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The End of the Culture Wars
J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo
Forget Iraq and the economy. Barack Obama’s greatest feat may be ending the ruinous, decades-long battle over race and religion that has plagued the Democratic Party.
For several decades now, analysts have divided American politics into three categories: economics, foreign policy, and culture. About categories one and two, Obama is voluble. On economics, he wants to stimulate short-term economic recovery while laying the foundation for greater long-term stability and equity. On foreign policy, he wants to restore America’s diplomatic capacity so we don’t have to rely so heavily on the military, and restore our good name, so we can help solve common global problems like climate change. But on culture? Here Obama goes mute. When was the last time you heard him speak unprompted about abortion or gay rights or gun control? He has positions on those issues, to be sure. But he’s determined not to be too publicly associated with them. That’s why he chose Rick Warren, who disagrees with him on abortion and gay marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration. It’s why he chose not to repeal the Bush administration’s ban on U.S. aid to international organizations that provide abortions on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. He did so the day after instead, so his decision would garner less attention. “It’s time,” he declared, “that we end the politicization of this issue.”
When it comes to culture, Obama doesn’t have a public agenda; he has a public anti-agenda. He wants to remove culture from the political debate.
When it comes to culture, Obama doesn’t have a public agenda; he has a public anti-agenda. He wants to remove culture from the political debate. He wants to cut our three-sided political game back down to two.
As recently as the early 1990s, the idea that a black man could end the culture war would have been unthinkable, because the culture war was—more than anything—about black versus white. From busing to crime to welfare to affirmative action, race saturated the politics of the 1970s and 1980s, making it extraordinarily difficult for candidates to appeal to black voters and white working-class voters at the same time. In the mid-1980s, when Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg went to Macomb County, Michigan, to interview Democrats who had defected to vote for Ronald Reagan, he found that they saw government in almost wholly racial terms. Every time Democrats talked about fairness or equality, they interpreted it as an effort to redistribute wealth from white to black. In the 1980s, Barack Obama—for all his political brilliance—could never have dreamed of ending the culture war. As a liberal black Democrat, he would have been the culture war, like it or not.
In the 1990s, things began to change. Crime declined, welfare was radically scaled back, and affirmative action receded from the political stage, in part because of the deep support it enjoyed from such conservative bastions as corporate America and the military. But the culture war didn’t end: It simply morphed from a struggle primarily about race to a struggle primarily about religion. In the 1990s, as the affirmative action, crime, and welfare debates subsided, the void was partly filled by gay marriage, an issue that pits not black against white, but secular against religiously orthodox. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was not a racial battle, but a battle over what standard of public morality would govern political behavior. Bill Clinton’s legacy, noted political scientists William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, was to relieve some of the racial anxiety that white working-class voters felt about the Democratic Party but substitute for it a new moral anxiety, felt most acutely by whites who regularly attended church.
For Barack Obama, this shift has been useful. A black politician running in the midst of a racial culture war is virtually doomed. But amidst a religious culture war, being black is less of a handicap since blacks are the least secular element of the Democratic coalition. Barack Obama was more successful than John Kerry in reaching out to moderate white evangelicals in part because he struck them as more authentically Christian.
That’s the foundation on which Obama now seeks to build. He seems to think there are large numbers of conservative white Protestants and Catholics who will look beyond culture when they enter the voting booth as long as he and other Democrats don’t ram cultural liberalism down their throats. In this effort, Obama has two big advantages. The first is the economic crisis, a trauma of such historic magnitude that it makes issues like guns and gays seem trivial. The second is a generational shift taking place among evangelical Christians, in which younger leaders like Warren are broadening their agendas to include issues like poverty and the environment, thus signaling at least a partial willingness to look beyond the culture war.
Obama’s effort could fail. After all, he’s not offering to split the difference with cultural conservatives, only to make his cultural liberalism less conspicuous. And while gay marriage may gradually fade as an issue as public attitudes shift, immigration may well gain in salience, perhaps igniting a whole new kind of culture war, pitting not white against black or secular against religious but immigrant against native-born.
Still, culture wars do end. In the 1920s, immigration, Darwinism, and the Ku Klux Klan dominated political debate, but in the 1930s, they receded as Washington turned its attention to the Depression and the specter of war. It is no surprise that the end of the last culture war coincided with a shift from conservative to liberal dominance. If Obama can end this one, liberals may be in power for a very long time.
Peter Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
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BernieO
As usual Beinhart is being naive. Liberals were - and are - furious about the choice of Warren. Meanwhile the right is still fighting hard against abortion, gay marriage, etc. Look at Boehner's dishonest comment about the stimulus plan spending hundred of thousands of dollars on contraceptives, referring to money to expand Medicaid's family planning program. Currently the Texas board of ed is still trying to get evolution trashed in their curriculum and textbooks, which will affect textbooks nationally since Texas adopts textbooks on a statewide basis.
Obama can make nice as much as he wants on culture issues, but the right will still expect to get their own way, election or no. It is time pundits like Beinhart wise up and stop thinking appeasing these radicals will work.
JamesKing
Correction: Obama and Warren agree on gay marriage. Don't give Obama too much credit. He is painfully moderate in his approach to cultural issues.
medina83
I really wish you were right and that we could, in fact, remove cultural and religious elements from the political discussion but check out a website like www.townhall.com or any other conservative website on any given day and you will notice that Obama's election has ignited what conservative Christians see as a new battle. They seem almost pleased with the fact that they have such a defined enemy to fight against and I assure you, speaking from unforgotten past experience, they view this prospect of battle as a blessing.
