Last month, I decided that while I was working from home I would watch the Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS confirmation hearings. From what I’ve experienced of American news media up until now, I went forth prepared to face hours and hours of people making divisive snarky statements. I expected to encounter a leviathan 8 hours long DESTROYED BY FACTS AND LOGIC video collage of rhetorical sea mines being dropped at the earliest opportunity, regardless of the cost of such an act to the general quality of discourse at hand.
This seems to be what American peers of mine had decided the hearing would be, too. Littered across my social feeds were comments regarding how the politicians have all gone crazy and how no-one was ever going to get anything done in this partisan climate. “Congress is just a circus who only act to serve themselves,” “The politicians are all sold out to corporations and special interest groups rather than serving the people.” One such person ventured into the livestream I was watching, heard what was a bit of a crass comment from one member of the Senate and immediately left, citing that they didn’t have the stomach to tolerate any more of that nonsense, especially not several hours of it.
The general attitude towards the US governmental structures by the people, on both sides of the current duo-political aisle, have been incredibly cynical, especially in the past ten years. The constant polarisation of issues in the public sphere seems to have left its scar on the presumptions of what happens on the inner sanctums of politics. The prevailing attitude from dedicated Democrats, dedicated Republicans, and those who feel caught in the middle of this political crossfire seems to be that nearly all political positions occupied in the House and in the Senate are rotted to the core, with few standout members such as Tulsi Gabbard being lone heroes in attempting to cross divides and reach a reasonable bipartisan consensus on contentious issues. Even my compatriots in the UK seem to have got the same impression that US politics is a circus, populated by clowns of the highest order, paid for by Big Pharma, McDonalds and the like.
However, what I experienced was far removed from the political reality that people are reporting they are sick of. I would wager that something in the region of 90% of the discussion was perfectly respectable and reasonable. The level of civility broadly speaking was monumentally decent. Monumental because of the underlying sense of bitterness within American politics whenever I’d spoken to anyone about it. There were several times that senators of a particular “side” would offer an olive branch out to the other. In particular, Sen. John Kennedy repeatedly addressed his Democratic peers offering up front a small monologue describing the amount of respect he had for their achievements and contributions during their congressional tenure, regardless of whether he ultimately agreed with their aims or methods or not. Senator Sasse gave what was an incredibly warm hearted and soulful monologue with Amy Coney Barrett chirping in now and again on the origins and the bases of modern US civics. When there was a Senator who decided that they were going to have their crack at partisan hackery, the vast majority of times it was simply acknowledged by the Chairman and then moved passed by everyone else in the Senate. One might have expected such a comment to cause a raucous uproar in one way or another and I can’t personally think of a moment that this happened. This level of civility is not what one expects from a country regularly being described as “being more divided than ever.”
I don’t think it’s too wild to hypothesise that the most popular clips from this hearing will be those moments such as Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly not answering questions on matters of how exactly she might make rulings as a Supreme Court Justice, despite not actually being supposed to do so – for that can bring a political bent to her nomination and appointment, on an intendedly apolitical branch of government. These clips will be favoured in place of the plethora of interactions that were incredibly civil and respectful and distributed through traditional news media to your average American’s television screen. This will further the story being pushed by nearly all news outlets that politics is full of drama and catty, partisan interactions and deny the average Joe or Jane with the ability to get a grasp on the large proportion of members of the political machine that are working in good faith with each other to try and solve contentious issues in today’s society.
There was a very similar disconnect that I experienced in the UK between the way that the traditional media and the public would report on how they felt about our Members of Parliament. They were, like my American peers, convinced of the partisan chasm between the Labour Party and the Conservative and Unionist Party being far too wide and deep to ever be traversed. Meanwhile, when I sat in on the House of Commons debates through the Parliament TV service that Her Majesty’s Government provides, it only ever seemed like things got to that point when the house was full enough that it forced some MPs to be standing for lack of seats and that the issue was perceived as publicly important enough that righteous indignation could be internally justified and that the performance would be very likely to get on the news.
It leaves me wondering. How much of the partisanship we know and love is due to some positive feedback loop between mass media and the public? When confronting people with the relative dullness of these events compared to what we see, they act like it’s obvious that that happens. Yet, the next thing I know, they’re spouting off enraged by the “absolute state of politics.” I have to ask – are we actually in love with the partisanship?