the better to make 2012 feel like a true hinge-of-history moment, a decisive choice between social democracy and free-market capitalism.

In reality, the next election may be no more transformative than 2008 turned out to be. The next Republican president may find himself as hemmed in and frustrated as President Obama has become. Meanwhile, America will still have a credit rating to fix, and a deficit to close.

None of this means that our parties need to give up their deep convictions, their grand plans, or their hopes of winning an enduring mandate.

But in the wake of the weekend’s downgrade, we need them to govern as though that final victory might never quite arrive.