Daily Update

updated 1:00 p.m. ET November 11, 2003

The Great post-9/11 Divide

The will of the American people has become intensely polarized, according to a survey in The Economist this week by John Parker, the magazine's Washington bureau chief. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 not only widened the gulf between America and the rest of the world, he argues, but deepened divisions within.

The divide was certainly pronounced before the attacks, according to The Economist. In the 2000 election, for example, 63 percent of those who went to church more than once a week voted for Mr. Bush, while 61 percent of those who never went voted for Al Gore. And about 70 percent of those who said abortion should always be available voted for Mr. Gore, while 74 percent of those who said it should always be illegal voted for Bush. But the rise of "American exceptionalism" before the attacks - a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in the mid-19th century to describe America's profound differences from other nations - is proving divisive at home, Mr. Parker writes, and is visible in the increasingly partisan makeup of the American people since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Bush ... has proved a polarizing president, better at solidifying the Republican base than at extending it. Two years after September 2001, his own party's approval of him stood at over 80 percent, but Democratic approval had fallen below 20 percent.... The president's radical policies and the growth of partisanship have increased the importance of extreme opinion and marginalized the center ... [lessening] the moderating influence of the middle.

MSNBC reports that partisan differences over national security, as well as domestic issues, are at a historic high a year before election day, according to an in-depth voter poll by the Pew Research Center. As a result, the Center says, the US "remains a country that is almost evenly divided politically - yet further apart than ever in its political values." Thomas Oliphant of The Boston Globe points to a lack of clarity in campaigning.

Notions of patriotism and how to express it have also grown increasingly contentious, according to the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute, a policy research institute in Washington. Almost a third of Americans call themselves "extremely" patriotic, while only 8 percent of Americans consider others to be "extremely" patriotic, and the percentage of Americans who say they consider themselves more patriotic than other Americans rose from 27 percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2003. Those who think Americans are more patriotic than 25 years ago shot up from 18 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2003.

And yet, according to a 2003 Gallup poll, only half of the public believes that original signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased with the way the US has turned out.

This simmering division among the American people is evident not only in their political beliefs but in their religious beliefs, the Pew Research Center reports. More than 80 percent of Americans say they believe in God, and while two-fifths of Protestants described themselves as "born again" in the 1980s, that figure is now more than half. And yet, as the number and membership of churches grows, the number of secularists (atheists, agnostics, those not affiliated with organized religion) has doubled since 1960. The Economist reports that, according to a City of New York survey, 14 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 describe themselves as "secular" and 9 percent as "somewhat secular."

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports, George Soros, one of the world's richest men, is committing a total of $15.5 million in an effort to oust the president - a matter, Mr. Soros says, "of life and death" because "America, under Bush, is dangerous to this world."

Soros believes that a "supremacist ideology" guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans.... He's leading the US and the world toward a vicious circle of escalating violence." ... Asked whether he would trade his $7 billion fortune to unseat Bush, Soros opened his mouth. Then he closed it. The proposal hung in the air: Would he become poor to beat Bush? He said, "If someone guaranteed it."

As Soros continues to recruit wealthy donors for his campaign to oust Bush (he has already contributed $115,000 to the Dean campaign, The Washington Post reports), and as former Vermont governor Howard Dean announces his rejection of campaign federal financing, Bush advisors announced Monday that his reelection donors may vault his campaign well past its fundraising goal of $170 million.

Also...
• The Age of Liberty ( The New York Times)
• Tight Race Between Bush and Unnamed Democrat ( Fox News)
• Whose democracy is it? ( National Public Radio)
• A Country of Fear ( The Atlantic Monthly)
• It's the war, stupid ( The Weekly Standard)
• Bush must create a bipartisan consensus ( National Review Online)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Elizabeth Armstrong.