Fiorina Culture Fiorina\'s Partisan Attempt

Fiorina Culture

Fiorina's Partisan Attempt to Mythologize America's Sharp Cultural Divides

The previous decade in American political history seems to be categorically defined by intense and passionate divides over policy issues, constitutional interpretations and moral ideologies. These, it appeared, had been manifested by a distinct and clear cultural divide across which America's population stretches. Indeed, geographical, religious and ethnic perceptions have seemed to place definable beliefs, interests and ideals with specific demographics. This has produced a scenario where our political system and public representatives appear to function according to an understanding and embrace of this divide. Here, author and political theorist Morris P. Fiorina makes the argument, the political process becomes a catalyst rather than an outcome, of such divides. In his 2005 text, Fiorina constructs the argument that most Americans actually fall somewhere in the moderate or centrist range with respect to political identity, but that the heightened and particular interests of political groups and select activists has shaped and intensified a sense of rancor and discord between two sides of the same public. Thus, Fiorina makes that argument at the center of his text that the supposed culture-divide in America is an illusion constructed by politicians, private interests and activist agencies as a way to achieve personal agendas. This argument, as with the general argumentative methods employed in Fiorina's text, is thin, easily discredited and rife with ironically partisan accusations about the state of modern politics.

At the crux of his text is the belief that, in fact, most Americans share some basic ideals where culture is concerned. To prove the point, he considers voting and polling patterns within the culture across several issues which remain controversial in spite of decades of discourse and change. Specifically, he considers such matters as homosexuality and abortion, both of which do seem to invoke a great deal of debate as inclined by religious and philosophical viewpoints. In referring to a "political order dominated by activists and elected officials who behave like squabbling children in a crowded sandbox," Fiorina suggests that these are issues which do not actually generate the intense public emotion and disagreement betwixt Americans that casts a dividing line down the middle (Fiorina 102).

Instead, his text makes the argument that the public is led to perceive of its internal differences by politicians and activists with far more uncompromising views than that of the average voter. Fiorina uses myriad statistics concerning poll and voting behaviors through roughly 30 years in order to contend that the public shares an overarching middle ground on these issues which has remained unchanged in spite of political, economic and geographical shifts.

Fiorina relies heavily on statistical evidence, which takes framed questions and invokes simple responses without the encumbering of nuance. Perhaps had the author appealed to such nuance, the text may have been forced into a discussion that accounts for how a nation of America's diversity might be seen as so culturally cohesive. The idea that the American public has been duped into believing itself committed to certain spiritual, political or philosophical ideals is one which, without prejudice, is insulting to the whole of the American public. A discussion which draws into consideration America's long history of disenfranchising minorities, mistreating immigrants, segregating African-Americans and continuing today to obstruct homosexual lifestyle discussions would seem to suggest that the motive exists, even for what Fiorina condescendingly refers to as the apolitical average American, to take a strong stance on such cultural matters. To suggest that such stances are only influenced by a dedication to political parties and platforms is to reduce the personal, emotional, ethnic, spiritual and cultural individualities that make this a diverse nation. The desire to argue for the existence of a homogenous political culture smacks not just of over-simplification, but of a concerted and one-sided political agenda.

Indeed, the text diminishes its own credibility yet further by casting blame not on a political system as a whole, but on empowered individuals to who he attributes the whole falsehood of America's culture war. Recounting what the author libelously proclaims to be the cause of our imagined divide, Fiorina contends that "all in all, it may well be that the myth of a culture war, misconceptions about voter polarization, and mistaken claims about the rising importance of religion vis-a-vis the declining importance of economics all have their roots in the arrival of Bill Clinton on the national scene." (Firoina 89)