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Is George W. Bush the Most Polarizing President in Modern American History?
By Mike Bayham
May 27, 2004

Time magazine asked this question on its cover some months back that showed how half the nation hated the president while the other half revered him. So what did President Bush do to invoke such divided feelings? The answer is nothing.

With the exception of the heightened decibel of the opposition (liberals are well-versed in the art of outrage); the country is no less split now than it has been over the past eight years. The "MoveOn" types of today are the "Don't blame me, I voted for Bush" people of the early nineties.

The electorate has found their respective homes, with the state boundaries demarcating the citadels of both parties. In a way, America has gone back to its "Gilded Age" political traditions.

Between the conclusion of Reconstruction and the election of Herbert Hoover in 1928, the United States was as much a nation divided politically as it was during the War Between the States.

After the states comprising the former Confederacy had their rights restored to them by Washington, Dixie continued its fight against the Republican Party through the ballot box creating a vote bloc known as the "Solid South" that would not be cracked until Barry Goldwater's presidential bid.

The victorious political faction in the sectional conflict, the Republicans, became the unofficial party of the north for many years. Looking at an electoral vote map between 1880 and the turn of the century, one would see everything north of the Mason-Dixon line in one shade and all of the states to its south in a contrasting hue.

What was true during the war also applied to politics, since the GOP saw their reign in the White House interrupted by only two Democrats, and both of those elections were tipped in to the opposition by infighting (the Mugwumps in the late 19th century and the Bull Moose in the early 20th). The state that proved to be critical in the presidential election was New York, with its wealth of electoral votes and cosmopolitan population, regularly altered through immigration.

The geographic division ended with Franklin Roosevelt's administration setting forth a churning process that would transform the nation's two major parties and the political map.

There would be two major shifts that would preclude the establishment of the current status quo.

Academics have argued that the process started towards the end of the Eisenhower Administration when the Republican Party's northern liberal leaders were mowed down in the mid-term "massacre", thus creating a void to be filled by conservatives like Goldwater and Illinois US Senator Everett Dirksen.

This shift was later complemented by the black defection to the Democrats only a few years later, which was one of the aims of master politician Lyndon Johnson, thus providing for his party its most loyal voters and giving the transformed party of secession, Jim Crowe, and Robert Byrd's former alter ego a solid foundation in any contest. But even after these events, virtually every state in the Union was up for grabs and neither party could write off any state during the realignment. And then Bill Clinton came along.

If Ronald Reagan is the father of the modern Republican Party then it could be said that the Republican Congress is the illegitimate progeny of Bill Clinton. The profound emotions stirred by the 42nd president, combined with the dying out of the hard-core New Dealers, reincarnated the Solid South, though this time they were in the corner of the GOP.

Clinton more than made up for the lost Democratic votes by pursuing a liberal social agenda that fired up the northeast and Pacific coast, small areas with a high population concentration. However, Clinton proved to be so polarizing of a figure that he was twice denied popular majorities despite winning electoral landslides.

And now we have the current occupant of the White House, who the media claims to be the most divisive president in recent history. The truth is that President Bush is no more polarizing than his predecessor. Just as 45% of the country would never vote for Bill Clinton under any circumstances, the same number applies to George W. Bush.

The new divide is not necessarily the fault of Clinton or Bush, but that of the American people, who after 70 years of groping, have reverted to their hard edge partisan tradition and the reason why the presidential election in 2004 is more of a fight for 12 states than it is a national contest.

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Mike Bayham is a political consultant and author of the book, "Right From The Bayou: The Opinions of a Conservative Cajun", which is available at iuniverse.com.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.