MeatyREADS

Ohio Sucks

March 23, 2008 – 9:19 pm by BH

My co-blogger, CJB is an unabashed promoter of Ohio and frequently proclaims that his home state is the “Greatest State in the Nation.” Normally I do not disagree, but I read a piece by Matt Yglesias the other day and have decided to forego the spirit of bipartisanship. Writing in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, the article starts:

In 1950, the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Political Parties issued a clarion call, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” that today sounds quaint. The committee worried about insufficient party discipline and undue tolerance of dissent from the party line, arguing that the country needed political parties with “sufficient internal cohesion” to carry out their legislative agendas. The report urged the minority party to draw starker policy contrasts with the majority, and to act “as the critic of the party in power.”

In short, the political scientists of the time wanted polarization. They got it, of course, and the result, in the general view, has been unseemly and unwelcome. Polarized politics takes the form of a bitter, endless feud; cross-party alliances, once the mainstay of Washington life, are now rare. Yet as today’s presidential candidates call for a less divisive kind of politics, it’s worth recalling the 1950s. While polarization has its drawbacks, the alternative is often worse.

Continue reading. For the record, polisci types normally talk about cross cutting cleavages, rather than alliances, because political science is a sexy subject. It’s just a preference.

And to be fair to CJB, I’ve never been to Ohio, so maybe it really is that great. In my misguided quest for bipartisanship I’ll let him off the hook. I guess that leaves my other co-blogger. Sorry AS, but Texas sucks.

Oh, and the Atlantic has really made a remarkable comeback in the past few years. You really have to love a magazine that runs Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle in the same issue.