Ritarita
Bernie O - Sounds like you missed the whole point of the piece. Try it one more time with feeling.
PattyDaddy
Peter makes a good point. I am a conservative who will never vote for a pro-abortion candidate. That leaves pretty slim pickins. However, in the evangelical circles I run there are enough squishy believers that, if the economy improves, forget foregin policy, will embrace Obama. His strategy may work with enough values voters to tip the balance in the democrats favor.
senor100
The score on gay marriage is 40-0; 40 states that have adopted either statutes or constitutional amendments banning it. Liberals, like Beinert, keep saying that the tide has turned because a bunch of gays turned nasty in California. Really? The only way that gay marriage is going to be legal in all 50 states during my lifetime (I'm a young man) is if the Supreme Court imposes it. After the culture wars over Roe, want to bet on that?
mikecrone
Has any elected black politician dropped the culture war? No. It is the #1 agenda. As Beinart says, it will not be forced down the throat of citizens. It will be silently but inevitably inserted in another bodily orifice.
threedy
"Obama was more successful than John Kerry in reaching out to moderate white evangelicals in part because he struck them as more authentically Christian."
You've GOT to be kidding. After the guy had been raised a (nominal, at least) Muslim and spent the past 20 years in a radically Afrocentric church? True, Kerry didn't really strike anybody as a true Christian either, but this whole treatise is an obvious exercise in liberal self-delusion.
Cforchange
It's difficult to understand how anyone can be confused about the state of business affairs aka The Economy. Our Government exists to protect and provide infastructure for a productive and fair business climate - dictating behavior has or will not be successsful.
Who cares about your personal beliefs or behavior as long as you do not harm others. If you're cold, hungry and getting less affluent by the second what difference does it make if your gay or Pentacostal? Your are primarily cold, hungry and poor.
The sane middle meaning only those who do not want special attention for their personal actions or desires, would be vehemently protesting if Obama were wrongly focused on the noisy irrelevant. Also, he would not have a 68% approval rating. It's the right time to get down to strictly the business of government.
Isn't it time that US citizens become absorbed in considering and evaluating the proposed programs to get our country financially on track.
mistermcfrugal
Wow! He didn't expand a huge increase in spending on abortions on the anniversary date of Roe v. Wade! He waited until the next day to issue the death sentence for children all over the world! Is this writer nuts or what?
Obama didn't have to make increases in abortions his Number One priority, but he did. He is evil and needs to be ejected from office as soon as possible.
robertg69
"threedy" uses the word "Christian" in a weird underhanded way that exasperates me, but I try to listen and consider what he is saying and not about Obama.
It startles me when I encounter such raw and ugly evidence of an opaque mind!
robertg69
Maybe they are not culture wars, but just the echoes of white paranoia repeating the same twisted misinterpretations of what is and could be!
amantell
Beinart captured some, but not all of the facets of the cultural war in which the country's been embroiled. Yes, race issues are the centerpiece, but more specifically, proponents of conservative versus liberal values are the combatants in this war, which has now wasted the energy of two generations. The liberals who came to power in the 1990s (Clintons, Gore) were footsoldiers against Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The men who entered public life working for Nixon first came into prominence in the 1990s (Gingrich) and got their revenge in the 2000s (Cheney, Rumsfeld).
Obama, thanfully, is not involved in this ideological struggle that has lasted over forty years, and which he wants the country to move past. As Beinart noted, Obama wishes to end the struggle over Roe vs. Wade. In his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last year, Obama said that Americans can agree that we desire to prevent unwanted pregnancy. It seems to me that in order to justice to the subject he's tackled, Beinart ought to have written a longer article.
Banjo1
Have you noticed that people with "opaque minds" strangely discover that quality in those who disagree with them? Strangest thing. As for Beinart, does he really think convictions and principles disappear because of atmospherics in the Oval Office?
drkaza12
Peter; generally I find you on target, and I'm inspired by your insight, but this time there is a big gapping hole in your evaluation of the cultural divide in our country.
Denver Nicks less we forget, "In the Land that Obama Forgot", is reminding us there's a constituency in this country that feels their entitlement to the Presidency has been corrupted. He mentions asking a man what he felt about Barack Obama, and his reply was, "I'm surprised he hadn't got killed yet".
This appears to be acceptable chatter through out the sunbelt, and the internet---which is disturbing---for people that do not see Obama as the last great hope; in fact they see him as a reflection of the hopelessness that is occurring In THEIR country---the rest of us are just visiting---as the anti Christ explained through that Rorschach blot called the bible code.
This is madness perhaps a little too high brow for reviewing in CFR, but its well worth perusing through truthdig.com.
For Obama to immediately prioritize his agenda with what you call a cultural war is silly. For one it would immediately exacerbate his relationship with our brothers south of the mason dixon who are drawing straws and bluing their guns as we speak; and for you to second guess him at this time precludes events at best that will have to occur gradually flying low enough in an attempt to avoid the media's one good eye.
It is day six Peter since he took office, and the ink isn't even dry where he signed in. We can say that for stem cell research and what's left of Mohammad Ali things are getting brighter; and we can say that the Pope, and nothing but the Pope after calling Obama arrogant, have galvanized a group of Catholics to create a sub-division right out side the White House by day four......................Mr. Beinart it's going to a long bumpy night, strap yourself in; yall comon back now hear.
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