Excerpts
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The economy and battles over government spending in a time of belt-tightening are not only helping shape the 2012 presidential campaign. They're also redefining American politics, and potentially the United States' place in the world.
That's the argument in a new book by former Washington Post political reporter Thomas Edsall. He's now a professor of journalism at Columbia University. And he writes a column for The New York Times. The book is "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics."
And author Tom Edsall joins us now.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: Because you are clearly worried where this country headed, where American politics is headed. What has you so concerned?
THOMAS EDSALL, "The Age of Austerity: Well, what's happened, I think, in the past -- really since the collapse, economic collapse, is that the country now is -- has become dominated by the issue of debt and deficits.
And there is a serious problem in the long run over the rising cost of Medicare and perhaps some other entitlements. And this stuff has to be addressed over time. The result, though, has been to change the basic nature of American politics, from one in which you could have compromise with a growing economy, some people are going to get tax cuts, other people could get social programs, to one now it where it's a zero sum or negative sum competition.
Somebody's going to take a hit. It's no longer a nice friendly game. It's who's going to get hurt. That makes for -- we already had a polarized politics. When you add this notion that politics now is one not just of what can I get out of it, but what do I have to do to the other people to get what I want, that makes it a much nastier and much more hostile circumstance.
And I think the 2011 Congress basically affirmed much of this kind of character of politics. And the fight now is a much more serious and brutal fight over, basically, economics and how do you cut up a smaller and smaller pie.
Another excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF: You describe two very different sets of adversaries here in Republicans and Democrats. You see them as qualitatively different people. Is that what you're saying?
THOMAS EDSALL: There's a lot of evidence and there's been a lot of study of the psychology, the values, the world outlook of conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.
A lot of this has become more intense since the culture wars and the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. There's been a real divide. And there is a different world view held by liberals and Democrats from that held by conservatives and Republicans. They're not totally antithetical. They share many -- they're both human beings, but they put priorities on very different things.
Liberals are very concerned with compassion and fairness. Conservatives have what one person describes as a broader spectrum, but not as much focus on compassion and fairness, but also on issues of sanctity, of a different kind of fairness. Their opposition to affirmative action, for example, is a different kind of fairness.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, in fact, you go so far as to say conservatives are willing to inflict harm. You're pretty tough on conservatives.
From that standpoint, Tom Edsall, is this a partisan book?
THOMAS EDSALL: No, I don't think so, although it's going to be accused of that.
But, actually, the idea that conservatives are willing to inflict harm is not necessarily a criticism. If you are in a fight, and you're fighting to protect what you have, being loyal to your own people is not necessarily a bad thing. If you and your family had to protect what your child is getting and what your husband and so forth -- if they face serious threats of lost goods, in effect, you're fighting for them, and, in fact, if that meant someone else had to get hurt, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
So to hear that as a fault is not really right, I don't think. It's a different value structure. Conservatives have a much stronger in-group sense and out-group sense. And they see the in-group as one to be protected. You can see this in Congress, where they are protecting their tax cuts, they're protecting what they want.
And they see the out-group as an adversary, which they are much more willing to cut benefits, for example, for poor people and for those who are not those within the conservative Republican constellation.
COMMENT: Note that in the context (the economy) of Mr. Edsall's comments, the nastiness of politics ALSO applies in the context of resources, like food. As the world's population grows and more food is needed but unavailable, the same political nastiness will result.
I also fine Mr. Edsall's comment about in-group vs out-group VERY insightful and pertinent.
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